OJT I've seen thousands of movies (literary!), and I have no troubles with watching movies which are different. What troubles me are boring movies. A film can be about everything without being boring. Even everyday life and work. But a film about everyday life needs a plot or a point to it. I guess this film is about world wide connections, and about the world and making money to fulfill people's dreams. In a sick world. And it's A film with lots of use of mobile phones. More or less pointless. Maybe there's a connection I don't get here. I'm used to look out for details in film, proving to be important pieces of the film puzzle later on in the movie. Here there's much pointless things happening that it ruins the experience. The important thing here appends in the last half hour, and they are made almost unimportant. I find that almost provoking to both the viewer and to the actors doing their best in this.Still, I have to say I'm not that sure about the theme. Did I understand it? Because I feel more and more empty while watching this. The opposite of what I expected, and it annoys me. And it is getting worse and worse. The script might be confusing, or just uninteresting. I didn't want to watch a film witch could have been my own working day or holiday. I really don't buy that these people are so bored.This is absolutely a great idea, but it's not well made. The cutting rhythm is so annoying, that it seems unprofessional. The tedious focusing of the camera is a Moodyson trade marque, and it functions well in a couple of his movies, but here it's not that suitable.I've enjoyed some of Moodysons earlier films, but I found this very unfulfilled. Some of his work has been both good and important. But this is far off. The cutting is annoying, and so is the actors, and the music. Not a good way to start, but the worst is that the film music promises something exciting, which really never happens. The aim characters are living quite interesting lives, but we almost are bored with they're every day life.Mammoth is a film which should be buried in the ice like the Mammoths. Hope Moodysons gets well soon!

secondtake Mammoth (2009)The symbolism of the title will escape most people (it did me), but it literally shows up in an expensive pen with mammoth tusk inlays. This pen crosses a border of wealth and culture that the characters of the movie can't ever cross. And yet the lives of all the many different narratives interwoven here are perfectly parallel.But we know that parallel lines by definition never meet, even if they seem to in the distance down the tracks.The three or four narrative threads are relatively independent even if they relate completely in theme (and in some small direct connecting way) to each other. It's a little like "Babel" in that the stories are literally worlds apart. Central is the New York City couple with the two main stars, computer games analyst (Gael Garcia Bernal) and his emergency room surgeon wife (Michelle Williams). They have a child who is mostly taken care of by a live-in nanny, a Filipino woman with children of her own left behind in her home country.The third locale is Thailand because Bernal goes there on a business trip, and while he's there he has a kind of epiphany about the meaning of life. That's where the pen takes on a brief life of its own. The epiphany, like many revelations for all of us, is short-lived, too, and I think that's part of the idea. We all strive, we all have good intentions, but really nothing quite adds up. What figures most in all of the stories are the children--not least the cute and precocious New York City girl. The children of the nanny and the child of a Thai prostitute who has a slightly caricatured but important role also figure in. If the parents are doing what they can for their children, they are also even more doing what they can for themselves. And sometimes it seems like survival, but of course, survival how, at what economic level? Would it be better in fact to not prostitute yourself (as a nanny, for example) simply to get ahead? Or is this the only way to give your children something you don't get for yourselves.All of this is in the movie. It's intense, it wants to say a lot. And in some way it does. There is some sense that it doesn't always quite click, as if there are things the director could have pushed--or pulled--for greater effect. This isn't something to really judge from the outside, but it's not a masterpiece, which requires some other kind of aesthetic elevation. But it's really good, very good, a movie to see. See it.

choden There are many aspects that make this film special starting from the its use of clichés and the extent it destroys the popular images of this millennium. One significant and courageous point is the way it tears down the adorable Internet geek image. Recently, Hollywood has produced a great number of youngsters, a generation of movie goers who want to become a Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs one day. Nonetheless, the other side of the coin is not that bright or desirable. Mammoth introduces Leo Vidales, the millionaire geek with all his immaturity and weakness, with his ultra shallow personality and his conscience per diem. Globalization rapes the world, devastates the life of the nanny, and enables a heartless brat like Vidales a millionaire live his life with a descent surgeon wife and a pretty kid. Actually, he is a kind of rapist when he talks about doing charity, when he talks about his fantasies of going to India or Africa with Cookie, when he wants to act like a free - souled hippie who he could never be. He rapes other people's dreams and innocent public images. However, after 2 hours we see him at his Manhattan home, safe and sound, enjoying the peace he himself never deserved.Mammoth of Lukas Moodysson runs for the cold truth. Except one detail, Salvador would have known. He would have known what could happen to kids when they talked to white foreigners out there. Every Filipino kid know without their grandmas telling. They watch the news on TV, they read the papers, and yes they have friends with sad and scary stories. Moodysson skipped this fact. Maybe despite all his good efforts, he is still too white for the realities of East Asia.

random_avenger After the crass but bold anti-pornography pamphlet A Hole in My Heart, Swedish director Lukas Moodysson continued his career with the black and white "silent movie with sound" Container, which sounds interesting although I haven't seen it yet. His latest film Mammoth is a return to narrative story lines and more conventional techniques, and a pretty good portrayal of modern loneliness and the nature of family relationships.The plot deals with the Vidaleses, a wealthy family of three living in New York City. Leo (Gael García Bernal), the father of the family and a creator of a successful gaming website, has to fly to Thailand to sign a contract, while his wife Ellen (Michelle Williams) and their daughter Jackie (Sophie Nyweide) stay at home. Ellen is an emergency surgeon often working long hours, leaving Jackie to spend a lot of time with the family's Filipino nanny Gloria (Marife Necesito) who she has grown very close to. Subsequently all of the characters experience different kinds of loneliness in the absence of their loved ones and have to find ways to cope with their feelings over the course of the film.The title of the film refers to an expensive pen made from mammoth ivory that Leo receives from his business partner as a gift. Later on the pen comes to symbolize the flaunting lifestyle Leo wants to distance himself from, and economic inequality in general is one of the themes examined in the form of the Gloria character: she is working hard in America to provide decent life for her children in the Philippines, even if the separation from them is tearing her apart. Leo and Ellen may be oblivious to her feelings, but they are not free of worries either, even if the nature of their anxiety is vaguer and often seen as less understandable by the common public. The characters' inner similarities are also exemplified by the adoption of a "surrogate child" for every character: Gloria is affectionate towards Jackie, while Ellen becomes particularly caring about one of her young patients in the hospital and Leo wants to help out a Thai prostitute named Cookie (Natthamonkarn Srinikornchot).Moodysson is clearly criticizing the effects of globalization on poor families' means of making money and Mammoth is not devoid rather emotional scenes, but luckily the director favours a much subtler way of presenting his message than in, say, his prostitution-themed depressor Lilya 4-Ever (2002). A lot of the time the characters' states of mind are brought forward by haunting pop songs or shots of people looking out of windows by themselves, a style not unlike that of Sofia Coppola's masterful Lost in Translation (2003). Using or referencing many modern communication technologies like cell phones, Skype or MySpace further emphasizes the increasing relevance of the sense of alienation in life, an important theme that has been touched by numerous films and works of fiction.Even though the main idea behind the film doesn't provide major surprises, and neither does the story or the ending, the film is well made and enjoyable to watch as a functional sum of its parts. The nice Thai scenery and New York's urban landscapes look great and all the actors succeed in their parts, especially García Bernal as the pseudo-youthful Leo and the always good Michelle Williams as the stressed Ellen, but Marife Necesito also get through her diverse role without giving reasons to complain. Child actress Sophie Nyweide delivers a delightfully seamless performance as too. Since the music and cinematography have been skilfully created as well, Mammoth can safely be called one of the better films of recent years and recommended also to wider audiences who may not have appreciated Moodysson's previous two films as much.