Force Majeure

Locations
Call Number: DVD FLC-SWE Force
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Pittsfield Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 1st Floor 1-week checkout	DVD FLC-SWE Force	1-week checkout	On Shelf
Pittsfield Adult A/V 1-week checkout	DVD FLC-SWE Force	1-week checkout	On Shelf
Traverwood Adult A/V 1-week checkout	DVD FLC-SWE Force	1-week checkout	On Hold Shelf
Malletts Adult A/V 1-week checkout	DVD FLC-SWE Force	1-week checkout	Due 04-30-2024

Originally released as a motion picture in 2014.
Special features: Interview with writer/director Ruben Östlund and actor Johannes Bah Kuhnke ; featurette.
Johannes Kuhnke, Lisa Loven Kongsli, Clara Wettergren, Vincent Wettergren.
An idyllic family skiing vacation takes a stunning turn when an avalanche threatens the ski lodge restaurant, sending people fleeing and demanding quick decisions that change the course of the family dynamics and trust.
DVD, NTSC region 1, widescreen (2.40:1) presentation; Dolby Digital 5.1 surround.

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

borrrrrring submitted by lawrencekl57 on February 15, 2015, 8:15am If you like watching a family brushing their teeth, this is the movie you've been waiting for. They did it many times. One of the most boring movies I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot.

Now I don't have to ever go skiing. submitted by Steve Amick on August 12, 2015, 8:18am Though there is more chair lift action here than skiing. Which is okay, I guess--we're Americans and fine, our attention spans are nil. But you sort of can blink and miss the story here. The director admits--as if there's no shame in this--that the whole idea was inspired by a Youtube video. The pacing sort of, oddly, reminds me of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. That's not a compliment to this movie so much as it is an admission that 2001 kind of leaves me cold, too. They're both sort of like visual electronic ambient music. I do get the point the director's after, but it can be discussed in an article about the so-called "viking" gene. Some people react to emergencies with their "lizard brain"--it's where we get firefighters and Audie Murphy--others freeze. No shame. It's apparently the genetic luck of the draw. They figured this out a couple years ago. Move on.
One peculiar element to this movie is that you can pretty much ignore the subtitles and understand it, even though it would sound like someone reading from an Ikea catalogue. We get it: "I'm ashamed," "I'm angry," "I have deep ennui.""

Force Majeure submitted by jibkidder on July 26, 2022, 10:12pm Ostlund and also the Safdie Brothers are contemporary directors who are working with awkwardness and stress in ways that seem really relevant to the present. I wonder if the internet has caused a massive and hard to pin down shift in our collective experience of anxiety. Anyways, much like his other works, this is a visually precise, often funny provocation about masculinity. The rights were purchased by Julia Dreyfus to make an American version - that fill is so much a lesser film for abandoning the careful cinematography of this one, but it is easy to see what Dreyfus loved about it - the way it takes a humor of awkwardness to new places.

“You seem irritated” submitted by tarascon on May 28, 2023, 12:18pm ^
With that understatement the husband proceeds to gaslight his poor wife—compounding his original betrayal with obstinate denial. And when those ploys fail he goes for the pathos. Will he ever make it right?
That would be telling…

I’m with jibkidder on this film and recommend Ostlund if you enjoy darkly funny films about cringeworthy jerks. Furthermore Ostlund has a sharp—almost clinical—eye. Nothing we’re shown exists by accident (very much like Kubrick) and certain scenes run on to such length that they go past disturbing and become absurd.