The Square

I watched this on a slightly-too-small laptop screen while my neighbor was loudly power-washing his driveway, and the rhythmic, aggressive drone actually added a nice layer of industrial anxiety to the whole experience. It felt right. Ruben Östlund’s The Square is the kind of movie that wants you to feel slightly oily and profoundly uncomfortable, even if you’re sitting in your favorite pajamas.

The High Price of High Art

Christian, played with a pitch-perfect mix of suave confidence and crumbling morality by Claes Bang, is the chief curator of a prestigious Stockholm museum. He’s the guy we all know: the one who wears expensive scarves, drives a Tesla, and speaks in eloquent paragraphs about the "social responsibility of art" while avoiding eye contact with the homeless man outside his office. He’s currently prepping a new installation called "The Square"—a simple 4x4 meter space where everyone is supposed to have equal rights and obligations. It’s a sanctuary of trust.

Naturally, the moment Christian steps out into the real world, that trust is incinerated. After a hilariously choreographed "damsel in distress" scam in a public square leaves him without his phone and wallet, Christian’s attempt to get them back spirals into a series of petty, desperate, and increasingly humiliating decisions. Watching Claes Bang—who looks like he was sculpted out of expensive granite—slowly lose his composure is one of the film's greatest joys. It’s an arthouse movie that actually wants to prank you, and it succeeds by making you realize you’re exactly like the people on screen.

Cringe as a Fine Art Form

If you’ve ever sat through a meeting that went on five minutes too long, you’ve felt the DNA of this film. Ruben Östlund (who later gave us the yacht-vomit-epic Triangle of Sadness) is the reigning king of the "long, awkward take." There’s a scene involving Elisabeth Moss and a post-coital dispute over a used condom that I genuinely watched through my fingers. Elisabeth Moss is brilliant here; she plays Anne, a journalist who refuses to let Christian slide back into his comfortable "cool guy" persona. She’s the needle popping his very expensive balloon.

Then, of course, there is "The Scene." You’ve probably seen the poster: a shirtless man acting like an ape. Terry Notary, a movement coach who worked on the Planet of the Apes reboots, plays a performance artist named Oleg who is hired to entertain a ballroom full of tuxedos and evening gowns. What starts as a "sophisticated" bit of dinner theater turns into the most stressful dinner party since the Donner Pass. It’s a masterclass in the "Bystander Effect." How long will these wealthy, "enlightened" people sit there while a man physically harasses them before someone actually steps in? It turns out the answer is: a shockingly long time.

The Viral Void

Since this is a film from 2017, it perfectly captures that specific, frantic era where legacy institutions were terrified of becoming irrelevant. The museum hires a pair of millennial PR "disruptors" who look like they’ve never seen a sunrise that wasn't through an Instagram filter. To promote "The Square," they decide to create a viral video that is so offensive and tone-deaf it makes current-day Twitter scandals look like a Sunday school picnic.

The film gets at something very "now"—the way we use the language of social justice and empathy to mask our own apathy. We love the idea of "The Square," a place of universal help, but we don't actually want to help the guy who keeps calling Christian on his stolen phone. The movie is long (151 minutes), and there are moments where it feels like it’s wandering into the weeds, but I'd argue that the fatigue is part of the point. It wears you down until your own social defenses are as thin as Christian’s. Even Dominic West shows up for a brief, hilarious role as an artist being interviewed while a man with Tourette’s syndrome screams obscenities from the audience. It’s chaotic, mean-spirited, and deeply, deeply funny.

The Square is a sharp, jagged mirror held up to the face of modern liberalism. It’s the kind of film that makes you want to go out and be a better person just so you don't end up as the butt of one of Ruben Östlund’s jokes. While it lacks the "instant classic" status of some older dramas, its relevance in our era of performative social media activism only seems to grow every year. It’s a big, messy, uncomfortable meal that stays with you long after the credits roll. Just maybe don't watch it right before you have to attend a gallery opening.