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There is a certain breed of middle class asshole, whose bathroom, or bookshelf contains at least one inspirational book of quotations, and inside that wonderful book, there is always the beloved Maya Angelou aphorism:
‘You can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.’
Most people who read those words will always say, ‘well, when this happens to me, I’ll act calm’, but guess what? You probably won’t, because it’s not always tangled fairy lights, rain, or your lost luggage. Sometimes it will be an avalanche, coming straight for you, and in such cases, what will be your first reaction?
Unfortunately, this slight deviation from Angelou’s rule is the case for Tomas (Johannes Bah Kuhnke), the poor misfortunate protagonist, whose confident and amicable manner, Swedish director Ruben Östlund tears to shreds in his film, the twistedly perverse Force Majeure.
A premise almost straight out of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror anthology series, Force Majeure pokes fun at a proud family man, whose apparent devotion to his wife and two children, he proves by forking out a hefty sum of money to hold them up in a French Alps ski resort for a few days. However, once this act of generosity is completed, his loyalty strays as a cavalcade of snow cascades down the mountains, in his and their direction.
That separation must be emphasised, because when Tomas’ survival mode kicks in, he chooses to run for cover, leaving his family for dead, while still managing to scoop up his iPhone in the process. Yet, the avalanche turns out to be a false alarm, the family reappear unscathed and the plot takes flight by asking the provocative question: Is Tomas a divorceable bastard, or merely a pitiful human being, whose survival instincts got the better of him?
Influenced by those figures of ridicule that we all love to laugh at in any viral Youtube video, Östlund decides to imagine a broader context to such people, telling the tale of what happens once the camera stops recording. What were they like before they became the idiot? How did this affect their lives in the aftermath? Did they deserve this humiliation? And more importantly, are we, the spectators, naïve enough to believe that we would act any differently in the same situation?
These questions, the family and their fellow skiing companion’s debate over, with the answers tormenting all involved, until each person snaps, only to reveal how equally pathetic they are in a crisis situation. The results are heartbreaking, utterly hilarious and unapologetically torturous. And of course, as is a prerequisite for any Scandinavian film, these painfully uncomfortable conversations are consistently set around dinner tables to give its viewer the sensation of being inescapably trapped in the politest prison cell ever built.
Yet, for all of the painfully awkward comedic moments that liven up each playfully cruel scenario, the film also begs us to look seriously at our own interference in nature, or territories that do not belong to us. There are two allegories here bubbling under the surface. The first is whether humans, in their insatiable need to conquer and manipulate nature for their own pleasures, do not fully realise that they are toying with a force that could at once, wipe them from existence in seconds, or worse still, cause them to lose face.
However, and even more interesting is the second, which is a nod towards western foreign policy. Throwing drones into the mix as a plot device, while also, using the threat of nature as a metaphor for extremist reactions against invading groups, there are is an infinite glut of questions about the times in which we live that Östlund uses to decorate his story at every turn. It is a smorgasbord of tragedy and farce from start to finish, and you will leave the theatre in a fantastic mood, chuckling to yourself, or potentially, disillusioned with the human race as a whole. What more could you ask for?
In the end, Force Majeure gives us all one fine piece of advice. If you want to see how impressive people are, just throw it in front of a fucking huge avalanche. What will happen next should be as good an answer as you could hope to obtain. It may not be what you want to hear, but, then again, nobody really sets out to be the idiot.
