DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT – RUBEN ÖSTLUND
FORCE MAJEURE has its origins
in a question I have long been fascinated by: How do human beings react in
sudden and unexpected situations, such as a catastrophe? The story concerns a
family on holiday that witnesses an avalanche and the father runs away,
terrified. When it is over, he is ashamed because he has succumbed to his primal
fear.
This
particular story came about from an anecdote that I found impossible to forget.
Some
years ago, a Swedish couple—friends of mine—were on holiday in Latin America
when suddenly, out of nowhere, gunmen appeared and opened fire; the husband
instinctively ran for cover, leaving his wife unprotected. Back in Sweden, she
could not stop, after a glass of wine or two, telling the story over and over
again...
My
imagination fired, and I began to research other true stories like this one -
stories of distress and emergency, of passengers during the sinking of ships,
of tourists stricken by tsunamis or held hostage by hijackers. In such extreme
situations, people can react in completely unexpected and exceedingly selfish
ways. It appears there are scientific studies on the subject – that in the
aftermath of a catastrophe, a hijacking or a shipwreck, a large number of the
survivors divorce. It also appears that, in many cases, men do not act
according to the expected codes of chivalry. In life or death situations, when
their very own survival is at stake, it seems that men are even more likely
than women to run away and save themselves, which may be the chief cause for those
divorces. This made me want to explore the perceived notion that a man is
supposed to be the protector of his wife and family, the societal code that
says he must not step back in the face of danger.
From
here, I arrived at the concept of an existential drama in a ski resort,
something that appeals to me greatly. Ski holidays contribute to the feeling of
having full control over one’s own life. Like most European ski resorts, Les
Arcs, where FORCE MAJEURE was shot,
was built in the 1950s to receive middle-class families consisting of an
executive father (sometimes working) mother and two kids. The father is
supposed to muck in, the fully equipped open-plan kitchens in the ski
apartments giving the mother a chance to do things other than cooking, like ski
with her family, or relax. Ski resorts are meant to be cozy, as the advertising
shows—we can imagine the woman relaxing, her husband playing with the kids.
Vacation is a time when the Western middle-class father “pays back” the family
for his absence. It is an opportunity for him to devote time to his children
and take care of them. But in FORCE
MAJEURE “Civilized Man” is confronted by “Nature.” The characters
experience this drama, and the father, Tomas, must face the savage part of
himself, because his instincts lead him to save himself and abandon his children
and his wife. He must face the reality that he, too, is subject to the forces
of Nature, and that he has failed to conceal his most basic human impulse – the
survival instinct.
After
the panic of the avalanche, our characters manage to raise a nervous smile, get
back onto their feet and brush off the snow. But although no physical damage
has been done, the family bonds have been shaken to their core; slowly, they
will begin to ask themselves questions about the roles they believed they
played so well, they will have to deal with this new image of Tomas, who did
not act as was expected. Tomas himself must also reconcile his actions with his
self-image, and his wife, Ebba, must admit that her husband and the father of
her children abandoned them at the moment when they needed him most.
This
particular situation illustrates the wider existence of specific mutual
expectations between the members of a family, even if these assumptions are
seldom voiced. Each person has a role to play and one expects the others to perform
according to their given role. Perhaps unconsciously, most people expect the
mother to take care of the children on a daily basis, whereas the father has to
stand up when a sudden threat is coming. Yet nowadays a man very rarely has to
stand up and protect his family. He has no practical opportunity to express
this kind of action, because there is so little physical danger in Western
middle-class society. But everybody still expects it from him—he even expects it
from himself. That interests me, this expectation, as does the fact that it is
disconnected from reality – that statistics show a man is more likely than one
thinks to abandon his family in a crisis. Investigations of catastrophes at sea
have shown that the percentage of male survivors is higher than that of female
survivors.
The
avalanche scene in FORCE MAJEURE is
genuinely frightening. It was shot in a studio where a part of the restaurant
terrace was reconstructed in front of a green screen, composited with footage
of a beautiful avalanche shot in British Columbia and with digital snow mist
added to the scene. During the post-production of this and some other shots, I applied
effects and/or camera movements using Photoshop and After Effects as I had previously
done with PLAY and INVOLUNTARY and most notably in the short film INCIDENT BY A
BANK, in which all the camera movements were created during the editing
process.
FORCE MAJEURE takes place in
a majestic visual environment that I wanted to enhance further through CG,
“rebuilding” mountains and portions of the hotel complex to create a truly
sensational feeling. Of course, as was the case in my previous films, digital
work remains completely invisible, leaving audiences without any clues that the
environments have been touched.
We
shot the film with anamorphic lenses, using the ARRI Alexa camera, after
cinematographer Fredrik Wenzel and I had done a variety of tests. These lenses
lend a more cinematic feel to the film and allowed us to achieve a truly epic
sense of framing in the mountain environment. They also bring us closer to the
characters than in my previous feature film PLAY; we were able to get close-up
shots whilst still having some background to work with.
The
structure of the film follows a regular ski week schedule—first day, second
day, third day—until the family goes back to the airport on the fifth day. The
family dynamic is developed on the first day, with the gorgeous setting, the
mountains, and the great weather. The incident with the avalanche then occurs
on the second day. On the third, fourth and fifth days, we see how the family
is trying to handle the consequences of the avalanche. This five day structure will
allow us to repeat several elements of each day’s routine—daily breakfast,
brushing teeth at night—in order to follow the evolution of the family’s
behavior before and after the incident.
In
FORCE MAJEURE we follow Ebba and
Tomas in their journey, see the evolution of their feelings and their perception
of events, witness them struggle to get back together, and share their sorrows and
their hopes. The appeal for the audience is much more connected to emotion than
in my previous, more conceptual films. In the final scene, as our main characters
return to the airport by bus, the tourists find themselves standing on the side
of the road not only because of the bus driver’s recklessness, but also because
they let their fear get the better of them. As they walk down the mountain on
foot they see the bus drive off safely, and a slight sense of collective shame arises.
Yet, as they walk, this slowly transforms into a feeling of solidarity. Their
social masks have crumbled away and they actually share a strong moment
together.
EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF: GENDER, NORMS AND
SURVIVAL IN MARITIME DISASTER
Mikael
Elinder and Oscar Erixson,
Uppsala
University, Department of Economics, April 10, 2012
Abstract
Since
the sinking of the Titanic, there has
been a widespread belief that the social norm of “women and children first” gives
women a survival advantage over men in maritime disasters, and that captains
and crew give priority to passengers. We analyzed a database of 18 maritime
disasters spanning three centuries, covering the fate of over 15,000
individuals of more than 30 nationalities. Our results provide a new picture of
maritime disasters. Women have a distinct survival disadvantage compared to
men. Captains and crew survive at significantly higher rate than passengers. We
also find that the captain has the power to enforce normative behavior that the
gender gap in survival rates has declined, that women have a larger
disadvantage in British shipwrecks, and that there seems to be no association
between duration of disaster and the impact of social norms. Taken together,
our findings show that behavior in life-and-death situation is best captured by
the expression “Every man for himself’”