"Together"
When the Vietnam War ended in 1975, it also spelled the end of the hippie movement in America forever. But, in Sweden, freethinking, free-loving idealism still lives and communes still flourish. At one such cooperative, the delicate balance needed for a large number of people, all very different, to live together in harmony is strained by the arrival of a family of outsiders in the Swedish comedy "Together."
When the leader of the Tillsammans (Together) commune, Goran (Gustaf Hammarsten), gets a plaintive phone call from his sister Elisabeth (Lisa Lindgren) he can't help but to take her and her kids into the house. Her husband, Rolf (Michael Nyqvist), has a drinking problem and, drunk again, he struck his wife in the face. Hard. Goran picks up Elisabeth and her two kids and drives them, in a VW microbus of course, back to Together for safety. Once there, the stable dynamics of the group home go completely a kilter as the family's arrival disrupts the delicate social balance - not that things weren't about to go awry anyway - in the house.
Goran is coupled with a sex-crazed, free love advocate, Lena (Anja Lundqvist), who decides to test her significant other's idealism and beds down, with vocal verve, the commune's irritable, radical, resident Communist, Erik (Olle Sarri). The cynical med-school member of the house, Lasse (Ola Norell), has to contend with his ex-wife Anna (Jessica Liedberg), who divorced him to become a lesbian. They also have their 8-year-old son, Tet (Axel Zuber), to raise amidst the varied group of freethinkers. Lasse has to cope, too, with Klas (Shanti Roney), a homosexual member of the household who has a crush on the doctor-in-training.
When Elisabeth and her children, Eva (Emma Samuelsson) and Stephan (Sam Kessel), invade the collective with their own set of middle-class problems and lifestyle, they introduce bourgeois elements into the communal. Two of Together's most idealistic and fanatical members, Signe (Cecilia Frode) and her stubborn husband Sigvard (Lars Frode), are appalled by the intrusion and the disruption the outsiders cause. When their idealism is questioned - Is Pippi Longstocking really a capitalist? Is a little meat with a meal so bad? Or, is TV really so evil? - the couple decides to leave for another commune where their values will be kept intact. Together begins its metamorphosis from the group concepts of the 60's to the self-centered cynicism of the 70's.
"Together," at its core, makes interesting social statements about the state of mind of the world in the 70's. The controversy of the Vietnam War is over, but the impact of that conflict and its effect on the world has made impossible the continuation of the altruism spawned in the previous decade. World society, now free of the political mess in Indochina, is taking on a self-awareness that spawned the "me" generation and the good of mankind takes a back seat to individual self-indulgence. Sophomore helmet/writer Lukas Moodysson, from a narrative viewpoint, does a fine job of recreating the philosophical transformation as seen in the tiny microcosm of Swedish communal society.
Technically, though, the film is second rate and diminishes the subject matter. Most annoying is the hand held, jerky camera work by Ulf Bantams. The lender was shooting for a documentary look with his rapidly moving, erratic camera but that is no excuse for bad photographic composition and look. At times the filming takes on the feel of an amateur given his first video camera and told to go shoot a feature film. Other techs are routine, except, possibly, for the costuming by Matte Muller that belies the obvious small budget of the film. One amusing distraction is the wig that character Klas is saddled with. It looks like he raided his mother's wig supply - blindfolded.
The ensemble cast is large with all of the actors (about 18 in all) each given some level of shrift throughout the film. Notable are Gusted Hammarsten as the kindly doormat Goran and his sister Elisabeth (Lindgren) who is attracted to the freedom of Together but still yearns to have a stable home life. Everyone in he cast delivers the good.
The combination of thoughtful period slice-of-life and the amateur-feeling production make me have mixed feelings about "Together." I like the idea but, regretfully, have major problems with the execution and give it a C+.
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