The Square

When The Square won the Palme d’Or at
Cannes in 2017, direc­tor Ruben Östlund leapt onto the stage with a bound­less ener­gy not seen since Tom Cruise met Oprah Winfrey’s sofa. At one point, he instruct­ed the press to turn their cam­eras to the crowd, and for the crowd to give out an almighty yell. Every­one did so obe­di­ent­ly – the cam­era even panned to David Lynch join­ing in. It was a sur­re­al, unruly moment at a cer­e­mo­ny iden­ti­fied for its unpar­al­leled pomp and deco­rum, but per­haps entire­ly fit­ting giv­en that The Square is itself a film com­prised of bizarre non sequiturs.

Loose­ly based on his own expe­ri­ences work­ing in the art world, Östlund’s fifth fea­ture sees Claes Bang take on the role of Chris­t­ian, a Stock­holm gallery cura­tor prepar­ing for the debut of his lat­est acqui­si­tion, from which the film draws its title. It’s dif­fi­cult to say if we’re sup­posed to sym­pa­thise with Chris­t­ian, or regard him with a cer­tain lev­el of dis­gust. In one mem­o­rable scene, he offers to buy a home­less woman lunch, and when she responds with a pre­cise request he seems con­fused, evi­dent­ly expect­ing the woman to grate­ful­ly fall at his feet rather than ask him for a chick­en pani­ni with­out onions.

Even so, Bang is well cast and like­able as the hand­some buf­foon around which the chaos revolves, from a hare­brained scheme to retrieve his stolen phone and wal­let, to try­ing (and fail­ing) to medi­ate a rapid­ly unrav­el­ling Q&A with humour­less artist Julian (Dominic West). He’s joined by Elis­a­beth Moss as Anne, an Amer­i­can art crit­ic, who seems fas­ci­nat­ed and frus­trat­ed in equal mea­sure by Christian’s hap­less­ness and immaturity.

At 151 min­utes, this is a con­sid­er­able invest­ment – par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en that so much of the run­time is ded­i­cat­ed to the mun­dane idio­syn­crasies which make up a man’s life. While its more sur­re­al moments and bizarre slap­stick sequences are often amus­ing, Östlund could prob­a­bly do with a more ruth­less edi­tor – the pace often drags and threat­ens to decay into at out direc­to­r­i­al indul­gence. Still, it’s hard not to admire Östlund’s ambi­tious vision, and what seems to be a gen­uine, earnest desire to make a statement.

While posi­tioned as a satire of the art world, the film actu­al­ly func­tions more effec­tive­ly as a damn­ing indict­ment of the West­ern bour­geoisie, in par­tic­u­lar the ambiva­lence and iner­tia which places the same incom­pe­tent, inef­fec­tu­al indi­vid­u­als in posi­tions of pow­er by virtue of their social stand­ing, rather than any capa­bil­i­ty or tal­ent. Östlund posits that the art world is as cor­rupt and greedy as any oth­er facet of soci­ety, but doesn’t have much to say apart from this, which leaves a curi­ous void at the film’s core. There’s no real weight to Östlund’s state­ment, and as such it verges dan­ger­ous­ly close to being an exer­cise in navel-gaz­ing by a direc­tor who explored a sim­i­lar lev­el of male incom­pe­tence in 2014’s Force Majeure.

Is The Square as clever as it thinks it is, or the ulti­mate prod­uct of unbri­dled male ego? The truth like­ly lies some­where in between – but for any­one who has ever stood in a gallery squint­ing at a Pol­lock and thought, ​‘I reck­on I could do that’, it is a wry, cyn­i­cal con­fir­ma­tion that yes, with the back­ing of a mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar indus­try… you prob­a­bly could.