Swedish filmmaker Lukas Moodyson has a comedy called Tillsammans which is not exactly polygamy but the socialist commune lifestyle. It does delve into similar issues like family dynamics with multiple people involved.
Here is a review from IMDB.
I recently saw this film on an import DVD (it hasn't been released on DVD
here in the states yet) after missing its small theatrical run here a
couple
of years ago. I think perhaps Ingmar Bergman is right about Moodyson. He
is
a young master. Though I have yet see Moodyson's other films, I was
overwhelmed by the power of this film.
The film is about a group of counterculture types who live in a collective
household called "Together" in 1975 Stockholm, Sweden. But they often
struggle to get along because they have trouble finding and living with
shared values and in some cases just don't like each other. Goran, the de
facto head of the household, wants to please everyone. He wishes everyone
would just get along. Any obstacle to group harmony is any obstacle to him
as well. Elisabeth, the working class sister of Goran, one day is forced
to
move in to the household with her two children, Eva and Stefan, due to the
breakdown of her marriage. Meanwhile, Rolf, her hard-drinking, abusive
husband, struggles to overcome his devastation and loneliness over their
leaving. Moreover, a boy who lives in a "proper" middle-class home next
door
to "Together" becomes attracted to Eva. This is the setup of a simple
story
with complex interactions. The story unfolds simply too, but in ways you
don't expect because it is so unforced and natural. Like most great works
of
art, literature or filmmaking, it progresses and unfolds with a feeling of
simplicity -- organic and lifelike.
Don't be fooled by the specifics on the surface. On the surface this film
seems to be little more than a survey of the amusing antics of hippies
from
the 1970s. But this film is so much more than that for many reasons.
First of all, this film is a commentary on the adults of today as much as
it
is of the adults 1975. The reason I say this is because the emotional
center
of the story is with the two children of Elisabeth and Rolf: Eva and
Stefan.
By allowing us, the audience, to see most of the action through the eyes
of
two impressionable children suffering through the break-up of their
parents'
marriage in 1975, and struggling to adjust to their new environment of a
collective, it soon becomes clear that this film is about us -- the
children
of the 1970s -- who are now in their late 20s up through the early 40s.
The
film is a look back through the eyes of a then child, now adult director
of
a time where nearly every value held by middle-class, western society and
culture was challenged if not, in some settings, entirely uprooted. We are
the children who grew up in this age of fantastic turmoil and upheaval --
which in Europe by the mid 1970s was probably even more tumultuous and
radicalized than in the U.S. But of course it is also about the older
generations who were young adults when all of this was happening.
Perhaps most importantly, however, it is for the younger generations who
weren't even born at that time. I say this because the direction the world
seems to be headed for today seems to demand a response of a sense of some
type community that began to disappear in the late 70s and 1980s. Many
kids
and young people only know about a couple kinds of communities and
families:
gangs and step-families. A film like this provides a very modest hope, but
at least some kind of hope.
The main characters who are children, Evan and Stefan, are looking for
love,
security and comfort at home, as all children do, but really can't find
any
of it save love, because the security and comfort of bourgeois,
middle-class
life was under this continual assault during the time period in which the
film is set -- and continues to be assaulted to this day (though today
often
for different reasons). But meanwhile, next door, another child (I can't
remember the character's name) must undergo a struggle of a different
kind.
He must endure the hypocrisy of his parents' loveless marriage, which
carries on possibly out of habit, or possibly for the sake of appearances,
or possibly a fear of loneliness -- or possibly all of these. The boy next
door is aware and intrigued by the energy and liveliness of his strange
next
door, hippie neighbors, but he is mainly drawn to Eva, who is as much a
misfit in her environment as he is alienated in his.
If Eva's struggle is to find a new identity away from the failure of her
parents' marriage, her brother Stefan's is to find a new way to reconnect
to
his mother and his father -- especially his mother, Elisabeth. She is now
free to live again away from her hard drinking, abusive husband; but this
new experimentation with a new life is, at least initially, a threat to
Stefan, who early on fears that his mother may be on the verge of
abandoning
him, and his sister whom he is not very close with, for this new
lifestyle.
Moodyson has a remarkable talent of rendering characters who on are the
verge of losing everything -- who are suffering devastating ruptures in
their lives but somehow find the strength to adjust, adapt and move on.
The
emotional core of these themes of great change, struggle and moving on are
with the children in this film. But all of the adults struggle with major
changes too. Moodyson focuses the camera most on the most heart-wrenched
of
the group of adults: Elisabeth and Rolf, and also Elisabeth's brother
Goran,
whose girlfriend is recklessly and desperately promiscuous. Thus the
emotional core of the film is basic to human emotional desires and needs:
the desire and need for love, and the fallout of loneliness, anguish and
craziness when love goes awry and loved ones becomes irresponsible,
reckless, or even dangerous.
But from the perspective of the collective, this film takes on another
ambitious theme: the interests of the individual(s) versus the interests
of
the group. We see this almost immediately in the film when we are
introduced
to the characters who inhabit "Together," and this is where much of the
comedy in the film comes from. Early on all of the housemates squabble not
only about whose turn it is to do the dishes, but also whether doing
dishes
is even too "bourgeois" to bother with. Also, the tension of integrating
Elisabeth and her children in to the group -- a tension which arises
simply
out of a reluctance to give up any more space to any newcomers -- is
important to the underlying themes in the film. Elisabeth and her children
badly need comfort and acceptance, but the children resist this new space
of
hippie "sharing" -- as though they believe it's a fraud in its weirdness
for
the sake of weirdness. And another area this film explores well within the
theme of the individual vs. the group is that of sexual experimentation
and
promiscuity. Vital to preserving the group is tolerance of homosexuality
and
sexual openness, yet sexuality in a group setting can be as diverse as
each
individual that inhabits the group. And those who are most sexually
predatory can leave lasting scars and bitter resentments. Homosexuality
for
some of the members in the group has lost its instinctual drive, and
instead, as Lasse irreverently jests about toward his ex-wife, becomes
just
another form of political expression -- but also ultimately sex serves up
a
form of individual expression too. Sex gives the individual a greater
sense
of identity to the degree that that individual's sex life is so different
from everyone else's -- whether it's a certain kind of homosexuality, a
large number of sex partners, an odd choice of sex partners, etc. In other
words, sexuality can define the group, but it often can threaten it too in
that it too greatly exalts the conquests and exploitations of the
individual.
But then again so can many other values can define or threaten a group --
many of which are shared and others which are not -- such as
vegetarianism,
television, consumerism, Marxism, etc. Tension is there throughout over
various "doings" (or lack thereof) within the household, and these
different
areas are discussed and battled over through the characters to explore how
the group succeeds or fails to define itself according to any given value.
Erik leaves because he can not stand the group's softness when it comes to
concern for the proletariat against the bourgeoisie enemy. Lasse makes fun
of Erik to no end over what he sees as Erik's fundamental hypocrisy. Two
other housemates finally leave when the children are allowed to bring hot
dogs in to the house. Fundamentalism, the film suggests, destroys
diversity,
and therefore is a threat to preserving a successful group dynamic, even
though fundamentalism may have the best interests of all at heart.
Tolerance, with some debate and disagreement, is the key to long term
togetherness and diversity. Togetherness and diversity is a key component
to
happiness and a functioning group, the film strongly and convincingly
suggests -- especially through its wonderfully simple games in the
November
snow.
This film also spoke to me in how it seemed to also evoke the
countercultural revival of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Something about
these hippies seemed neo rather than old school, but that's understandable
in that total period authenticity just isn't possible. Political
correctness
vs. creative and individualistic irony and drive also felt like a major
theme at work here -- even though no one in the film ever utters the term
"politically correct" as it was not a term that was coined in the 70s. As
a
theme, as much as a term, such tensions are of the 1980s and 1990s as much
as the 1970s -- if not a little bit more. Maybe this is more in my head
than
it is in the film, but I have to think that the countercultural aspects
and
themes in this film connect to a 21st century audience so strongly still
not
just because so many of us lived through the time period in which this
film
was set, but also because we continued to live out these kinds of issues
up
until the present day -- especially many of us who were kids in the
70s.
Interestingly, one thing the film really stays away from was central to
the
60s and 70s counterculture: drug use and experimentation -- as though
exploring this theme might infringe upon or distort the theme of drug and
alcohol abuse -- which one of the characters, Rolf, battles in the film.
But
nearly everyone else in the film drinks too, so I'm not so sure. If drug
experimentation at "Together" had been more explored in this film, it
could
have provided some more lively and funny scenes, but perhaps Moodyson
didn't
see the need either in terms of character or of theme. Instead, everyone
pretty much drinks alcohol. Maybe drugs weren't as big in 1975 Sweden as
they were in 1975 America. They were -- and for much of the population
still
are -- a religion in America.
If this film had been only about Elisabeth's dilemma with her children and
her husband, or only about the collective itself, it would not have been
nearly so strong. But Moodyson joins the two main stories and sets of
characters masterfully to illustrate his themes. Moodyson introduces us to
dysfunction in the family realm with Elisabeth and Rolf, and then moves us
over to difficulties in the community realm with the collective
"Together."
By joining the two groups -- the family and the community -- in his
narrative with such skill, wit and simplicity, Moodyson shows how the two
need one another, can threaten and damage one another, but can also fill
in
for one where the other could be failing. In this film, it seems to be the
community rescuing souls from the dysfunction of family more so than vice
versa. Families break down, but the community can help restore some sense
of
order -- and can occasionally help restore families. Togetherness in the
community arises where a lack of togetherness in the family is most
needed,
yet togetherness in the community requires a sense of shared
responsibility
and industry to go along with the friendship and nurturing.
The film suggests that not all forms of togetherness are ideal, but
togetherness in general is essential -- and that debate and discord are an
important part of maintaining and discovering what makes the group work.
The
film also strongly suggests that intolerance and recklessness, in the long
run, leads to loneliness, anguish and despair. It's been so long since I
have seen a film I could relate to with such ease. My sincere thanks to
Moodyson for such a heartfelt, hilarious, painful, genuine
film.
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