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The story, as it were, concerns a married couple, Leo (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Ellen (Michelle Williams), their daughter Jackie (Sophie Nyweide), their Filipino nanny Gloria (Marife Necesito), and the people they interact with as they go their seperate and linked paths in life.
And that's pretty much it. Leo goes to Bangkok on a business trip, and ends up searching for a 'real' experience (he works in video games, and is disconnected from real life). Ellen is unable to sleep, and feels increasingly uncomfortable about how remote her daughter is from her, versus Jackie's closeness to the nanny. And Gloria desperately wants to return to her children in the Phillipines.
When the film opens on the happy family all separating on their various trips and jobs, this reviewer, at least, fully expected a terrible tragedy to break them apart. The surprising thing about Mammoth is that for the first ninety minutes or so, that doesn't happen.
Instead, we're treated a remarkably subtle exploration of family in a time of capitalism. Each person in the movie cares more for a surrogate than the person for whom they are ostensibly responsible. Moodysson intercuts his characters in remarkable ways that show the passage of time. As Leo sits alone in a Bangkok club at night, the pulsing music stays as Jackie works during the day in New York at school. It's a potent reminder that other people exist, even when we can't see them.
...And then there's the last half hour or so, when the remarkable performances by Williams, Bernal and the rest of the cast are taken over by Moodysson realizing he forgot to include a plot. Where cross-cut simultaneous tragedies worked so well in the magical realistic world of the Coen Brothers' recent A Serious Man, here they come off as trite and false.
A powerful scene where Gloria's mother explains to her grandson just why his Mom can't come home is followed by one of the clunkiest, dumbest bits of plot set-up I've seen in any film this year outside of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Come on. Enough with the child rape.
When Moodysson focuses on his spectacular cast, and lets his camera catch them as they live, the film roars triumphantly. When he tries to force them into action, Mammoth falls flat on its face.
Big, really big.
