Play (2011)

In my opinion, Ruben Östlund is perhaps the most interesting movie director making films in Sweden today. His films explore social situations and the viewer is put in an as uncomfortable position as the protagonists, but this is not to say that Östlund makes some kind of social pornography of the type that we are supposed to take a lot of pleasure in looking at other's misery. One of the recurring themes in Östlund's movies is how fear is handled in encounters between people. He investigates how fear is transformed into a persistent will to make everything all right, to act as if nothing happened, as if the uncomfortable things can be mastered somehow. These topics are also apparent in Östlund's latest movie, Play. It is a difficult movie but not in the sense that it is difficult to follow the story or that it contains a lot of violence. It's difficult to watch because it forces you to think about what all of these situations mean, how you react to them - Östlund's films feel personal in how they seem aimed not at an idealized, statistical audience ("this is what people normally want to see"). He puts some acute questions in front of you, and it is your responsibility to think about what you see. But like Michael Haneke, I am not always sure whether Östlund's films express a moral clarity. As you can probably guess, his films have an open-ended character. They never conclude in clear-cut solutions or narrative resolutions.

Some reviewers and debaters accused Play of being racist. Even though I can see where that worry is coming from, I don't feel that does justice to the film. The question is there, however, what does race mean in the film, in what way is being black important or not important here? But this is not the only questions. There is also another story, a story about reactions that have a racist structure to them that the film reveals as an aspect of a tangled situation.

Through a very sophisticated series of techniques that play on psychological responses, a group of boys makes another group of boys handle over all of their valuable. It all starts with the first group telling one boy that he has just the same kind of mobile phone that has been stolen from another boy's brother. Can he prove that he didn't steal it? The boys bribe, play good cop/bad cop, they talk and persuade, they use force and elicit fear. Among themselves, they are not at all a coherent group. One of them is beaten up for acting differently. The other group of course try to flee from the situation, they try to make all of this end so that they can continue their day in the normal way. Their actions express insecurity, and this is exploited. The other boys persist. Slowly, some of their resistance starts to wither away. They get tired. They submit. They react spontaneously in ways that make them play along. The situation is a perpetual state of social bribery. At one point, they all "cooperate", but in the next scene, it is back to the mix of resistance and lack of defiance.The black kids play with racial stereotypes: the gangsta, the dangerous black, the unruly youth, the victim. The other gang are confounded, they don't know what to do.

The digital camera remains static. It is usually placed far from the actors. We see the situation playing out against the backdrop of urban non-places: a shopping mall, a tram, a train station and in one scene the group has ended up seemingly in the middle of nowhere. I think of Östlund's short film about a robbery, another one, in which he uses a security camera, or the style of a security camera. Östlund juxtaposes the apparent neutrality - the observational camera - of the image with its almost violent non-neutrality - these images are in no way neutral. My own reaction oscillates. Is this a mere artistic trick or does it have a good point?

Some have interpreted the film as a movie about political correctness. One plays along because one fears that otherwise one will be complicit in racism. I think this makes sense. But the film also ties in with Ruben Östlund's other films - in what way do people react to oppression or threats by a form of passivity, so that the only wish is to get it over with, the wish that the others will simply disappear? Play and his film The Involuntary explores what happens when somebody reacts to a difficult situation by being paralyzed. 

I don't think Östlund's film makes any statement about race or black people. What he does, I think, is to look at the fears that a racist society gives rise to, and that these fears have many sides. Here, racism is connected with the fear of meeting the other, of looking her in the eyes, treating the other as a human being rather than "a black kid who probably wants to make trouble". In this sense, racism is not just some unfounded conceptions or stereotypes - it is also intermingled with attitudes, the concrete encounter and what it makes us into.

While I write this, I realize that I will probably say different things about this movie in a few months. It's a film that has to be re-thought, digested. I should also mention that the film has many problems. Its smartness is one - it creates a tangle which creates a sort of mirroring effect - one responds with the same kind of insecurity and fear that the characters express - and this effect is so contrived and calculated that it no longer can morally have the effect of self-reflection. Another problem involves some specific scenes, especially towards the end, where Östlund tries to bring home the point about behavior that seems 'decent' but that just makes things even worse - here things gets too obvious, too schemed.