Saw two films with ambitions to reframe the satire of corporate mindsets, one of which fell apart (or maybe never really cohered at all), the other of which I loved.
Severance sends a group of corporate-office types out for some team-building in the backwoods of Hungary, then sics some rejects from Hostel at ’em. The film’s set-up–and its snarky title–gave me high hopes, as it promised to be a scary slasher flick and a caustic deconstruction of cutthroat capitalism. Alas, it was not to be. The humor is mild, rarely cutting; the cutting, too, is mild, and rarely interesting.
Meanwhile, Lars von Trier’s The Boss of it All seemed in reviews to be all trite concept (actor hired to impersonate a boss never seen by the office) and trite aestheticism (yet again, von Trier trots out some technical device meant to bang your head against the fourth wall–a camera that randomly shifts its framing of the shot, so that characters are seen from the bridge of their nose up, or four-fifths off to the left of our view). It was, however, a hoot–and smart, returning to old themes for this director (the purpose of art, the failures of sentiment, the hopeless inadequacy of realism) and this genre (the narcissism of corporate ambition, the false bonhomie of community, the acidity of greed) but working all kinds of lovely and–despite so much obviousness–many subtle, sly, often outstanding variations. It’s one of my favorite films of the year. Continue reading You shitty, shitty, shit-faced Danes.