In a scene early on, Claes Bangs, who plays the head curator at a high-profile contemporary art museum, practices a speech in front of a mirror. He stops and restarts, rehearsing the point at which he will pretend to discard his notes and speak from the heart. When we see him deliver this performance to a room full of museum benefactors, we only get a few lines of artspeak before Östlund cuts to the aftermath. Although Elisabeth Moss’s character has already challenged him on his gobbledygook, establishing the film’s satirical attitude toward the artworld, Bangs’s incoherent reference to “relational aesthetics” is key to the rest of this film. Social relations are an important theme in this film, as when Moss confronts Bangs after their hookup, explicitly referring to the power afforded him by his position at the museum; or when the man with Tourette’s keeps interrupting an artist talk with profanity. Rather than acknowledge how one man is inconveniencing everyone else, rendering the event null, members of the audience call for tolerance (an example of the woke mindset before it really caught on). The most obvious example of the theme of “social relations” is, of course, the constant presence of the homeless. They intrude into the narrative, such as it is, by interjecting themselves into the lives of our characters. They are a constant reminder of the broader social context that all these artworld shenanigans are playing out within, even as the physical geography of the film—hyper-modern Sweden—seems perfectly congruent with that social reality. Even when we visit a 7-Eleven, or a low-income housing block, they are still afflicted by the modern design that is in perfect congruity with the rest of the film’s settings.
In Force Majeure (2014), Östlund’s static, spare, and isolating compositions accentuate the alienation felt at the heart of a troubled family dynamic. In The Square, they are a crucial part of this film’s successful representation of the artworld. Architecture and compositions are used to accentuate characters’ relationships through the physical environment. Often we don’t see the critical piece of action, or a key character. What I really came to appreciate about Östlund’s compositions, however, is his editing: sequences are often cut short, and we are filled in at a later point on the details of what happened. There’s a very careful and tightly co-ordinated integration of script, shot composition, and performance that make this possibly the best narrative film representing the artworld that I have ever seen.