The Square movie: Review, Cast and Director

Film: The Square

Cast: Claes Bang, Elisabeth Moss, Dominic West, Terry Notary

Director: Ruben Ostlund

Rating: * * * *

This cerebral award-winning film critiques art, culture and societal mores with a dazzling cast of actors. Dominic West essays a hipster artist; Terry Notary is a performance artist who unnerves fat cats at a fundraiser.

Elizabeth Moss (Mad Men & The Handmaid’s Tale) plays the journalist who interviews Christian, the smug curator (Claes Bang) of a Stockholm museum, who enlists marketing whiz kids to create a PR buzz. Swedish writer/director Ruben Ostlund’s film explores values and perceptions: the way we present ourselves, and who we really are. Some, as my favourite man in the New Testament points out, are whitewashed sepulchres. The Europeans said they loved art but never bought Van Gogh who died penniless.

Ostlund chooses the contemporary art scene to make his point via lengthy takes. The titular Square is a public installation of lit tiles. Are we squares in round holes? Merely pretentious? It is not a crime to admit you don’t understand a painting. Or a novel. I have yet to complete James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Anne is unable to understand Christian’s purple prose. What is he saying? What does it mean?

Like a novel, a painting is completed by the viewer who brings his/her own perceptions often interpreting the work in ways unforeseen by its creator. Ostlund’s thought-provoking Square addresses inequity, gender, power and wealth through the comic lens first employed with devastating effect by Roman satirists.