Mammoth (2009) Reviews

Mammoth is the English-language debut of Swedish writer-director Lukas Moodysson, who made Together (2000) and Lilya 4-Ever (2002). Reflecting the state of specialty distribution in the post-2008 economy, the film played in precisely one American movie theater, but it was available for download from the IFC Channel. Since professional critics prefer to do their viewing in private screening rooms – you can tell by the whining whenever a studio withholds a film prior to release – most didn’t see Mammoth. There are only nineteen entries at Rotten Tomatoes; the rating is 58% positive.

 

MPI has released Mammoth on DVD with no extras but a good presentation that aptly conveys Moodysson’s somber vision. He’s never been one to make viewers comfortable, and he hasn’t changed his ways.

 

 

 
 

 

The Vidales family lives what appears to be a comfortable life in a well-appointed Soho loft in contemporary New York. Ellen Vidales (Michelle Williams) is an ER surgeon who works long hours, leaving her too little time to spend with her daughter, Jackie (Sophie Nyweide). Leo Vidales (Gael García Bernal) developed a popular gaming website, then partnered with Bob (Tom McCarthy), a businessman who knew how to make it profitable. As the film opens, Leo is leaving to accompany Bob to Bangkok, where they plan to sign a multi-million dollar deal. As befits businessmen of their stature (at least in Bob’s eyes), they travel by private jet. On the plane, Bob presents Leo with a lavishly expensive pen for the signing ceremony. It’s inlaid with fossilized mammoth bone – hence the film’s title.

 

But there’s a snag with the deal in Bangkok, and Leo has to stay much longer than expected while Bob negotiates. With little patience for business affairs, Leo looks for something to fill his time, and he ends up flying off to a nearby island, where he stays on a beach, plays in the surf and tries to forget his loneliness. Then he meets a young Thai prostitute, and things gets complicated.

 

Back in New York, Ellen becomes overly attached to a patient, a boy brought into the ER with grievous injuries who remains on life support. It’s clear, even to Ellen, that she’s compensating for her guilt at spending so little time with her own daughter, who is growing closer to her Filipino nanny, Gloria (Marife Necesito), than to her own mother.

 

What Ellen doesn’t appreciate is that Gloria, as much as she enjoys taking care of Jackie Vidales, struggles daily with the heartbreak of separation from her own sons, Salvador and Manuel (Jan David G. Nicdao and Martin Delos Santos). They remain in the Philippines in the care of their grandmother, while Gloria works to support them in America. She talks to them regularly on cellphones, and Salvador, the elder, routinely begs his mother to return. It’s Gloria’s mother (Maria Esmeralda del Carmen) who’s forced to be the voice of practicality, first reassuring Gloria that she’s doing the right thing, then giving Salvador a grim tour of the local garbage dumps where poor people scrounge for bread crusts. This is why your mother has to work in America, Grandma tells Salvador, so that you don’t have to live like this. (She tells him a few more hard facts of life, with unexpected consequences.)

 

Mammoth continually shifts among these three locales – New York, Thailand and the Philippines – but not in the arbitrary manner of a multi-stranded narrative such as Babel. The film’s characters are all genuinely connected, even if they themselves don’t always see how. Indeed, that’s the point. The film is about people struggling to maintain the connections that matter to them in a world that seems to be working against them at every turn. An ironic moment occurs when Gloria buys a basketball to send her sons in the Philippines to show how much she misses them. She’s in a Manhattan sporting goods store, and the camera cuts to a close-up of the label: “Made in the Philippines”.

 

For all the wonders that technology and the global economy have accomplished, they’ve erected just as many barriers to the most basic human relations, and the characters in Mammoth are constantly bumping up against them. Each of the three parents feels far away from their children, whether physically or emotionally, and none of them knows what to do about it. As the events of the film unfold, these distances will be closed, but at significant cost. By the end, it’s unclear how much anything has really changed.

 

Moodysson works at a leisurely pace that may not be to everyone’s taste, but it lets him explore these worlds in depth. For example, as Salvador tries to figure out a way to make money so that his mother won’t have to leave home to work, we get an extensive tour of the surrounding town, with its fishermen and barter economy (and also its more dangerous elements). In Bangkok, we sample the night life with which Bob tries to divert Leo, and then when Leo strikes out on his own, Moodysson follows him among the beach bums and other itinerants, and even detours among the colleagues of the prostitute in whom Leo takes an interest (this is, after all, the director who made the searing exposé of the sex trade, Lilya 4-Ever). In New York, we follow Gloria as she attends a church popular with the local Filipino community, with Jackie Vidales in tow – much to her mother’s dismay, because Ellen can’t understand why her daughter would rather go to church with Gloria than stay home and cook pizza with mom.

 

Bernal, Williams and Necesito give natural and understated performances; they hold your attention without doing anything obvious or “actorly”. It’s the kind of movie acting that creates the sense of having caught someone in a moment of real life, and Moodysson helps by generally not requiring anyone to deliver Big Important Statements. Possibly the most meaningful line in the film is Ellen’s at the end when she says: “Now we’re going to have to find a new nanny.” It’s a simple sentence, ordinary in itself. But given everything we’ve just been through in the past two hours, we can now feel, even if Ellen can’t, that it’s a thread tied to dozens of others and pulling at an entire tapestry of existence.

 

 

 

After watching so many Blu-rays, I always brace myself for disappointment when I switch to DVD, but Mammoth was a pleasant surprise. The image is remarkably detailed, fully capturing such scenes as the overdone decor of the Vidales’ loft, the lavish accommodations of the Bangkok hotel where Leo stays and the nightmarish squalor of the garbage dump where Grandma brings Salvador to show him the face of true poverty. There is an inevitable degree of video noise, as well as occasional aliasing, where the demands of the image push against the limits of the DVD format’s resolution, but these were kept to a minimum. The film’s color pallette is naturalistic but effective. Scenes like Jackie’s visits to the planetarium or Leo’s plunge into a golden sun-lit sea add a dash of cinematic flair to Moodysson’s vision, and the DVD conveys them well.

 

 

 

Even if you're used to lossless tracks, it’s striking how good a well-mastered Dolby Digital track can sound. The editing style of Mammoth frequently overlaps the dialogue from one scene into the visuals of the next, so that you’re still listening to the previous scene as you begin to take in its successor. The sound design for such a style can’t rely on environmental ambiance, and Mammoth’s soundtrack confines itself to essential sounds that complement the action (cars, airplane noises, crashing waves, etc.). Dialogue is always clear and intelligible, and the score is an eclectic mix of original compositions (by several composers), classical selections and techno-pop. All of it is well-reproduced.

 

 

 

Trailers. The film’s trailer is included, with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and enhanced for 16:9. At startup, the disc plays trailers for Uncertainty (enhanced), Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (enhanced), Swedish Auto (non-enhanced), Five Minutes of Heaven (enhanced) and Paper Covers Rock (non-enhanced). These can be skipped with the chapter forward button. They are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

 

 

 

 

Lukas Moodysson may be working in English and with American actors, but he’ll never be mistaken for a mainstream filmmaker. Until IFC expands the availability of their on-demand library, DVDs like this one are the only way most viewers can see his work.