You’ve made your new year’s resolutions and you’re eagerly chugging along to make those dreams come true. Whatever you’ve decided on, we have one more resolution that will be easy to accomplish: Check out the 2015 HHM film series. And with one film showing just around the corner, it won’t be hard to start tackling it right away.
We start out year 10 (sure to be the best one yet!) with a showing of Swedish film Force Majeure, which won Jury Prize in Un Certain Regard at its premiere at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival in France, received a 93 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 72nd Golden Globe Awards, and shortlisted for the same category in the 87th Academy Awards.
When on a ski trip in the French Alps, a family experiences an avalanche, causing the father to “make a decision that will shake his marriage to its core and leave him struggling to reclaim his role as family patriarch.” Watch the trailer below:
The director, Ruben Östlund, conceived the idea of the movie by a question he has long been fascinated by: “How do human beings react in sudden and unexpected situations, such as a catastrophe?” He researched to find that after a catastrophe, many of the survivors end up divorcing and that men do not necessarily act on the “expected codes of chivalry.”
In his director’s note, he writes, “In life or death situations, when their very own survival is at stake, it seems that men are even more likely than women to run away and save themselves, which may be the chief cause for those divorces. This made me want to explore the perceived notion that a man is supposed to be the protector of his wife and family, the societal code that says he must not step back in the face of danger.”
That exploration leads him, and ultimately us, to a visually captivating film that leaves us in awe and asking our own questions.
Force Majeure
foreign language drama
Saturday, January 17
4:30 p.m.
Delta College Planetarium
Cost is $5 a person in advance or at the door. Because seating is limited, we recommend purchasing your tickets online in advance through BrownPaperTicket.
See you at the movies!