Kollektivet (The Commune)

I know open relationships can work because I've met people who have rationally embraced free love without jealously descending into the wild frenzied madness that structures so many monogamously themed narratives.

When I listen to sex people tell their lusty tales of spontaneous syntheses and unbridled inspiration, I often wonder how their stable relationship continues to thrive over the years, yet years later still see them dating the same people, and neither partner claims to be consumed by purest envy.

They say it's a matter of maturity.

I still don't get it.

Kollektivet (The Commune) examines a stable relationship that is challenged by the introduction of a third element, who is plainly a much younger version of the man's original life partner.

The mother of his child.

She's seeking change to alleviate mid-life meaninglessness and argues that they should transform their recently inherited house into a lively commune.

She isn't psychologically equipped to sublimate her true feelings, however, and eventually finds herself struggling to logically endure.

More like Cassavete's A Woman Under the Influence than Lukas Moodysson's Tillsammans (Together), Thomas Vinterberg's Kollektivet cruelly illustrates the detrimental effects of a hasty big picture alteration, an incredible paradigm shift, as sure and steady security promotes basic instinct.

I was deceived by Kollektivet myself.

I was hoping to see a multidimensional film wherein which multiple characters were developed and nuanced as they cohesively embraced collective conflict as one.

I suppose it is unpredictable inasmuch as it primarily focuses on the deterioration of a nuclear family rather than the challenges of communal life, but I didn't rent a film about a commune to see what manifold more traditional storylines tend to generate.

The other individuals living within the commune receive little to no character development and bluntly interact throughout as originally presented, the occasional clever comment or the purchase of a dishwasher notwithstanding.

Decisions are made rather quickly as well, as if something as serious as starting a commune and giving away your house is like tying your shoes or trying Indonesian food for the first time.

Kollektivet atypically narrativizes life in a commune thereby tricking its traditional audience into watching the bizarro mainstream.

A dire preachy warning for the experimental, a harsh validation of conjugal revenge, it heartbreakingly explores/justifies adulterous instincts commonly depicted as characteristics of the alpha-male, who ironically wanted nothing to do with them, without sympathy for his partner, a daughter torn apart along the way.

An excruciating attempt to find a way to exonerate misogyny.

Far from the Madding Crowd

There seems to be at least 2 ways to view Thomas Vinterberg's Far from the Madding Crowd, one favourable and another dismissive, without focusing on the strong performances.

I often say this, but it applies here as well, when you cover dense literary material in a short span of time and try to maximize the amount of your narrative coverage, you often lose much of the poetic subtlety that maintains the vision's life force, by causing complex emotions to seem trite due to their overabundance, which adds a subliminal comic dimension to your structure.

Joe Wright's Anna Karenina worked well in this frame.

Strong performances can fight against this tendency, and they do in this case, but as the frequency of the condensed points of fascination increase, there's little they can do to avoid being swamped by the deluge.

Two scenes in particular struck me, when Sergeant Francis Troy (Tom Sturridge) discusses his preference for Fanny Robbin (Juno Temple) with Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan), a definitive moment, where the depth of emotion simply isn't there, and when an exasperated William Boldwood (Michael Sheen) pulls out his rifle in the end, once again a pivotal pinpoint, which falls flat in terms of critical perplexion.

But, if the film is viewed as a sombre love story in/directly examining Everdene and Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts) specifically, then it makes sense that both the scenes I've mentioned above would fall flat, in order for the film's subconscious to structurally validate all the interactions Bathsheba has with Oak.

By making the scenes with Oak stand out, and making those featuring the other men who desire her insignificant, Bathsheba and Gabriel's love rings true, an appealing romantic cultivation.

This is a risky move because it necessitates lacklustre moments, but if your aesthetic preferences are in tune with such stratagems, Far from the Madding Crowd works on a high level.

Liked the black bear and how it highlights Everdene's suffocated independence, both spirits prospering as they assert themselves, suffering when forced to perform parlour tricks.

Jagten (The Hunt)

An asphyxiating altercating articulation of innocence incrementally fuels fratricidal flames until an upright loving gregarious educator's life lies holistically in ruin.

Thomas Vinterberg patiently and poignantly crafts a traumatic testament of angelic ostracization as a joyful lifelong friend slowly idealizes the abject.

The childlike recreational pursuits of a supportive communal cohesivity introduced at Jagten's (The Hunt's) outset haunts its terrorized reels in an acerbic antiseptic embodiment of consternated dramatic horror.

Nowhere to go.

No reason to run.

The truth's condemnatory instinct is diatonically disreputed as media sensations are pastorally localized.

Difficult and controversial subject matter.

A didactic tool designed to encourage pause and reflection in order to accentuate the right that one is innocent until proven guilty.

And what can happen if that guilt is assumed inveterately beforehand.