Mammoth (2009) or, Modern Life Misery

11/15/2020

Mammoth (2009) or, Modern Life Misery

♥♥

Intimacy and depressive shell-shock appearance clash on this dropped-in-space poster for Lukas Moodysson's Mammoth

A nurse in New York has her hands in life and death situations at work, while her daughter is taught words by a Filipino nanny/maid who has two sons of her own, who miss her. The father in the New York family is off on a contract-signing job in Thailand.

Mammoth is written and directed by great Swedish filmmaker Lukas Moodysson (Show Me Love/Fucking Åmål (1998)). The title refers to a mammoth ivory pen that the man receives in the film as well as a line from one of Moodysson's poetry collections: "Our Savior buried like a Mammoth."

The film starts alright, and one senses quickly that here is an emotional drama with high stakes involved. But the very Swedish family drama, relocated to New York, or so it feels, gets too labored and sharpened in that every story in Mammoth seemingly must move towards misery. At the same time Michelle Williams (Wendy and Lucy (2008)) and Gael García Bernal's (The King (2005)) lead couple, - who seem like the filmmaker's exponents for the competent modern day parents, who still feel lost in the world, (because they lack a resting-place in faith/religion), - are wearying. - Especially Bernal, whose character is thoroughly insufferable in Thailand, where he by turns lectures on (Swedish) equality philosophy, makes promises voraciously as some 16 year-old, gets what he wants and then takes off.

SPOILER The impact of a couple of the tragedies in Mammoth (a boy passes away in the hospital; the nanny/maid's son is raped in the Philippines) is also lessened, because we see them arriving in advance. Moodysson's well-meaning and often well-acted fate-crossing drama can with a bit of harshness be described as misery porn, and it also seems very inspired by Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu's masterpiece Babel (2006), though it (also) lacks that film's striking visuals. Mammoth is overrated.

Moodyson presents the film here in a 2-minute clip

Cost: 10 mil. $

Box office: 2 mil. $

= Box office disaster (returned 0.2 times its cost)

[Mammoth premiered 19 January (Stockholm, Sweden) and runs 125 minutes. Shooting took place in Thailand, the Philippines, New York and Sweden from November 2007 - ?. Williams learned that her fiancee, star actor Heath Ledger had passed away in his sleep while filming Mammoth. The film opened #83 to a 4k $ first weekend in 1 theater in North America, its only release in the country, where it grossed just 9k $ (0.5 % of the total gross). The 3 biggest markets were Sweden with 1.5 mil. $ (75 %), Spain with 182k $ (9.1 %) and Finland with 113k $ (5.7 %). The film won a Guldbagge (Sweden's Oscar). Roger Ebert gave it a 3/4 star review, translating to 2 notches higher than this one. Moodysson returned with We Are the Best!/Vi Är Bäst! (2013). Bernal returned in The Limits of Control (2009); Williams in Blue Valentine (2010). Mammoth is rotten at 45 % with a 5.18/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

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11/15/2020

Mammoth (2009) or, Modern Life Misery

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