The wife and I went to see Force Majeure yesterday. It's a compelling new Swedish film about a young family on a skiing holiday in France. Sounds great, 'eh? That's not what it's about, incidentally. It's actually about the tension between the person one pretends to be and the one you actually are. The one that's controlled by the brain stem exclusively. You stripped of language, learning, mores, fatherhood, fraternity - everything. Just you, whoever you is. That one.
In this highly developed epoch we call home, this id-driven grablous monkey self is more or less buried, so we give him little thought. He does emerge occasionally, when one is angry, stressed or tired for example. He's the one who gives voice to that florid invective you hurl at other motorists when you've been cut up in traffic. These episodes are short, and when over, we can generally explain away our outré behaviour by pretending we weren't ourselves for an instant. "I'm so sorry. I don't know what came over me; I lost myself for a moment." Au contraire. That snarling Tasmanian devil in slacks is you. It's more you than the various roles you've clothed yourself with over the years.
This is the theme the film examines. The father of the family in the story finds to his horror that in extremis he is a coward. He is cowardly to such an extent indeed that he flees from his wife and children, abandoning them to their fates. But it's a false alarm and no-one is hurt. He has to return to the scene. The shame starts to eat away at him. How can he play this role with any conviction when he now knows it's just that, a role.
His wife and kids give him short shrift an' all.
It all makes for very uncomfortable viewing. But it's a wonderful film for all that. It's beautiful, intelligent and thought-provoking, which is rarity these days.
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