Ravishing realism of Ruben Ostlund

Tell you what My next film will have the largest walkout in the history of Cannesrdquo Swedish masterdirector Ruben Ostlund tells me over a videocall while patiently narrating specific scenes from his forthcoming movie titled The Entertainment System is Down ESD I didnrsquot ask if hersquos already shot edited or still scripting his nextFirstly which writerdirector dives so deep into a movie that isnrsquot out yet while the overt agenda for the conversation is Ostlundrsquos Triangle of Sadness TS 2022More specifically I just wanna be around Ostlund 49 This is something I feel about a few auteurs when the evident distance between what they think and film is zeroThrough their movies as wholly personal suitably offkilter expressions they come across as familiar people yoursquod wanna hang with the ultimate compliment a person can pay another Which is also a reason like a backslapping buddy I go off on another tangent with Ostlund myselfRandomly wonderingmdasharrey how did you shoot that climactic sequence in TSmdashwhere the cruiseship filled with the ultrarich rocks in the ocean while the guests puke en masse It looked so real I just couldnrsquot omit the vomit from my headldquoOkay three things One there was a tube inside the actorsrsquo mouths attached to airpressure pumps to let out liquids A lady in the cast had done plays where shersquod learnt to puke on command hundreds of times Finally we added VFX visual effectsrdquo Ostlund smilesA still from the film PicsTwitterFor all its inherent humour and sassiness TS is expectedly a takemeditation on life and relationships Arenrsquot all filmsmdashor art for that mattermdashwhether inadvertently or not Ostlundrsquos works are more overtly somdashranging from the strangely surreal to a ravishing realismmdashanything but predictableEspecially with TS which refers to the frown lines between your eyebrows called the lsquotriangle of sadnessrsquo Once the film begins with a couple conflicted over who pays the restaurant billsmdashitrsquos impossible to tell where yoursquoll end up with it detouring to communism power structures how humans organise themselves the worksSurely thatrsquos both disconcerting and delightful depending on you the audience eventually Also he takes risks with attention spans in ways that few contemporary directors are as securely capableDrawing you in deeper and deeper stillmdashthe film ideally consumed in parts like a book not binged as if popcornmdashwhile itrsquos as bigscreencinematic as it gets Consider the manturnsmonstermonkey sequence in The Square 2017 or the mundane beatsmdashbrush breakfast trip repeatmdashof a family holiday in Force Majeure 2014I mention The Square and Force Majeure along with TS since therersquos a sense of trilogy there Also you can access them on Amazon Prime Videomdashthe streamers having made arthouse the new lsquomainstreamrsquoAlso Read The great boom in crappy ideasTS is the first Ostlund film to open in Indian theatres March 3 I ask him the usual rubbish about whether hersquos watched Indian cinema or what he thinks of his picture debuting among desis in a hallHersquos heard of the joyful loudness of Bollywoodmdashboth as content and a consumption space Therersquos no point probing further on this clicheacuteAs a filmbuff Ostlund says he was most influenced by Roy Anderson whose visual style especially from advertising was impossible to escape growing up in Sweden whether or not you knew his nameAs a student at film school though when he saw Michael Hanekersquos Code Unknown 2000 the penny dropped He discovered the form to bleed his art into A recurring theme in his films he says are blinding societal compulsions that bizarrely burdenbind the individualAn obvious connection between Haneke and Ostlund is their intense obsession with setting He agrees further to suggest that the setting is itself the point of his story from which flow the characters He first wants you to enter the ski resort in Force Majeure or the museum in The SquareAnd indeed the fashion week cruise liner and a deserted island in TSmdashnominated for Best Picture Best Director and Best Screenplay at the Academy Awards 2023A YouTube video of Ostlundrsquos that went viral in 2015 was him and his producer recording their disappointment live at missing out on Best Foreign Film Oscar nom for Force Majeure which was otherwise globally fetedThe Square won the Palme drsquoOr topmost prize at Cannes As did TS Ostlund didnrsquot upload that happy video for the TS Oscar nommdashldquosad video is more interestingrdquo Expected no less from the current undisputed champion of the melancholically lingering long takes who patiently mines characters on screen as if they were experiencing life itselfOkay so letrsquos hear about Ostlundrsquos next feature ESD is literally about a pilot announcing that the planersquos entertainment system is down once the passengers have boarded a really long flightmdashldquosay between New York and BombayrdquoNow everyone has to confront their boredom There are two children with one iPad to share The mum times their iPad usageThe waiting kid has eight minutes to go for his turn The audience watches this child in realtime for eight minuteshellipBy the way forget that Ostlund expects hordes to walk out of ESD at Cannesmdashhersquos told his team letrsquos grab the third Palme drsquoOr ldquoa hattrickrdquo Pass me my LSDMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper