Pieces come 'Together' in campy Swedish Saga

It almost seems too obvious. You're watching Together, the newest film from Swedish director Lukas Moodysson, and shortly after the film opens there is a scene that depicts the aftermath of a violent domestic dispute. A woman is sitting dazed at the kitchen table, her lip bleeding. A man stumbles around the small apartment in his underwear, obviously intoxicated. A young girl in her bed holds her ears and whispers inaudibly to herself. The scene is jarring and rife with tension. And then you hear it—the sweet synthesized sounds of ABBA's "S.O.S." As cliché as it seems out of context, the song makes a relevant point—Together, like "S.O.S.," is about bridging emotional gaps, overcoming closed minds, and appreciating blonde-haired '70s camp.

Together is the story of Elisabeth (Lisa Lindgren), who, fed up with the abuses of her husband Rolf (Michael Nyqvist), takes her children Eva and Stefan (Emma Samuelsson and Sam Kessel) to her brother's commune in Stockholm. The commune, called "Together," includes, among others: Elisabeth's brother Goran (Gustaf Hammerstan) and his girlfriend Lena (Anja Lundqvist), whose "open relationship" is too open for his liking and not open enough for hers; the bitter, disparaging Lasse (Ola Norell), his ex-wife Anna (Jessica Liedberg), who for political reasons has recently become a lesbian, and their son Tet, named for the Offensive, and Erik (Olle Sarri), the most politically aware of the group, seeking to disseminate his Marxist views.

COURTESY ICF FILMS That's not a soccer ball. Damn hippies.

On its most basic level, the film gently pokes fun at all of the trappings of the hippie lifestyle that can blur the line between what is essential to communal living and what is extraneous. The irony is certainly not lost on the audience when Stefan and Tet paint signs and march through the house chanting, "We want meat!" It is only natural for children to want to eat meat, watch TV, and play war games. Throughout the film, we see the kids struggling to preserve their childhoods while their parents alternate between allowing them to live their own lives and forcing them to adopt parental ideology. This is most apparent when Elisabeth wakes her children in the middle of the night and makes them switch their respectively colored blue and pink pillows in order to avoid gender stereotyping. Eva, Elisabeth's daughter, puts it best when she tells her friend Fredrik (Henrik Lundstrom) that it is like the adults are playing a game where the goal is to do the opposite of what the rest of the world does.

Where the film really shines is in what it has to say about human nature. All the adults in the commune are extremists: extremely pacifist, extremely Marxist, extremely cynical. They are all so firm in their own individual convictions that in-fighting is rampant. By the end, many of the characters have left the commune. Only those who have been able to open their minds and make personal sacrifices for the good of the collective remain. Some of these sacrifices are small, like when Goran and Lasse purchase a TV set for the children to watch. Some of the sacrifices are great: as part of a poignant minor plotline, Rolf, Elisabeth's husband, struggles to overcome his alcoholism for the sake of his wife and children. Regardless of the magnitude of each character's expiations, they show us that our place is not at either extreme of the ideological spectrum, but somewhere comfortably in the middle.

The film ends as it began, with ABBA's "S.O.S."; the bouncy strains from the Swedish übergroup giddily remind us of where we are, and when, in case we've forgotten how the film began. The final scene, to which the song is set, shows a soccer game in the snow. In one brief sequence, we see that all the characters have eschewed their closed philosophies and prepared themselves to start again, together. And even though we know that the laughter and the warm embraces shared by the characters are idealized and over the top, we can't help but smile.

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