Berlinale. "Mammoth"

By David Hudson on 02/10/2009

As you may have heard - from indieWIRE's Eugene Hernandez, for example - Lukas Moodysson's "Mammoth" was met by critics here in Berlin on Sunday with a rowdy round of boos, followed by tentative counter-wave of applause, which only fired up the boos again. I'm with the boos. Some films are simply bad; others are downright offensive.

"Mammoth" is "Babel" on tranquilizers. It's got the original's globe-hopping down, but it's a much lazier storyteller. It's also got Gael Garcia Bernal, here playing Leo, a family guy who can afford to remain stuck in adolescence because he's struck it mighty lucky and filthy rich with his online gaming site. Michelle Williams, whom Moodysson seems to enjoy ogling, plays his wife, Ellen, an emergency room surgeon. (Williams is a terrific actress, but I don't buy her scenes in the operating room.) And they've got a daughter, Jackie (Sophie Nyweide), and gosh, they wish they could be spending more time with her. Thing is, we seem to have tuned into their troubles at a particularly exceptional time. Surely Ellen doesn't always work the night shift, just as Leo isn't always flying off to Thailand on business - far as I can tell, he usually works at home. But fine.

So they have this nanny, Gloria (Marife Necesito), who's left her two sons in the Philippines to earn money to pay for a house the three of them will move into some day. Leo and Ellen evidently consider themselves open-hearted and politically correct, but the deference Gloria pays them and they way the couple takes it as a matter of course raised the hairs on the back of my neck. What's more, while we're supposed to sympathize with these two, they consume more conspicuously than any other characters I've seen in a recent film that considers itself a serious drama. Their fridge alone... but don't get me started. Worse, Leo's disregard for the value of money is, I assume, meant to be endearing, but when, just as one of several examples, he can't decide which silk scarf from a table display of dozens to bring home to Ellen from Thailand and, with a nonchalant half-giggle, decides to sweep up the whole lot, it's infuriating, plain and simple. As Jerry Adler and Frank Rich have recently pointed out in Newsweek and the New York Times, respectively, though our attitudes toward the rich are sharpening, we can still respect the wealthy - as long as they respect their wealth.

At some point, Moodysson must have realized that his story was going nowhere slowly, so while he thinks up something to do, he pumps up the soundtrack. Then he hits on a solution: Not one but two children must feel the breath of death on their faces. (Moodysson's not alone, by the way; children are dropping like flies at this year's Berlinale.) If, despite fair warning, you decide to catch this movie, once it's over, step back and take a look at the constellation of characters in all three time zones: Who's wound where? Leo and Ellen's attitude towards this outcome, expressed in the "Mammoth's" final exchange, clenched it for me: Worst film competing at the Berlinale this year. So far.

Again, though, as always, different strokes: "'Mammoth' is the most affecting picture I've seen at the festival so far," writes Salon's Stephanie Zacharek, "one that at least tries to grapple with some very delicate ideas: among them, the reality that no matter how much we may feel we've succeeded in shrinking the world with technology, it's still an impossibly large place - especially when the people you love are on the other side of it."

"The film's scenes are sketchy, often inconclusive and filled with characters' frustrations," writes Kirk Honeycutt in the Hollywood Reporter, which also runs a quick chat with Moodysson. "While writer-director Moodysson's points are clear - sometimes to the point of mundane obviousness - audiences may experience their own frustrations with all this soft drama."

"The title... may allude to the giant extinct beasts, but could more properly refer to the hairy mess this Berlinale competition contender eventually devolves into," finds Youyoung Lee at unlike.

It "comes with too much repetitive exposition and lacks an emotional payoff," writes Alissa Simon in Variety, while Jonathan Romney, writing for Screen, finds it to be "an elephantine dud from a director who has plenty to say about the state of the world - and not a whit of new insight to offer nor artistic invention to express it."

Annika Pham reports on the press conference for Cineuropa.

Tags: Berlinale 2009, Gael Garcia Bernal, Lukas Moodysson, Mammoth, Michelle Williams