Mammoth (2009/IFC Films/MPI DVD)
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: C- Film: C+
If Writer/Director Lukas Moodysson had made Mammoth (2009) ten years ago, it might
have been a better film and had a better ending, but instead, it is yet another film that cannot resist being Crash and lands up being so phony. It is amazing how often good movies go bad
when they try to tie characters together, even continents apart, but this one
does and it implodes in the end.
Michelle Williams is a nurse and her husband Gael Garcia
Bernal is a traveling businessman who must go to Thailand for a big merger deal that
will make him rich. They have a Filipino
babysitter they trust with their daughter they love, but the separation will
challenge their lives and bad news is on the way for all.
In addition to the contrivances that undermine a good
cast, some good ideas and good locations, the film also has a subtext about
environmentalism that is not certain what it wants to say. The title refers to a pen that a fellow businessman
owns that is made of the tusk of an extinct elephant and is supposedly the most
expensive pen in the world, though the claim is that it is the best in the
world. Along with pollution in Bangkok, this is an
underlying theme about denatured things and is the only loose connection in the
film. He should have tired the opposite.
Still, the performances are good, though the use of
children makes them a bit two-dimensional, the use of vocal music is not always
effective and the husband’s virgin/whore complex is not examined as much as it
should have been. An interesting
failure, its limits remind us of how independent film had painted itself too
much in a corner.
The anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image was shot in the
Super 35mm film format and is not bad, but color and detail are an issue. Director of Photography Marcel Zyskind (Code 46, 9 Songs, A Mighty Heart,
Mister Lonely) does add some styling
and can produce visually interesting images, so this makes it all the easier to
watch. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is
dialogue based and has some good soundfield sometimes, but the vocal songs are
not always integrated into the soundfield very well. The only extra is the original theatrical
trailer.
- Nicholas Sheffo
