Most disaster action films are an elaborate fiction to bring a family together, but Force Majeure is the polar opposite. This film examines how a perceived disaster fractures the fiction of unity and highlights how alone we really are in the world. It also belongs to a lesser-known genre: Europeans on vacation discovering that they are having an existential crisis under the best circumstances.
Force Majeure uses composition and framing to visually depict fluctuating psychological allegiances or lack thereof. For example, at the beginning of the film, the screen is dark to reflect that the lens is on the camera, and we only hear two men talking. When the photographer asks about family, the lens comes off, and we see that there are more people than we thought because we couldn’t hear them. This moment is foreboding, but also signals how we start alone or don’t see the whole picture. The family is a fictional, commercial construct to later sell photos to memorialize an idea that they want to confirm exists despite their nagging doubts that reality differs from the illusion. After the film’s turning point, which occurs thirteen minutes into the film, the screen is completely white, and there is no sound like some comedic depictions of heaven as a stark white room, but more sinister, bleak and obliterating because of the lack of sound, which symbolizes the uncertainty of the moment and will cause viewers to hold their breath.
Force Majeure shows and tells that the social dynamic is always in flux. As the family fractures, they may all be in the same frame, but the parents’ bodies may not fully be included in the composition-heads or legs get cut off. They move in and out of it. Then the parents will be in a frame together on the same level to reflect their unity or one of the parents with the two children. Later the camera will only focus on one person then cut to the other person in medium, interview style shots to reflect individual isolation. A lot of movies forget that a film needs to be more than its dialogue and can be consumed like a radio program while the viewer multitasks, but this film demands your complete attention.
At two hours, Force Majeure is probably too long by a half hour as others get sucked into the family’s vortex of disillusionment and identity crisis. I do think that depicting panic as something that can suddenly infect large groups of people was necessary, and it is helpful to show how an individual’s bad mood reverberates through a community unless a person has enough inner security to be unruffled and arrest the wave of hysteria, but the film should have restricted itself to only following the family members, not going off on tangents and focusing on other characters except in relation to their family.
Force Majeure morphs into a battle of the sexes, creates a conservative reinforcement of gender norms and manufactures crisis to create fake resolutions to the disruption in their psychological fiction of civilization.
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I’m actually empathetic to the father for running when he thought there was danger, but he is a jerk for holding his son’s shoulder to prevent him from not running earlier, having enough presence of mind to take phone and gloves, pretending like everything was fine afterwards, gaslighting his wife, fake crying and making it about him. No, you weren’t calm and collected. Everyone in the restaurant was giving him the stink eye. While I understood and approved the mother basically quitting her job for the rest of the trip—they are your kids from now on, I need her not to ruin everyone else’s good time because she is married to a jerk. She only feels safe to tell her story when strangers or friends are present, not when she is alone with her husband, which is not a great indicator of the health of their relationship. Her open relationship friend was smart to draw a line with her and keep her at arms length. If we’re going to get sidetracked, why can’t we follow her? 10s don’t marry 2s. I love her “you’re pathetic” face. When she basically fakes danger so her husband can prove that he loves her, and he has to abandon the children on a mountain to retrieve her, I was through with her. I think the bus freak out was fine, but Lord, this woman got a little confirmation that she was right, and she is going to be impossible to live with after this vacation.
Even though it is petty, I thought that it was hilarious when a woman randomly says the husband is hot then withdraws the compliment, and Game of Thrones’ Tormund wants to fight her for a minute. No, everything is not going to be OK if things don’t work out with your family. That male solidarity was desperate and real. Tormund kept throwing him lifelines, but dude was just out of it. The husband accidentally getting caught in the middle of some dude bros dance antics felt too random, and I didn’t get the significance other than his concern that the family ditched him, and their chaotic screaming reflected his inner turbulence. I adored that Tormund spent the rest of the trip trying to be the man in authority to prove a point to himself, but I thought the diversion of focus on him was a bit excessive. I didn’t need the helmet cam. Why am I getting helmet cam?
Force Majeure teaches us one important lesson: don’t vacation with your kids. The real victim in this situation is the handyman who has to deal with the fallout of their drama. He is on his smoking break outside of Room 516. They come out of their room, 413, which another reviewer explained represents the story of the family, to talk in the hallway afterwards, and they want him to leave. No, he was there first. You leave! Then they need his help to get in the room. Now you’re happy that he is around. Ugh.
By the end of Force Majeure, I was struggling to stay awake possibly because I did not get enough sleep the night before or because the movie is too repetitive. I loved it, but there are subtitles, and it gets a bit too self-indulgent.