Play
Director: Ruben Östlund
Writer: Ruben Östlund, Erik Hemmendorff
Cast: Anas Abdirahman, Sebastian Blyckert, Yannick Diakité, Sebastian Hegmar, Abdiaziz Hilowle, Nana Manu, John Ortiz, Kevin Vaz

Plot:
3 boys – 2 white, 1 Asian – come into the clutches of a group of five older, black boys. The group bullies them through Göteborg over some made-up story about the boys’ cell phones, under the absolute passivity of the various adults who see them.

Play is a difficult and uncomfortable movie. It is very strong in parts, but sometimes you can’t help but feeling that it bit more off than it could actually chew.

Östlund works with static camera positions and very long shots, often not only from a distance, but also through doors, increasing the distance between the characters and the story ever further. That is ultimately what gives the film, or actually better yet the audience a completely harrowing sense of helplessness.

Especially whenever adults get involved into the story you just want to shake some moral courage into them. When in the end that finally happens, it feels too little and too late to really have an impact on the story anymore. I do believe that it is a pretty realistic scenario, but it did make me wish for more hope. Maybe even escapism.

That is the film’s biggest asset, but also its biggest problem. Because – even though I’m not averse to the occasional feel-bad-flick – it just gets all too much and you really don’t want to see any more of that. You start feeling bullied by the movie yourself. Ultimately that’s what makes the last scene – where the moral courage and voice of reason finally surfaces – feel so insufficient.

Keeping this in mind I should have appreciated the metaphoric sideplot of metaphors about a metaphoric cradle that is pushed around on a (probably metaphoric) train which is at least a little funny, but in fact I found it distracting. It would have worked very well as a short film on its own, but in this it felt out of place.

Still. It is a powerful film with amazing performances. It has big ambitions – it just doesn’t achieve them all.

Summarising: It’s challenging and certainly not for everyone, but it’s also kind of admirable.