Three years after his "experimental" phase wrapped with the jarring, iconoclastic Container, Swedish enfant terrible Lukas Moodysson returned for this sprawling, ambitious social drama. Echoing Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel and featuring two Hollywood A-listers as his leads, Mammoth also marked the director's premier English-language project. Michelle Williams and Gael García Bernal co-star as Ellen and Leo, New York marrieds; she's an emergency-room surgeon, he's a listless, vaguely
dissatisfied Internet game designer. They have a family, albeit an unconventional and dysfunctional one: seven-year-old daughter Jackie (Sophie Nyweide) is practically being raised by a 24/7 Filipino caregiver, Gloria (Marife Necesito), who dotes on her incessantly. This provokes the envy of Ellen and the resentment of Gloria's two geographically estranged sons, Manuel (Martin Delos Santos) and Salvador (Jan Nicdao), who repeatedly phone their mom from Manila and plead with her to come home. Gloria's mother grows so distressed by this behavior that she attempts to show Salvador just how easy his life is in comparison to that of others, which leads to unanticipated tragic consequences. Meanwhile, Leo teams up with a shifty associate, Bob (Tom McCarthy), flies to Thailand, and encounters a freewheeling, laid-back working mother named Cookie (Run Srinikornchot). Step by step, the actions that Leo takes while abroad create a domino effect and alter everyone's lives in irreversible ways. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi
Too many films exploit the perils faced by children when the social contract is ruptured, but Mammoth earns its cruel, sensationalistic turns and then some.
The overlapping stories, the emotional disconnect, the heavy-handed symbolism -- no, it's not a movie from the makers of Babel, its a mumbling, stammering copycat drama from Swedish director Lukas Moodysson.
In Mammoth, when a rich child eats her lunch in New York, a poor boy in the Philippines cries. And so it goes, as privilege begets exploitation with grimly deterministic logic and pages and pages of bad dialogue.
Having spent a decade purposefully alienating audiences, Swedish writer/director Lukas Moodysson claws his way back into the mainstream with this condescending, glossy slice of We Are The World-style film-making.
[A] Babel-ish drama about the malaises wrought by globalisation, how we're closer than ever, and yet, if I'm not mistaken, farther apart. Unfortunately, you've seen it already.
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with message movies like this provided the characters feel real (they don't) and it's handled with a light touch (it isn't).
[A] fatuous, self-serving and fantastically dishonest exercise in pseudo-compassion, composed in the supercilious "globalised" style of Alejandro González Iñarritu's 2006 film Babel.
This is an impressively directed, superbly acted and emotionally engaging drama, though the script is occasionally a little heavy-handed and the whole thing is nearly scuppered by a jaw-droppingly crass final line.
A return to form by Moodysson although the bigger Iñárritu-like stuff -- globalisation, poverty, fraying family relationships -- are all a bit too neat to really engage.
An inexorable dread holds the attention (if you've seen Moodysson's disturbing Lily-4-Ever you'll know what to expect) and as tragedy moves ever closer it's difficult too look away.
Mammoth features sensational moments of reaction and deliberation communicated by a gifted cast, building a few symbolic global bridges, more appreciable for their design than their destination.
Fragmented, but coherent, Mammoth comparatively narrates domestic drama in different social-cultural settings. Heaving with stereotypes, Mammoth concluded in accomplishment of imparting a definite set of emotions with the audiences.
'Where do all the children play?' Disregard the film synopsis. These interwined stories, from varying cultural standpoints, confront and question post-modern values. The pursuit of money to better our lives and childrens' exacts a high price. Each character determines if the cost is worth it. This film's direction,
symbolism and 'message' is far from subtle.
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