Film reviews roundup: The Square, Peter Rabbit, Mary Magdalene, The Magic Flute, My Generation

An Oscar nominee, Beatrix Potter but not as we know it, Biblical revisionism, a return to Ingmar Bergman, and Michael Caine reflects

The Square (15)

★★★★☆

Dir. Ruben Östlund, 151 mins, starring: Claes Bang, Elisabeth Moss, Dominic West, Terry Notary, Christopher Laesso

Middle-class, middle-aged white men don’t come at all well out of Swedish director Ruben Östlund’s recent films. In his 2014 feature, Force Majeure, at the very first sign of danger, the hero runs for his life, forgetting all about his wife and kid. In The Square (which won the Palme d’Or in Cannes last summer), the art gallery curator Christian (Claes Bang) proves equally incapable of dealing with what “real” life has to throw at him. He exists in his own little bubble and can’t cope at all when he tries to come out of it.

Anyone expecting a forbidding Scandinavian art house film will be in for a pleasant surprise with The Square. In spite of its lengthy running time and the darkness of its themes, the film is frequently very funny. Its tone is similar to that of the comedy series, W1A, which lampoons the bureaucrats, middle-managers and marketing consultants who haunt the corridors of the BBC. Here, Östlund’s target is the publicly subsidised art world.

Christian (Claes Bang) seemingly has every advantage. Like the subject of Jorgen Leth’s famous satirical short, The Perfect Human (1967), he is presented to us as if he himself is the main exhibit. Journalists are as curious about the successful, good looking curator as they are about the shows of obscure conceptual art he oversees. Christian talks a very good game. He tells one reporter (Elizabeth Moss) of the heavy sense of obligation he feels to spend public money so his gallery can compete against private collectors. He waxes forth at every opportunity about the meaning of art.

Some of the gags here are a little obvious (the cleaner who can’t tell between artwork and junk, the huge statue that topples from its pedestal, the advertising execs determined to cause controversy) but parts of The Square could easily pass for a fly on the wall style documentary about the art world.

“The Square is a sanctuary of trust and caring. Within its boundaries, we all share equal rights and obligations,” reads the slogan for the exhibition that gives the film its name. That all sounds very impressive but the words don’t mean much.

Östlund includes frequent shots of beggars and street hustlers. Generally, Christian and the other professionals are far too busy checking their smartphones to pay any attention to them. When he is drawn into an incident involving a distraught woman and an angry man who appears to be chasing her, Christian is delighted. It gets his heart pumping. The threat of actual violence is so far removed from his everyday world that it excites him. Even being robbed is strangely pleasurable. It makes him feel engaged.

The same jolt comes in what is already the film’s most famous scene, a swanky dinner at which a very aggressive performance artist appears. He is physically imposing. His act consists of him grunting and bellowing, jumping on tables, goading the sponsors and pulling women’s hair. All the rich sponsors enjoy his behaviour, at least at first, until they begin to think his aggression might be for real. Then, they begin to behave like ape men themselves. A scene which starts in very funny fashion ends on a deliberately jarring and unsettling note.

Throughout the film, the liberal, well-intentioned art lovers force-perform all sorts of contortions in the name of tolerance and democracy. They cherish the idea of free expression. This means that when a man with Tourette’s syndrome yells obscenities during a Q&A with an important artist (Dominic West), they agree “everyone is welcome, irrespective of views”. The others therefore sit quietly as the disturbed audience member shouts out “fuck off” or “show me your boobs”. Lines are so blurred anyway between what is “art” and what is “real life” that you half suspect the interruptions may be part of the performance.

Christian is a creep but Östlund portrays him in a sympathetic light. He treats everybody close to him – his daughters, the lover whose name he can’t remember, his co-workers – in the same off-hand fashion. For all his intelligence and sophistication, he is profoundly immature. Like the husband who fled the avalanche in Force Majeure, he struggles to cope with anything that threatens his security or comfort.

His self-obsession stops him from seeing the damage his actions are causing others, most notably the boy from a housing estate whose life becomes intertwined with his own. Christian is as much a victim of his own actions as anyone else. He turns into a figure of pity as well as of scorn. In his own way, he means well. We see him through the eyes of his daughters, who look on with bemusement as his behaviour becomes more erratic.

Inevitably, the longer the film lasts, the less biting and funny it becomes. It risks turning into yet another study of a middle-aged white man who can’t make any sense of his life. Claes Bang plays this modern-day anti-hero in very engaging fashion, capturing his smugness but also his surprising naiveté.

Östlund’s portrayal of the contemporary art world is only partly tongue in cheek. It feels like an insider’s view as much as it does like a lampoon. The director is even-handed. He is showing the idealism and ingenuity of the curators as well as their cynicism and absurdity.

The Square is an uneven film. Some of the high points (most notably the set-piece with the deranged performance artist) give the story an adrenalin rush which the filmmakers can’t sustain. The plot soon begins to meander. It has an emptiness at the core. Christian isn’t a figure of any emotional depth whatsoever but Östlund extracts an unlikely pathos from his search for meaning in his life. He doesn’t want to behave badly but he just can’t help it.

Peter Rabbit (PG)

★★★☆☆

Dir. Will Gluck, 95 mins, starring: Rose Byrne, Domhnall Gleeson, voiced by: James Corden, Margot Robbie, Daisy Ridley, Elizabeth Debicki

This is Beatrix Potter but not as we know it. Anyone coming to the new computer-animated/live action version of Peter Rabbit looking for some gentle Lake District whimsy is likely to be very startled. The approach here is deliberately abrasive. Petter Rabbit (voiced by James Corden) is a buck-toothed, blue coated rebel without a carrot, always ready to goad Farmer McGregor (Sam Neill beneath heavy layers of white whiskers) and to steal his vegetables. The other rabbits – and all the other animals too – are equally outspoken and mischievous.

Farmer McGregor himself is an outrageous glutton whose pie-heavy diet would clog up the arteries of a far younger man. Director Will Gluck strikes a frantic pace. Peter Rabbit and the other bunnies, Flopsy (Margot Robbie), Mopsy (Elizabeth Debicki) and Cotton-Tail (Daisy Ridley), are always rushing somewhere.

You can’t help but admire the anarchic glee of the storytelling as the animals take over the farmer’s house and leave it looking like a bomb site.

Some of the puns here are pretty feeble. (“It’s not about the salary, it’s about the celery,” typifies the kind of wordplay the film delights in.) The human performances are as broad as those of the animated animals. Rose Byrne plays the beautiful, rabbit-loving, would-be artist Bea, who lives next door to the McGregor house.

Domhnall Gleeson is in smirking form as Farmer McGregor’s nephew and heir, Thomas McGregor, who has been working in Harrods Department Store but is continually passed over for promotion. He hates the countryside but swoons at the sight of Bea. This makes Peter Rabbit extremely jealous and sparks full-on warfare, involving lots of very violent slapstick, some explosions and some shock treatment.

Peter Rabbit is uneven in the extreme. Its riotous approach won’t appeal to anyone hoping to spend a few soothing moments in the company of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle and Jemima Puddle-Duck. The film, though set in rural England, was made in Australia and has an unmistakable whiff of Barry McKenzie-like Aussie yobbishness about it. That, though, is a recommendation. In an era when so many animated features are so cloying, the slapstick, malice and offbeat humour here can’t help but seem bracing and refreshing.

Mary Magdalene (12A)

★★☆☆☆

Dir. Garth Davis, 120 mins, starring: Rooney Mara, Joaquin Phoenix, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Ariane Labed

Where is the People’s Front of Judea when you need it most? This very earnest and pious new film about Mary Magdalene would surely have benefitted from a little of the ribaldry and irreverence found in Monty Python’s The Life Of Brian. It makes the argument that its central character (played by Rooney Mara) was at least as important to Jesus (Joaquin Phoenix) as his male disciples.

A note at the end credits suggests that the long-held notion Mary Magdalene was a penitent prostitute was a calumny put about by Pope Gregory I in the sixth century.

Nothing about her depiction here suggests a fallen woman. Mara portrays her as a hypersensitive but extremely resilient figure. Mary refuses to be forced into an arranged marriage. To the fury of her family, who feel that she is possessed, she follows Jesus instead.

This is the story of Mary’s spiritual awakening. Director Garth Davis (best known for the Oscar contender Lion) fills the film with tear-stained close-ups of her and shots of a dreamy looking Jesus, preaching to his followers. Mara tries to convey Mary’s stubbornness and her courage. We see her working as a midwife; she is shown gathering in fishing nets. She is always the one to tend the sick and dying.

When the other disciples teeter on the brink of despair, she understands before any of them why he was ready to die for their sins. At the same time, she looks so fragile and ethereal that it is hard to believe she is robust enough to survive in the blistering heat, let alone to fight the good fight.

Phoenix plays Jesus as a gentle, patient figure, very different in temperament (if not hirsute appearance) to the violent vigilante he portrays in You Were Never Really Here (also in cinemas now). Only in the temple, when he confronts the money lenders, does he show any anger.

Early on, we are told “peace is fragile” and “sedition is rising”, but we barely get to see the Romans. Pontius Pilate doesn’t appear at all. Judas is played by Tahar Rahim in strangely sympathetic fashion. (He may betray Jesus but that, the film appears to argue, shouldn’t be held against him – it was just a momentary aberration.) Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Peter is as redoubtable as you expect him to be. He may be the rock on which the church is built but his character, like those of the other disciples, is very skimpily drawn.

Davis’s approach is closer to the humanism of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Gospel Of St Matthew than to the extreme masochism of Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation Of Christ or the bombast of Cecil B De Mille’s Biblical epics. Some of the imagery is very striking. Davis includes shots reminiscent of Sebastiao Salgado photographs of figures looking like dots on the landscape as they walk across huge, empty deserts. The seething crowd scenes in which dozens of faces fill the screen are also very striking.

The music from Hildur Guonadottir and Johann Johannsson plays a crucial role in establishing a dream-like mood. What’s missing here is any sense whatsoever of dramatic conflict. The film’s formal beauty notwithstanding, this is a torpid affair. Everyone accepts everything that happens to them, as if it is long since pre-ordained.

“If we don’t understand, it is because it is beyond our understanding,” is their Lewis Carroll-like logic for explaining the crucifixion and its aftermath. The one trait they share with the characters in the Monty Python film is that they look on the bright side of life. It is just a pity there isn’t more colour or humour along the way.

The Magic Flute (PG)

★★★★☆

Dir. Ingmar Bergman, 137 mins, starring: lrik Cold, Jane Darling, Elisabeth Erikson, Sixten Fark, Hakan Hagegard, Nina Harte, Arne Hendriksen, Helena Högberg

Ingmar Bergman’s version of Mozart’s The Magic Flute isn’t his most cinematic work – it’s a film version of an opera and was originally shown on Swedish TV. Nonetheless, there are elements here which echo his other films. Inevitably, Bergman accentuates the darkness in the storyline – the references to death and suicide.

He also plays up the romantic misunderstandings. Prince Tamino and the rustic bird-catcher Papageno lost in the woods aren’t so different from the characters in search of love in Smiles Of A Summer Night.

The film opens in an unexpected and very graceful way with a montage of faces of the audience members as we listen to the musical overture. They’re of every different age and background (and include Bergman himself). Their expressions all register exactly the same sense of curiosity and intense pleasure.

My Generation (12A)

★★★☆☆

David Batty, 85 mins, featuring: Michael Caine

Michael Caine whisks us through the Swinging Sixties in this breezy and evocative archive-based documentary. The film interweaves his own story with that of the society around him. Caine himself features prominently, both in clips from old films and TV chat shows and in contemporary footage. Other interviewees, who include Marianne Faithful, Paul McCartney, Mary Quant, Twiggy and David Bailey, are heard but not seen other than in footage from the period.

Caine describes the 1960s as “the first time the young British working class stood up for themselves and said we are here, this is our society and we are not going away”. He also highlights the importance the post-war education system played in the social and cultural transformation of the period. Most of the prominent figures featured here, whether from movie, music or fashion worlds, are grammar-school kids.

The archive material has been painstakingly assembled and the well-chosen musical soundtrack plays like a jukebox selection of favourites from the era. Many of the anecdotes and insights here will already be familiar to anyone with even a passing knowledge of the period but that doesn’t reduce in the slightest the nostalgic pleasure that the film provides throughout.