Film: Mammoth
Release date: 14th March 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 125 mins
Director: Lukas Moodysson
Starring: Gael Garcia Bernal, Michelle Williams, Marife Necesito, Sophie Nyweide, Thomas McCarthy
Genre: Drama
Studio: Soda
Format: DVD
Country: Sweden/Denmark/Germany
This is a majority English-language release.
Lukas Moodysson’s Mammoth introduces the director’s first English speaking film and reverts back to the good old narrative style (thankfully some might say) somewhat abandoned in his last two disappointing projects. Babel-style comparative and interlinking stories pave the way for thought-provoking themes inspired by everyday people and life defining situations.
The story focuses on three different situations amongst one small family: dad, Leo, a computer game wizard who owns his own business; mum, Ellen, an ER surgeon; their young daughter, Jackie; and their Filipino nanny/housekeeper, Gloria.
When Leo travels to Thailand to sign a business contract, the deal unexpectedly takes longer than promised, and Leo is left to amuse himself. He travels to a remote, picturesque island where he takes up with some pot-smoking travellers one night and ends up in a brothel. At first he sympathises with the situation and pays a prostitute named Cookie to go home alone. However, when Cookie finds him the next morning, they spend the day together, and Leo, caught up in the romance, sleeps with her. The next day, he regrets what he’s done, pushes the deal through asap, and returns home to his family in New York.
Meanwhile, Ellen spends a few hard days at work trying to save a young neglected boy who arrives with multiple stab wounds to the abdomen which he received from his own mother. Ellen develops an attachment to the boy because of his situation, and wishes she could spend more time caring for her own daughter. Instead, she is torn between work and home while her daughter grows ever more attached to the housekeeper, and simultaneously estranged from herself.
The final strand of the tale is all about Gloria, the housekeeper, and her two young sons who live back home in the Philippines. As Gloria struggles emotionally to spend so much time away from them, her mother assures the grandsons she is doing it for their own financial good. Nevertheless, the older brother, Badong, one night seeks easy money from tourists in the city; innocently ignorant to what it entails, only eager to obtain money to allow his mother to return home. His beaten body is discovered the next day, and Gloria comes home for good to be with her family…
There has been controversy surrounding a perceived theme in the story – that of women living for their work and neglecting their children along the way, and this is an oversight of Moodysson, a self proclaimed supporter of feminist politics. Considering the film is about human relationships and families, an audience can’t help but make the link. All three working women in the film – Ellen, Gloria, and Cookie - have moments lamenting time not spent with their children, and only when something tragic happens to Gloria’s son does she return to him. Otherwise, by the end of the film, even after instances of self-realisation, nothing really happens to change Ellen’s or Cookie’s situations, and life will go on as before.
In fact, nothing hugely positive can be taken from the story at all. Be it issues of working women, tourism, child-rearing, third world society, even the modern day family – none are looked on too kindly. Instead, we are shown the dark side of tourism, prostitution, philandering husbands, negligent mothers, and people who have to make a living on rubbish dumps. If Moodysson’s aim was to pose questions and make us think, then he fails. And the reason why is because there’s not enough depth.
It’s all very well illustrating the problems in every aspect of global modern society, however, the film could have been displayed in mute and the audience would still understand what’s going on. This point would usually be taken as an appraisal of on-screen coherence and a nod to the production, but when a film like Mammoth tries to make a study of deep themes within society, it needs to give an audience more to chew on.
Better character development could have done the trick and given an extra dimension the film needs. The characters seem to be there to serve a purpose instead of the other way round.
However, saying all this, the film isn’t as bad as it sounds. It is cleanly produced and the $10 million budget makes sure of this. With a funky soundtrack, smooth filming and two big names attached in Williams and Garcia Bernal, all is not lost in the name of entertainment. The colour palette and scenery are nothing but pleasing to the eye, and there is one (although just the one) amusing episode in a conversation between three prostitutes discussing punters’ performances according to nationality.
Despite the film’s avoidance to build or flesh out its solid themes, Moodysson presents us with a just-about plausible feature; although what’s being presented is a bit slow and obvious. Mammoth should only be given a hard time by those seeking to do so. Otherwise, it’s a watchable film leaning on the side of ‘nothing’, because that’s what it leaves the viewer feeling – if a bit sad. MI
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