To quote Dustin Hoffman quoting Lenny Bruce in the movie Lenny, referring to his bit about Jackie
Kennedy wanting to flee during the assassination of JFK: “People don’t stay……They
don’t stay…” Force Majeure is the
exact examination of that quote and theory. That a person’s first instinct is
to escape sudden tragedy, rather than stick around and help whoever else
involved from harm.
Force Majeure is
about a family on vacation in the mountains on a skiing trip. One day while the
family is having lunch on a patio, a mountain erupts next to them and a mild
avalanche over throws their table. Before this happens, the father immediately
flees to safety, leaving his wife and two kids behind.
A father stuck in his head; a wife and kids disappointed. Force Majeure dives deep into the
phenomenon of its title, the idea that we all have an internal need to survive
and at almost every soon-to-be tragic occurrence, our first instinct is to remove
ourselves from wreckage. What Force
Majeure does well is the examination of what an Alpha male is, and what
being male is meant to be within society but how those ideals are heightened
when added to the label of father. The unwritten laws that civilization has
placed upon us all, ignores and negates our own feelings on self-preservation. Force Majeure doesn’t only explore the
meaning of being male and being a father, as it presents the idea that even
though the mother is upset that her husband abandoned them, she too has the
same tendency, but in an observational pre-emptive way before any tragedy can
be completely noticed.
The director also uses the cold atmosphere of a snow
mountain landscape mindfully, by letting the grey tone of the sky with snow
fall to illuminate the phony cover up of its characters emotions. To express
the pure dread that haunts this whole vacation, as when it starts things seem
bright and as it goes on things look more and more glum stylistically.
Force Majeure is a perfect unflinching exercise in human behavior
and a testament to the truth of Lenny Bruce’s infamous joke. Definitely a must
see film.
- - Maurice Jones
