Ruben Östlund’s 2004 debut feature, The Guitar Mongoloid, opens with a short clip of Swedish adult contemporary crooner Lasse Berghagen performing his cheese-ball pop anthem “Stockholm i mitt hjärta” on the annual Allsång på Skansen television broadcast as a crowd of thousands join him in singing along to the song’s blindingly earnest title refrain (“Stockholm is in my heart!”). It’s a humorous bit of sourced footage whose signal is soon interrupted by an unidentified delinquent tearing a satellite receiver off the roof of an apartment building. The literal and figurative static uniting these two scenes, one fiction and one unfortunately not, is a handy metaphor for the darkly comic sensibilities of the Styrsö-born Östlund, who has built his young career thus far on life’s everyday dissonances and the resultant absurdities. But it’s likewise, and perhaps more tellingly, representative of the forty year-old director’s concurrent transition...
- 1/13/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
Ruben Östlund’s 2004 debut feature, The Guitar Mongoloid, opens with a short clip of Swedish adult contemporary crooner Lasse Berghagen performing his cheese-ball pop anthem “Stockholm i mitt hjärta” on the annual Allsång på Skansen television broadcast as a crowd of thousands join him in singing along to the song’s blindingly earnest title refrain (“Stockholm is in my heart!”). It’s a humorous bit of sourced footage whose signal is soon interrupted by an unidentified delinquent tearing a satellite receiver off the roof of an apartment building. The literal and figurative static uniting these two scenes, one fiction and one unfortunately not, is a handy metaphor for the darkly comic sensibilities of the Styrsö-born Östlund, who has built his young career thus far on life’s everyday dissonances and the resultant absurdities. But it’s likewise, and perhaps more tellingly, representative of the forty year-old director’s concurrent transition...
- 1/13/2015
- Keyframe
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.