After the crass but bold anti-pornography pamphlet A Hole in My Heart, Swedish director Lukas Moodysson continued his career with the black and white "silent movie with sound" Container, which sounds interesting although I haven't seen it yet. His latest film Mammoth is a return to narrative story lines and more conventional techniques, and a pretty good portrayal of modern loneliness and the nature of family relationships.
The plot deals with the Vidaleses, a wealthy family of three living in New York City. Leo (Gael García Bernal), the father of the family and a creator of a successful gaming website, has to fly to Thailand to sign a contract, while his wife Ellen (Michelle Williams) and their daughter Jackie (Sophie Nyweide) stay at home. Ellen is an emergency surgeon often working long hours, leaving Jackie to spend a lot of time with the family's Filipino nanny Gloria (Marife Necesito) who she has grown very close to. Subsequently all of the characters experience different kinds of loneliness in the absence of their loved ones and have to find ways to cope with their feelings over the course of the film.
The title of the film refers to an expensive pen made from mammoth ivory that Leo receives from his business partner as a gift. Later on the pen comes to symbolize the flaunting lifestyle Leo wants to distance himself from, and economic inequality in general is one of the themes examined in the form of the Gloria character: she is working hard in America to provide decent life for her children in the Philippines, even if the separation from them is tearing her apart. Leo and Ellen may be oblivious to her feelings, but they are not free of worries either, even if the nature of their anxiety is vaguer and often seen as less understandable by the common public. The characters' inner similarities are also exemplified by the adoption of a "surrogate child" for every character: Gloria is affectionate towards Jackie, while Ellen becomes particularly caring about one of her young patients in the hospital and Leo wants to help out a Thai prostitute named Cookie (Natthamonkarn Srinikornchot).
Moodysson is clearly criticizing the effects of globalization on poor families' means of making money and Mammoth is not devoid rather emotional scenes, but luckily the director favours a much subtler way of presenting his message than in, say, his prostitution-themed depressor Lilya 4-Ever (2002). A lot of the time the characters' states of mind are brought forward by haunting pop songs or shots of people looking out of windows by themselves, a style not unlike that of Sofia Coppola's masterful Lost in Translation (2003). Using or referencing many modern communication technologies like cell phones, Skype or MySpace further emphasizes the increasing relevance of the sense of alienation in life, an important theme that has been touched by numerous films and works of fiction.
Even though the main idea behind the film doesn't provide major surprises, and neither does the story or the ending, the film is well made and enjoyable to watch as a functional sum of its parts. The nice Thai scenery and New York's urban landscapes look great and all the actors succeed in their parts, especially García Bernal as the pseudo-youthful Leo and the always good Michelle Williams as the stressed Ellen, but Marife Necesito also get through her diverse role without giving reasons to complain. Child actress Sophie Nyweide delivers a delightfully seamless performance as too. Since the music and cinematography have been skilfully created as well, Mammoth can safely be called one of the better films of recent years and recommended also to wider audiences who may not have appreciated Moodysson's previous two films as much.
The plot deals with the Vidaleses, a wealthy family of three living in New York City. Leo (Gael García Bernal), the father of the family and a creator of a successful gaming website, has to fly to Thailand to sign a contract, while his wife Ellen (Michelle Williams) and their daughter Jackie (Sophie Nyweide) stay at home. Ellen is an emergency surgeon often working long hours, leaving Jackie to spend a lot of time with the family's Filipino nanny Gloria (Marife Necesito) who she has grown very close to. Subsequently all of the characters experience different kinds of loneliness in the absence of their loved ones and have to find ways to cope with their feelings over the course of the film.
The title of the film refers to an expensive pen made from mammoth ivory that Leo receives from his business partner as a gift. Later on the pen comes to symbolize the flaunting lifestyle Leo wants to distance himself from, and economic inequality in general is one of the themes examined in the form of the Gloria character: she is working hard in America to provide decent life for her children in the Philippines, even if the separation from them is tearing her apart. Leo and Ellen may be oblivious to her feelings, but they are not free of worries either, even if the nature of their anxiety is vaguer and often seen as less understandable by the common public. The characters' inner similarities are also exemplified by the adoption of a "surrogate child" for every character: Gloria is affectionate towards Jackie, while Ellen becomes particularly caring about one of her young patients in the hospital and Leo wants to help out a Thai prostitute named Cookie (Natthamonkarn Srinikornchot).
Moodysson is clearly criticizing the effects of globalization on poor families' means of making money and Mammoth is not devoid rather emotional scenes, but luckily the director favours a much subtler way of presenting his message than in, say, his prostitution-themed depressor Lilya 4-Ever (2002). A lot of the time the characters' states of mind are brought forward by haunting pop songs or shots of people looking out of windows by themselves, a style not unlike that of Sofia Coppola's masterful Lost in Translation (2003). Using or referencing many modern communication technologies like cell phones, Skype or MySpace further emphasizes the increasing relevance of the sense of alienation in life, an important theme that has been touched by numerous films and works of fiction.
Even though the main idea behind the film doesn't provide major surprises, and neither does the story or the ending, the film is well made and enjoyable to watch as a functional sum of its parts. The nice Thai scenery and New York's urban landscapes look great and all the actors succeed in their parts, especially García Bernal as the pseudo-youthful Leo and the always good Michelle Williams as the stressed Ellen, but Marife Necesito also get through her diverse role without giving reasons to complain. Child actress Sophie Nyweide delivers a delightfully seamless performance as too. Since the music and cinematography have been skilfully created as well, Mammoth can safely be called one of the better films of recent years and recommended also to wider audiences who may not have appreciated Moodysson's previous two films as much.