The Square

Ruben Ostland's new film, The Square (2017) is long, complex, and, maybe, just a little too loose to be a masterpiece.  It is also very, very funny.  (His previous film, Force Majeur is less ambitious, more tightly focused, and equally wonderful -- it's the best film that I have seen about the problem of being a man in the modern world.)

The film is about a exceptionally handsome, self-assured and prosperous Swede, the curator of a vast and prestigious museum of modern art whose life.  In Swedish cinema (Bergman for instance) such characters exist to become progressively unhinged by a series of strange events.  In its last half hour, the picture's narrative becomes Kafkaesque -- the hero is harassed incessantly by a tiny boy who shrieks at him and threatens to unleash "chaos".  By this time, chaos is already much in evidence -- both in the hero's personal and professional life. 

I will have to think more about this film before I can reliably report on it.  The movie is 2 and a half hours long and contains many incidents.  Here is the feeling that the picture induces:  you're on a subway and someone seems to be having an epileptic seizure.  Everyone is appalled and averts their eyes.  But everyone feels intensely guilty.  Or you are at a Seven-Eleven in a poor neighborhood in a big city.  A beggar has harassed you into giving him some money.  He's not satisfied and demands more.  How do you feel?

The film's title refers to an art installation at the X-Royal Museum that the hero, Christian, operates.  The Square is a space the size of a small room in the museum's courtyard -- it shimmers because it's boundary is delineated by a strip of fiber-optic light.  Within the square, a bronze plate tells us:  All people will be treated with respect and humanity and all rights and obligations will be protected.

Does such a space exist in our world outside of self-indulgent conceptual art installations?  What if such a space did exist?  How would we behave?  Just before the film's end, we see a dance-team, the Bob Cats, performing an elaborate number in a competition.  What is the meaning of this scene?