The Square is a 2017 Swedish film by Ruben Östlund.
The Square is an upcoming art installation in a museum of modern art, and much like any contemporary art, it is abstract. The square is defined as ” a sanctuary of trust and caring. Within it, we all share equal rights and obligations.”
What The Square portrays is “a perfect utopian world”. A world where the whole of humanity trust and care for each other and everybody hold equal rights and obligation to serve humanity.
The story revolves around the curator in the museum and he is the main part of the art exhibit. The much of the movie and its shots itself are composed in a way that it serves its characters, the people, as an exhibit. Most shots are center framed and we rarely see an exhibit in the museum in its whole but rather the humans that occupy the stage and performing at the center. And the main exhibit “The Square”, though much is spoken about it throughout the film, we never see it exhibited (to the public).
What is art? It is raised in the film and answered by the curator himself as a question. If a handbag is left on the floor of a museum as an exhibit, would it become art? You can recall an old news passed around social media, where spectacles left on the museum floor to be mistaken for an exhibit. It even could have been the inspiration akin to many other real people and events that had been inspired into the movie. But what is art actually? Art is not just the exhibit, the piece, but also the performance. The intention of the artist and what the art inspires in you. All that is left for you to figure out.
I don’t want to divulge the elements of the story here. I’m merely trying to dissect it. The movie mostly deals with portraying human nature. It shows us the disparity, by socioeconomic standards and how it drives a wedge between the two group and how they interact with each other. The upper echelon, the rich 1% and the lowest of all, the beggars are both part of the exhibits. All of these people irrespective of where they come from they behave as nature dictates. A beggar, whom the lead has nothing to offer, helps him to look over his belongings. The rich and affluent turn to their basic animalistic nature when being hunted by a beast of the wilderness.
Th movie also deals with the human nature at a personal level. The display of power to attract a mate is also a universal law of nature, even for humans. We are just primal in that way. They even use a primate to establish that fact. When the curator loses his mobile and wallet, he leaves threatening note to the whole community in an apartment to get his belongings back. And feels threatened by the people living there. That is how profiling works. But it is questioned later whether it is because of the disparity or their nature.
A kid who lives in that apartment is considered guilty by his family and is being punished for nothing and he demands the curator’s apology. But how hard it is for us humans to accept our mistakes and apologise. After a show of power and disposing off the kid, the curator is left with echoing voice of guilt. He then seeks redemption, trying to find that kid and to apologise to him and his family, along with his two daughters. But the kids family has moved and he doesn’t get redeemed. In the final shot of the movie, we see him drive away silently in the car, a dialogue from the previous scene involving his daughter cheer team is found echoing in our hearts, where the coach says to a girl that it is okay if she had done a mistake and should be moving on with the routine and work with the team. His younger daughter is looking up to him.
Though we have the right intentions, sometimes what we do might bear wrong outcomes. And it would cause chaos. After all, we are humans and basically still animals. We move on and bring out the best of us and work together for the betterment of humanity, to create the safe space for others. Make the world ‘The Square’, where we are obligated to trust and help each other out.