Mammoth (2009)

Well, I like all of the actors but let's talk about their characters in this movie. While Michelle Williams as mother/wife/doctor is trying to save a boy's life in NYC...the happily married man - her husband - gets bored waiting for a business deal to go through and has a beach vacation with a young prostitute (and I note he fails to tell his wife he might be HIV infected by the prostitute). Also, I don't think the nanny would have left the girl Jackie alone without calling to tell her mother...you don't ask a 7 year old to do that. And the nanny's mother blew it by telling her grandson that the kids go at night and get money "sleeping" with someone. (What an unfortunate reminder that it is Westerners who keep the child prostitution going there.) And to add to the dreariness of the characters,the pace of the movie was horrendously slow. There was a heaviness, too...so on my list to never watch it again.

like many others. a trip . like a lot of movies. a new Babel. but in specific way. a poem. about maternity, search of sense and broken bridges of soul. nothing more. story of three mothers in different places of world. and same problems, answers and tragedies. like game of mirrors. like hided arena.a young man in Thailand. his questions, quests and discoveries. and a strange pen. nothing else. a puzzle and definition of globalization fruits. or only reflection of same need of sense who makes heart of every society. who makes hours, months, years, decades of each man and woman.the axis of that heart is always the child. a child. who may be promise for better life. who must be legitimation of present sacrifice. who gives force in every difficult moment. a prey, a pray, a promise and perfect victim.so, the virtue of film is game of nuances. delicate. subtle. cruel. and wise. far from a moral lesson. but, with a very good cast, a letter to public.

In New York, the immature family man Leo Vidales (Gael García Bernal) is a successful businessman, owner of the Underlandish, a successful website of digital games and married with Dr. Ellen Vidales (Michelle Williams), a dedicated surgeon of the emergency room of a hospital. They have a daughter, Jackie (Sophie Nyweide), who is an intelligent girl that is raised by her nanny, the Filipino Gloria (Marife Necesito) that spends more time with her than Ellen. Gloria has two sons in Philippine that miss her.When Leo need to travel to Singapore with his partner Bob (Tom McCarthy) to sign a millionaire contract with investors, Ellen operates a boy stabbed in the stomach by his own mother and she feels connected to the boy and rethinks her relationship with Jackie. Meanwhile Leo is bored waiting for the negotiation of Bob with the investors and he decides to travel to Bangkok and lodges in a rustic cottage on the seashore. Leo meets the young prostitute and mother Cookie (Run Srinikornchot) and he has one night stand with her. Meanwhile, Gloria's ten year-old boy Salvador (Jan David G. Nicdao) misses her mother and decides to find a job. His innocence leads him to a tragedy. "Mammoth" is a melodramatic film about motherhood – there are four parallel situations of mother and children – Ellen and Jackie; Gloria and her sons; the boy Anthony and his mother that has stabbed him; and Cookie and her baby. I had a great expectation with this film, but unfortunately the plot does not work well and is pointless, going to nowhere. There is the contrast between people and specially children from the First and Third Worlds, but nothing new. The narrative is cold and not engaging. Gael Garcia Bernal is miscast and his immature character has nothing to do with his mature wife. Sophie Nyweide steals the film with her top- notch performance. There are so many tragedies along the story that in the end I was expecting that Leo had contracted AIDS with Cookie and would transmit the disease to his wife Ellen. The title "Mammoth" refers to the expensive pen that Bob gave to Leo, but I did not understand the intention of the author with this title. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Corações em Conflito" ("Hearts in Conflict")

Since the development of Marx's critique of bourgeois society, the purpose of critical social theory has been to clarify how the economic forces that made possible the rise of modern capitalism exact costs that cannot be grasped in terms of political economy. Today, however, it has become more and more difficult to contend that individuals, social groups, and societies as entities, pay a price for economic progress (capitalism is expert at "outsourcing" suffering). Man has been acclimatized to his world, and resistance to the notion that there is no viable alternative to today's (laissez faire or otherwise) economic policies, has shrunk to the so-called "anti-globalisation movement". These critics usually stress that today's policies result in various forms of injustice and alienation, and violate many of the very values western democratic societies purport to embody.Lukas Moodysson's "Mammoth" aims to paint a portrait of life under twenty first century globalisation. It opens on Leo and Ellen Vidales, a wealthy Manhattan couple whose eight year old daughter, Jackie, is entrusted to a live in nanny called Gloria. Leo, a video game designer, epitomises our perpetually wired, yet wholly cocooned, media savvy generation. Emotionally and intellectually stunted, but always plugged in, he leaves his family indefinitely to travel to Thailand. There he hopes to sign a multi-million dollar contract with a big software company. The borders of finance are not only being redrawn, but eradicated. Leo travels across the globe to sign a cheque.An emergency room surgeon, Ellen's world is equally cold. Patients come in, she treats them, and they're shunted away. She returns home to an apartment as sterile as her hospital walls. Always working, she rarely sees her daughter or husband. Mirrored to the Vidales is Gloria, the couple's live in nanny. She slaves away in America only to send money back home to her children in the Phillippines. Like the Vidales, Gloria is alienated from her family. Unlike the Vidales, she earns scraps. While Jackie's father and mother are away, Jackie and Gloria grow close, each hoping to assuage loneliness. And so a mother seeks a surrogate child, a child a surrogate mother.Meanwhile, in Thailand, Leo hooks up with Cookie, a prostitute who sells her body to earn money for her own impoverished child. Leo then returns home after having confronted the dark underside of his life's Mobius strip. He hugs his wife and child, but nothing changes. The film ends on a note as dispiriting and depressing as everything that went on before.All artists want to say great things, but great art tends to speak invisibly, its messages disguised, almost imperceptible. "Mammoth" is well meaning but contrived, obvious and didactic, Moodysson constantly talking down to his audience. As a comparison, see Olivier Assayas' "Summer Hours", and his duology of "Demonlover" and "Boarding Gate", two trashy B movies which cover similar ground. Some other better films about globalisation: "Red Desert", "What Time Is It There?", "35 Shots of Rum", "Platform", "The Girlfriend Experience", "Miami Vice", "Syndromes and a Century", "Pulse", "L'Enfant", "Code46", "The Class" and late Romero/Chronenberg/Godard etc.If the film fails dramatically, it nevertheless captures the noxious alienation of Antonioni. Here, alienation is not just an undesirable by-product of techno-capitalism, but its very modus operandi. The film also captures a certain paradox of 21C life; its character's are increasingly connected, yet find themselves always moving farther and farther away from one another. The film's cast is weak, with the exception of actress Michelle Williams as Ellen. Williams made better, similarly themed films with "Wendy and Lucy" and "Land of Plenty".7/10 – Worth one viewing.