Container [DVD] [2006]

Moodysson's arthouse mood piece (part of an installation at London's ICA in October 2006 - though not its premiere) is a difficult thematic jumble that offers few resolutions and no narrative. This English language version has Jena Malone's ethereal and languid voiceover relating the thoughts and feelings perhaps of the characters, perhaps not. The performances and direction in the visuals are fearless and provocative, shot in effortlessly stylish monochrome with no sync sound. When the cynical meaning of the title becomes clear, the themes continuing from his most recent narrative features become clearer too. In his introduction to the screening at the London Film Festival he invited the audience to "fall asleep" during the film, to drift in and out of it - don't expect a message, but on the other hand absorb whatever message you infer. Is this what he intended, or is this his defence? It's hard to tell.

At first I thought Mr Moodysson was purposely trying to destroy his career!

Then I thought he was doing what only the brave do ... after being ranked so highly because of his first 3 beautiful, wonderful and shocking films he's found himself in a position to express himself with greater freedom (and perhaps heartlessness!) and relax in the knowledge that people WILL listen ... why? - because he's Lukas Moodysson of course! In the same sense Coldplay could release and album that is purely banjo and farting noises and it'll probably still go platnium!!

The film itself is B&W filmed (mostly amateur handheld styley). The only sound throughout is the voice of Jena Malone (Donnie Darko's girlfriend!) speaking rather vacantly and consistently.

The images seem rather random and do not create a plot, but instead a concept or frame of mind.

The voice is reciting Mr Moodysson's poetry which covers issues like; beauty, weight, sexuality, war, famine, God, etc. The images then loosely follow these themes as they are covered.

FINAL OPINION:

It's a wonderful expression of the pressure of the world today. The weight we all carry, the choices we have, and the crap we are feed and how it's all simply too much! However, I do feel that this is a film that Mr Moodysson should have gotten out of his system in film school, not at the potential pinnacle of his career. But now that it is out of his system I have high hopes for his future (he types with both fingers crossed!).

This is a bad example of Moodysson's brilliance and if you're new to his work please look elsewhere.

If you're already a fan of Mr Moodysson then be warned: This is a full on Art House film and requires a lot of energy and patience.

Container is, basically, the fractured VO monologue of a confused young actress. Consumed and disassembled by the dazzlingly obscene superficiality of celebrity, the actress' voice glides along, in a monotonal drone, through the plastic, throwaway detritus of her life, a mess of fascination with catastrophe, mutilation, sexual ambiguity; senseless, lost and deluded ("Brad Pitt's going to move to Sweden just for me"). Accompanying the VO is a fat man and the actress wandering listlessly through a random panorama of like detritus, occasionally coincidental with the voice of narration, more often not.

The subject itself (a point which could also be made of Moodysson's Lilya 4 Ever) is not a difficult one to skewer. One can hardly extend accolades of extraordinary insight to Moodysson for making a film about the vacuous absence of this actress's world- plastic, throwaway pop-culture, misinformed faux-philosophising, pornography, cosmetics, processed food, processed everything else- these are pretty easy targets. This said, the VO is by turns grotesque, witty and bizarrely compelling, while the images which partner it are captivatingly strange enough not to be boring. There are particular moments when the images on screen and the oblique voiceover seem to coalesce in an attempt at the fusion of people and things, a Burroughsian attempt at something weirdly organic, edaphic. Taken out of the context of the rest his work, Container is little more than an enjoyably disquieting oddity. But it's intriguing when looking, particularly, at Hole in My Heart- the issues in that film were similar- where does one go when one becomes so inextricably lost to a world and a lifestyle of self-hatred and superficiality? Hole put it's people vigorously through this question- it's a violent and emotionally demanding film which gives resolution to the effort, a fractured mess which finds something like catharsis after purge. The characters literally exhaust their own depravity and find a final, human, connection. Container, with its wearily somnolent `narrator', lost in much the same realm, is reduced to merely staring at the pieces. There is no attempt to reassemble sense, but just a beyond-fatigue collapse in the face of such mess. One wonders where Moodysson goes from here.