Written by Andreas Babiolakis

This review is a part of the Palme d’Or Project: a review of every single Palme d’Or winner at Cannes Film Festival. The Square won the sixty second Palme d’Or at the 2017 festival.

The film was selected by the following jury.
Jury President: Pedro Almodóvar.
Jury: Maren Ade, Fan Bingbing, Park Chan-wook, Jessica Chastain, Agnès Jaoui, Will Smith, Paolo Sorrentino, Gabriel Yared.

Ruben Östlund is a bit of an odd fellow when it comes to being a filmmaker, as if his satires are jokes that only a small amount of people get (Cannes juries being a part of this minute demographic). The thing is that it’s not always the same audience that understands his humour or remarks, and they shift each film (although he would win another Palme d’Or in 2022 for Triangle of Sadness), and his largest positive response would come with Force Majeure: a film so beloved that it would spawn an absolutely awful American adaptation. Anyway, the point I’m trying to get to is that The Square is a highly polarizing film, and yet I actually like it a hell of a lot. I feel like I get what this particular film is trying to say, and its 2017 awards season meant that the film was being shopped around to many that didn’t understand it at all (and I don’t mean that people miss the point as much as I am saying that they don’t like how it is being said).

Part of this abrasive exterior comes from the dual natures of The Square: it is a satire of performance art, and it itself mimics the nature of this kind of art. While it mocks the aficionados that eat this shit up, it almost feels like the film is trying to appeal to these very people. I think there’ a certain level of hilarity to this aspect of The Square alone: this endless quest for validation and respect within an art form. Östlund recognizes the snobbery behind kind of appreciation, but he also knows why he got into filmmaking in the first place. So, yes. Both worlds collide here: the unserious gawking at artistic expression and the circles that go about trying to interpret each and every piece of art, and the effort to try and make something substantial. This dichotomy won’t appeal to everyone, but I kind of like it. Do these halves gel together? Not always, but this ebb and flow between disgust and fascination is why I became so attracted to thought provoking art in the first place. I don’t like knowing exactly where I stand with art. The Square pushes me around and forces me to make my own conclusions on the spot. I never know where I stand with the film. That’s art to me, even if this sensation doesn’t come as naturally to The Square like it does for other forms of art.

We follow curator Christian around as he is tasked with coming up with the next exhibit for a Stockholm art museum. He needs to find something bold and challenging, as to bring a draw back to the institution. That’s the most basic premise of The Square, but Östlund and the film tend to hop around between subplots, vignettes, and this main quest. It’s this kind of disconnection that likely alienates some viewers as well, but I see these elements of The Square as similar to looking at separate art pieces in a gallery, feeling the lasting effects of the works I had just seen seep into the current experiences I am feeling, and getting both individual and amalgamated responses from an overall stirring event. Each individual moment sticks out, but they all are a part of the same whole: this strange environment that Östlund has placed us in. Christian’s mission matters, but so do all of these other escapades.

The film houses some strong performances from its leads, including Elizabeth Moss’ inquisitive journalist role, Claes Bang as Christian (having to balance a lot of different responses and thoughts), and Dominic West’s brief-but-alluring work. Östlund doesn’t just have English speakers to make his film more widely seen. He does something a little more interesting: using these fishes-out-of-water to create an even bigger gap between the art and the observer, as if there are many people here that are lost in translation. That’s maybe what the director is trying to showcase the most: that know-it-alls don’t know it all. Art can be something you just don’t get, and that’s okay. Experiencing it without answers is a part of the intrigue. Pretending to be able to dissect everything (as a curator, a writer, a patron, et cetera) will only open the doors for you having to analyze that of which isn’t art, and Östlund goes down this path as well.

Then again, that’s kind of the artist’s mantra, isn’t it? Especially after the dadaists opened up this can of worms. Anything can be art. Anything can be interpreted. There’s this line that people don’t like to cross: either having to accept that everything is art, or that we definitely gate keep what is art and what isn’t. Is a performer acting like a primitive ape and ruining the nite for many of Sweden’s elite an expression? Why isn’t it? That’s on you to figure out. Also, advertising is a major antithesis of art, and yet it is needed for this art to even be see. The Square deals with this as well, with its most upsetting plot thread. Can promotion be as artistic as the exhibitions being advertised? Well, those within The Square sure try. Even if I don’t feel like The Square provides every answer, I firstly think that’s on me to discern myself (because, again, “art”), and I think that the film is affective enough that it definitely sticks in my head as interesting satire (especially because real life and caricatures are blended together to the point of being indecipherable from one another). The Square makes me laugh at myself as I try to figure it out, and I can’t say that many other films have achieved that. This alone deserves some recognition and kudos.

Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.