The Big Picture - Ruben Östlund Is Trying to Provoke You | The Big Picture (Ep. 31)

Episode Date: October 27, 2017

Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey chats with filmmaker Ruben Östlund about his new film, ‘The Square,’ satirizing the art world, and why he enjoys toying with audiences. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Bill Simmons. Wanted to make sure you subscribe to The Watch with Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan. Two longtime friends who have had this podcast since 1973. Yeah, that's how long. It was even before podcasts were having this. These guys spent their whole life arguing with each other. And now we just record it and they go at it. They talk about everything pop culture. It is one of the most popular pop culture podcasts, especially valuable during Game of Thrones season. But they'll argue about movies, music, TV, you name it. The Watch, one of the best pop culture podcasts on the internets.

Subscribe now, wherever you get your podcasts. I was interested in actors imitating monkeys. Because, you know, acting becomes so interesting to look at when you go down to that level. It's not like when you have Hamlet, then you need a lot of background knowledge to say, ah, hmm, he's doing a good Hamlet, you know. You're bringing down acting to a level of playing soccer. I'm Sean Fennessy, editor-in-chief of The Ringer, and this is The Big Picture. Ruben Ostlund is messing with you.

Provoking you. Needling you. In his movies, specifically 2014's Force Majeure and This Falls the Square, the Swedish writer-director takes him at big ideas. Masculinity, viral internet culture, the modern art world, marriage, and he completely upends them with his satire. His movies and their characters are unafraid to get strange and go to strange places. They cry, they fight, they act like apes. Aslan is a character too.

I chatted with him this week about his career and his movies, particularly The Square, which zeroes in on the absurd happenings around an exhibit in a Swedish art museum. Without further ado, here's Ruben Ostlund. Very happy to be joined by Ruben Ostlund. Ruben, thank you for being here today. Thank you for having me. Ruben, your new movie, The Square, is a satire from my perception of many things, the art world, museum culture, propriety, apes, love, romance, masculinity maybe especially. So in watching your films, I was thinking about whether what comes first for you,

the theme or the story. In this case, what happened first? Actually started 2008, I was making a film called Play. And Play was about true events that happened in the city where I live in Gothenburg in Sweden. It was a group of young boys that was robbing other young boys for several locations in a mall in the center of the city. I was reading through the court files of these robberies and what you could tell was that the bystander effect was very strong. The fact that we have a problem as human beings to take responsibility

when it comes to public spaces. So even though that these kids got robbed in a big mall at daytime when there were a lot of adults around them, it was very, very seldom and few occasions where adults interacted. And me and a friend of mine, we were trying to like, we were trying like, you know, we got the idea suddenly that we could create a symbolic place where we are reminded about our role as fellow human beings. And this symbolic place is like just as simple as a pedestrian crossing. You know, a pedestrian crossing is like a couple of lines in the street that where we have made a super strong agreement that the car driver should be careful with the pedestrians. And our idea was that we, with a couple of lines of the street, like a white marked square, should build an agreement of a symbolic place

where we take care of each other. So for an example, if you needed help, you can go and stand in this square, and then it's my obligation to address this person if I pass by and say, how can I help you? So actually this symbolic place was the starting point of the whole idea. Yeah, it's an interesting thing. You know, in the States, we have the Kitty Genovese case is sort of our version of that.

I'm not sure how much you studied it, but a similar act where there was a crime against a woman. Many people heard about it, but no one acted. In your story, though, there is something a little bit metaphorical in every physical choice that you make. So with the square, I'm curious how you started actually building the installation and then how, if you knew when you were working on the installation with another artist, if it would actually be a film. Yeah. The thing is that I started to write the script first. Then we got invited to do this installation in the art museum. Oh, okay. So that's when I decided that the film could take place in a contemporary art world. Because I think it's something interesting with a contemporary art world because it's actually a place where we can present an idea like the square

and that arena can embrace it, you know. It can like, we can think outside of the box in this arena. So to speak, yeah. And so then, you know, what I did was like I decided, OK, I want the chief curator of this museum to be the main character. And then I look at the scenes that I make a little bit from a sociological approach. As the Kitty Univisa case that you talked about. What I love about sociology is that it has a very humanistic viewpoint on us humans even when we fail and i want to do that in the same way you know i want to make setups where we can look at

our own failure and maybe create the knowledge out of it you know and so so that is basically the scenes that i'm collecting you know different setups I think, oh my God, now I would be pushed into the corner myself also if I had to handle this situation. Then I enjoy looking at that setup. The actors are almost like lab rats. I have to try to deal with my setup. You often choose powerful but weak men, you know, men who are theoretically father figures or the curator in this instance, who are somehow revealed to be less dignified than they initially seem.

What is it that draws you to those figures as the center of your stories? Well, I think I'm completely uninterested in heroes. I think that I think I identify much more with someone that is struggling with life. And I mean, if you look at Klaus Bang, the actor that is playing Christian, he

is a person that have like a little bit of his emotions. They are outside the skin of him. And it becomes so much more interesting to look at characters that are struggling with life than those that are heroic and always succeed. Also, I'm curious about underlining some of the pretensions of the museum world, you know, having had some close hand experience. Were you in any way also trying to celebrate what's happening inside of museums or is this strictly a sort of like, let's take a look at what's really happening in these spaces? Jens Nielsen I consider my film as a satire. So that is of course, it doesn't matter if I aim my camera to my own cinema industry, I will do a satire

about that also. So I'm very fair in that way. Any area I will aim the camera towards, I will be just as mean. So, you know, when I was doing the research for the film and I was traveling around in different art museums, what I felt is something happened when Duchamp put the pissoir into the museum, and that was almost 100 years ago. But now it feels almost like this has become a ritual that is repeating itself over and over again. When he put the pissoir in the museum,

it was a way of trying to provoke the room and raise questions. What should we use this arena to and what is art, etc.? But pretty much the same feeling I get when you see a lot of the objects in the museums today. And you see that the visitors are kind of disconnected from the art. They have like a neon sign on the wall. They have a Giacometti. They have a war hole.

And then there's a couple of objects. And people are walking around there and not feeling really connected with art. And the art doesn't feel really connected with what's going on in the world outside of the walls of the museum. It's this box-checking experience, right? Exactly. It's curated, almost like a catalog rather than something you're feeling. So I think the challenge if you are running a museum is, of course, in which way you are exhibiting the art.

Because in order to get an experience of the art and get a connection of the art, that is a really, really big challenge. And we were talking, me and a friend of mine, we were talking, what kind of exhibitions, what do we see in the museums? And he goes, well, it's mirrors and piles of gravel. And I'm like, yeah, you're right. So one of the exhibitions was called this was in the film. Yeah.

So you chose a couple of familiar, if not specific examples. The piles of gravel is one of them. Terry Notary, who plays a man sort of in this film, is in a video installation. How did you go about choosing the other installations to show, sort of to satirize what typical art exhibits are like in the 21st century? Well, when it comes to Terry Notary's character, the character is called Oleg, and that comes from a Russian performance artist that is called Oleg Kulik. And in Sweden, there's a kind of famous performance when he was playing dog in a museum in Stockholm.

And that went so far that they actually had to call the police because he bit the chief curator's daughter in the leg. So it was like a lot of the things that is in the film actually have a connection to like real events that have been happening in the art world. And you sort of one to one that in this film in a scene with Terry where he is at a dinner gala and he is acting like an ape. Hello. It's a really striking, incredible scene. How did you make that one happen? Well, first of all, I was inspired of an American punk rock artist that is called G.J. Allen. Of course, yeah. You know about him?

I do, yes. Yeah, okay. And there's like two fantastic YouTube clips called G.J. Allen Boston, part one and part two. And I was looking at these YouTube clips and it's probably the most intense vibrating moments I have ever seen captured with moving images. I haven't seen these clips. What is he doing? Okay. He's like having a – how do you say?

He's reading some of his poems for an audience. And I mean Gigi Allen is a complete anarchist. I have never seen someone that is that anarchistic. If you get too close to him, you get beaten up. And you can tell that the audience that are going to his performances knows about this, and they also like trying to play with the fire, you know. And it's a certain moment

when this playfulness from the audience becomes that they get really, really scared. Look at that fucking lap box. We've got the lap box. We've got the lap box. Somebody got a fucking laughing problem? Got a laughing problem, motherfucker? Fuck you.

Fuck you. And that dedication also that JD Allen had to play this figure is kind of interesting. You know, I've never seen anyone go that far. So I was thinking, you know, since our goal with The Square was to be selected for competition in Cannes, I loved the idea to let someone like Gigi Allen be a performance artist in a ballroom with a tuxedo-dressed audience and that that scene should be screened in Cannes, in Lumiere, with a tuxedo-dressed audience, sitting and watching another tuxedo-dressed audience trying to deal with Gigi Allen. Through the looking glass.

So it's like breaking the social contract on how you are supposed to behave on a very strict dinner gala. But then I realized I will never find anyone like Gigi Allen, anyone that can play that role in that way. At the same time, I was interested in actors imitating monkeys because acting becomes so interesting to look at when you go down to that way. At the same time, I was interested in actors imitating monkeys. Because, you know, acting becomes so interesting to look at when you go

down to that level. Even a child can say, that guy is the best one playing a monkey. It's not like when you have Hamlet, then you need a lot of background knowledge to say, ah, hmm, he's doing a good Hamlet,

you know. You're bringing down acting to a level of playing soccer. Because we can relate to how hard it must be if you see someone doing it in a skillful way. Yeah, physical and primal and that's it. Yeah, exactly. And so then I was Googling on YouTube.

Once again, I very often use YouTube as a source for reference. I'm getting that sense, yeah. And then I found a beautiful clip of Terry Nary when he's doing a demo because he has been in Planet of the Apes. And he's like a motion capture artist in that one when he had these green dots on him. Right. Many people will know Andy Serkis, but Terry is sort of the second most notable mocap artist. Yeah. What Terry does is that he has these arm extensions.

And he's like saying, okay, so this is a chimpanzee. And then he walks exactly like a chimpanzee. And the feeling I had when I watched that YouTube clip is like, you know, I start to laugh because it's so striking. And then he says, yeah, and this is a gorilla. And then he changes his way of moving and you see immediately it's a gorilla then I realized ah maybe I can let him play the performance artist

and he can play like a wild animal someone that comes in to this ballroom without this civilized shell that we have he have been stripped of all these human being characterized things like the culture and the clothes and so on. And in comes a man that is imitating a monkey

and all he has left is his instinct and his needs. So when you were writing the script, you didn't know that it would be someone being an animal. You had a story that was going about a performance artist of some kind, but you stumbled upon Terry and you rejiggered the movie to represent that. Yeah. And then also that scene became 100% focused on the bystander effect because it's like the voiceover goes on and it says,

if you remain perfectly still, then you can hide in the herd, safe in the knowledge that someone else will be the prey. And that is like trying to highlight that the reason I would get paralyzed when it comes to the bystander effect is like we're thinking, don't take me, don't take me, take someone else, you know? Yeah, you really captured in that scene. Yeah. What is it that is so appealing to you about provoking audiences? Because it seems like you have a skill for button pushing. I think I love provoking myself, first of all.

I love situations where I have to struggle with how would I relate to this myself. And I think that provocation is very good to use sometimes because if we want to ask ourselves questions about our own behavior and what we would do or something that – yeah. If you need us to reflect a little bit more, then provocation is a very good tool to use. I want to ask you about – a little more about YouTube and the concept of virality. That's also a theme in the movie. You had a moment of sub-virality a few years ago on YouTube when there was an announcement for the best foreign language film, and your film, Force Majeure, was not nominated.

You had a very emotional reaction to that news. That video was very funny. I'm not totally sure what the intention of that video was, but I wanted to talk to you a little bit about that and if you were using that to sort of explore something that you were trying to do. Creating attention was, yeah. Well, it worked. No, but the YouTube clip was called Swedish director freaks out when he misses out on Oscar nomination.

It is a kind of an art installation in itself. You know, both me and Erik Hemmendorf, that is the producer and that I own the production company Platform Produktion in Sweden, we have been working together for 15 years now. One ability that I think is important when it comes to making it in this business is to turn a failure into something good. And, you know,

we were so sure that we would get nominated with Forst Major. You know, we were like, okay, we were looking at the announcement. Now we are on the short list. Out of nine films, of course we will be one of the five. Such beautiful hubris. And, you know, the whole day was already planned.

After the announcement, we were supposed to go and do interviews. And so we were like looking at the announcement and we were shooting it from the photo booth camera and when when it finally comes to the foreign language film the category that I think is way after makeup and things like that it's like okay now it's time for foreign language film since they do it in alphabetical order, we quite quickly realize we are not nominated. And to film that bittersweet moment of failure is something.

If you don't have the ability to laugh about that, then you shouldn't be in this business. Is every instance of the reaction genuine in that moment? Because there's a question even in the films that you make as well about the notions of performance and what is actually happening here.

You have a very violent emotional reaction to not being nominated. I can tell you that we are super jet lagged when we are filming that clip. We just came from Europe 12 hours earlier or something. And we are standing there and eating that green apple. Both of us. You're both chewing on apples. And at the same time, we're like talking and we are cocky also. We know like, soon we will be nominated.

Almost ape-like in some ways. Yeah, I agree. I agree. And then when we don't get nominated, then, you know, immediately the phone stops calling. It's just completely silent. And we are so disappointed. There's a moment when I'm walking out of the screen, and me and Erik, we went for a walk in Central Park,

and we were like, you know, we were really depressed. And then suddenly we came up with the idea, come on, we have to do something with this material that we got. And then we realized that since I'm going out of screen, then we can record sound, what's going on then. And then there's a scene in Forst Major called Worst Man Cry Ever. And let's do a paraphrase, you say it in Swedish at least, on that part when I freak out. Sit. And so we put it together and then we subtitled it.

And later that night, we put it up on YouTube. And for us, it was a way of turning this into something that was fun and playful. It was making fun of ourselves because we shouldn't take these things too seriously. Did you suspect that there would be a reaction to it did you suspect you'd be on all of the movie blogs about posting this video and commenting on your sadness super happy about that we we we we weren't we didn't know we thought that okay maybe in sweden they will write a little bit about it but what also happened which was a little bit little bit troubling for me, was that people called me and was really worried. And then I felt, oh my God, you have to understand it's fake.

It's understandable. You have this anguished cry at the end of this video that sounds like you are collapsing in the moment. Sure. And then there was a lot of people showing their sympathy and wanted to help me. And when I said it was fake, it was almost, then they feel cheated. So then I was like, fake, it was almost, then they feel cheated. So then I was like, it's nothing strange that you think it's real. You have to try to, so that was probably the hardest thing.

Otherwise, we had a lot of fun with it. You have American and English actors in this film and it does seem like you are making a bid for more visibility in the States. Force Majeure was very well received. Is a move like that very specific for you or you are trying to make an effort to be a little bit more than a Swedish filmmaker, more worldwide coming out of Europe?

Definitely. But the thing that with Elisabeth Moss and Dominic West was definitely that they were so good. I was doing impros with both of them in London when I was there. And Elisabeth, I was playing Christian, she was playing Anne, and she could push me into a corner with her way of using the setup of the scene. But of course I know also that we will get more attention to the film. And the sad thing about this is that I'm playing on this arena. And in order that my, how do you say,

the content that I think is important should get attention, then I also have to fight to get attention. So you can't drop down, how do you say, your ambition and say, I will not play on this arena because then other content will win the audience, so to speak. And I have to fight for my content. Yes, I was going to say it is really a fight that you're in every day to get attention to your projects. So what does that mean?

Will there be more films now starring English actors? Will you be making a film in Hollywood? How does that go forward? I can tell you about the next project that I'm really, really excited about. It's called Triangle of Sadness. From a square to a triangle. Yes, that was very unintentionally. But me and my wife, we're making fun, you know, I'm saying,

first comes the square of trust, now comes Triangle of Sadness. And the third film will be Octagon of Confusion. And it will be a feature film that never will be finished. And that is still in the editing room trying to solve Octagon of Confusion. No, but Triangle of Sadness, my wife, she's a fashion photographer. And she has been telling me

a lot of interesting stories about the fashion world and the beauty industry. And the Triangle of Sadness is when you have this wrinkle in between your eyebrows because you have had a lot of trouble in your life. In Swedish it's called bekymmersrynka, which means trouble wrinkles. But you can fix that in 50 minutes with Botox.

So don't worry, you know. Trouble wrinkles would have also been a good title for this film, I just want to say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I like triangle of sadness. It's something beautiful about it. So it's going to be like a satirical approach towards that industry. And something that's interesting with beauty, because you can be born beautiful without money, without education, and without talent,

and it can make you travel in the hierarchy of a society very quickly. So it's almost like winning in the lottery in some ways. And then this can be an economical value. The thing is that if you're a model, then you have to find an exit very quickly because there's a very short career.

And the main character of this film is a male model that is like getting closer to 28 so the career is over. Oh, no. Yeah. How interesting. But he's on his peak of his career because he's the face for a big, big fashion

brand. But he has two problems. One of them is that he's getting bald. And it's not only that he's getting bald. It's actually completely connected to the self-confidence. You can see on his face before when he was not getting bald, at least, and then he's like self-confident and the pictures after when he knows that his hair is losing his self-confidence, that is so painful to see.

And the second problem he has, that is that he's so connected with this brand that he's representing so no one else wants to book him. But he has a very sweet agent and I think it would be fun to make this agent very, very sweet and caring. This agent is looking at his hair and how's it going and, oh, this is not good. You may have two more years in the business uh and he but he has a suggestion to the model and he's like you should get together with a famous girlfriend because then we can rebrand you then you're not only this guy that is connected with this

big fashion brand uh but but the model is a very sensitive guy so he wants So he wants to be in love. So this is, of course, a problem. And so this is an opportunity to draw in beautiful people and then completely undermine them the way you have maybe some characters in the past. Yeah, I mean, I think this is a super opportunity

also for a female actress because I have a fantastic part for a female actress also. That is fantastic part for a female actress also. That is, she's also supposed to be a model. She's coming from Ukraine or something like that. Not 100% decided yet. And she's getting closer to 24.

So her career is soon over. And the problem for her is that she's lesbian. So she can't marry rich to get out of this business, which is probably something that she could have thought of doing. And the other thing is that when you see the pictures of her, she's like super beautiful.

But as soon as you meet her in life, everything dies. She doesn't have any social skill at all. You know, she's laughing on the wrong spots. Every time she starts talking, it just feels like out of phase in some way. And I think it could be super interesting to find an actress that is very beautiful, but she must have a super comical timing and a talent of playing with pauses and doing things at the wrong time all the time. So it's going to be really fun. That sounds intriguing.

You mentioned earlier when you were researching the square. Is that something that – well, you now spend a lot of time researching that world. Obviously, you're married to a fashion photographer, so you have some access to that universe already. But is that a big part? Will you watch a lot of films? Will you read a lot of books? What goes into that process? I think I will watch a lot of films? Will you read a lot of books? What goes into that process? I think I will do a lot of interviews with people in the industry and trying to pick

out those moments where people tell me where, you know, I'm also interested in what is it like to be really, really beautiful? What are the downsides of being really beautiful? And to try to pick up these small moments. Because very often when people tell you about their own experiences, I think that's when you see, ah, that's a beautiful scene. So that is a big part of my research process. Robby Barrett Rubin, I'd like to wrap up by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they've seen? What is the last great thing you've seen?

It was a documentary about that mayor in New York that tried to run to be mayor in New York. Weiner? What was the name? Oh, Weiner, yes. Weiner. Yes. He is a Ruben Ostlund-style character. Anthony Weiner, yeah.

I thought it was very interesting to see that. And, you know, since I've been dealing with people that is trying to avoid losing face, and you have these moments when he had all these problems dealing with the media and with himself and so on. Someone that is so transparent in that moment and inviting us to actually participate in that moment. It was very interesting. Scary and interesting. And also, you know, I think the documentary also created a lot of sympathy for everybody that was involved.

I don't know if you've followed his story since then. It has not gone well. I haven't. Yeah, well, you can read up on it. He's not doing nearly as well. Nor is he nearly as sympathetic a figure. Okay. Okay.

But I do know what you mean. Ruben, thank you so much for doing this. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of The Big Picture. Next week, I'll have Taika Waititi, the director behind Marvel's new movie Thor Ragnarok, which is surprisingly funny and strange. So I'll encourage you guys to check that out. See you then.