Mammoth (Mammut) (2009)

50% of critics liked it
(40 reviews)
65% of users liked it
(6,636 ratings)

Three years after his "experimental" phase wrapped with the jarring, iconoclastic Container, Swedish enfant terrible Lukas Moodysson returned for this sprawling, ambitious social drama. Echoing Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel and featuring two Hollywood A-listers as his leads, Mammoth also… More Three years after his "experimental" phase wrapped with the jarring, iconoclastic Container, Swedish enfant terrible Lukas Moodysson returned for this sprawling, ambitious social drama. Echoing Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel and featuring two Hollywood A-listers as his leads, Mammoth also marked the director's premier English-language project. Michelle Williams and Gael García Bernal co-star as Ellen and Leo, New York marrieds; she's an emergency-room surgeon, he's a listless, vaguely dissatisfied Internet game designer. They have a family, albeit an unconventional and dysfunctional one: seven-year-old daughter Jackie (Sophie Nyweide) is practically being raised by a 24/7 Filipino caregiver, Gloria (Marife Necesito), who dotes on her incessantly. This provokes the envy of Ellen and the resentment of Gloria's two geographically estranged sons, Manuel (Martin Delos Santos) and Salvador (Jan Nicdao), who repeatedly phone their mom from Manila and plead with her to come home. Gloria's mother grows so distressed by this behavior that she attempts to show Salvador just how easy his life is in comparison to that of others, which leads to unanticipated tragic consequences. Meanwhile, Leo teams up with a shifty associate, Bob (Tom McCarthy), flies to Thailand, and encounters a freewheeling, laid-back working mother named Cookie (Run Srinikornchot). Step by step, the actions that Leo takes while abroad create a domino effect and alter everyone's lives in irreversible ways. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

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Rating, Runtime: R, 2 hr. 5 min.
Directed By: Lukas Moodysson
Written By: Lukas Moodysson
Genres: Art House & International, Drama

In Theaters: Nov 20, 2009 Wide
On DVD: Apr 20, 2010
Studio: IFC Films

Critic Reviews

David Edelstein, New York Magazine
Too many films exploit the perils faced by children when the social contract is ruptured, but Mammoth earns its cruel, sensationalistic turns and then some.
Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News
The overlapping stories, the emotional disconnect, the heavy-handed symbolism -- no, it's not a movie from the makers of Babel, its a mumbling, stammering copycat drama from Swedish director Lukas Moodysson.
Manohla Dargis, New York Times
In Mammoth, when a rich child eats her lunch in New York, a poor boy in the Philippines cries. And so it goes, as privilege begets exploitation with grimly deterministic logic and pages and pages of bad dialogue.
Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal
Mammoth manages to be as affecting as it is heartfelt.
Lou Lumenick, New York Post
Any semblance of subtlety was unfortunately lost in translation.
Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
The movie is at once intimate and (in its softhearted way) preachy.
Alistair Harkness, Scotsman
Having spent a decade purposefully alienating audiences, Swedish writer/director Lukas Moodysson claws his way back into the mainstream with this condescending, glossy slice of We Are The World-style film-making.
David Sexton, This is London
This is the Mike Leigh paradis terrestre, as good as it gets.
Allan Hunter, Daily Express
Mammoth looks sleek and is well-acted but the preachy tone is hard to bear.
Tim Robey, Daily Telegraph
[A] Babel-ish drama about the malaises wrought by globalisation, how we're closer than ever, and yet, if I'm not mistaken, farther apart. Unfortunately, you've seen it already.
David Edwards, Daily Mirror [UK]
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with message movies like this provided the characters feel real (they don't) and it's handled with a light touch (it isn't).
Adam Woodward, Little White Lies
Mammoth is a masterclass in feel-bad cinema.
Peter Bradshaw, Guardian [UK]
[A] fatuous, self-serving and fantastically dishonest exercise in pseudo-compassion, composed in the supercilious "globalised" style of Alejandro González Iñarritu's 2006 film Babel.
Nigel Andrews, Financial Times
As woolly and elephantine as its title.
David Parkinson, Radio Times
Mammoth is well-meaning, but ultimately contrived and melodramatic.
Becky Bartlett, The Skinny
Lukas Moodysson's approach to filmmaking was becoming increasingly experimental, so it is a surprise to see how conventional Mammoth is.
Matthew Turner, ViewLondon
This is an impressively directed, superbly acted and emotionally engaging drama, though the script is occasionally a little heavy-handed and the whole thing is nearly scuppered by a jaw-droppingly crass final line.
Philip Kemp, Total Film
Moodysson braids these threads with contrived symmetries. The preaching soon grows wearisome.
Ian Freer, Empire Magazine
A return to form by Moodysson although the bigger Iñárritu-like stuff -- globalisation, poverty, fraying family relationships -- are all a bit too neat to really engage.
Cath Clarke, Time Out
An interesting idea, but Mammoth's good intentions -- like its characters' -- are lost somewhere in the delivery.

Read all 22 critic reviews

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Featured Audience Ratings

Nicki M

Good movie. Have been seeing this going cheap on Blu ray for a while now. Was tempted to buy it, but glad I watched it on tv instead, as I don't know that it is a movie I would want to watch again. (though I did like it). It's pretty much a movie about unhappy people. I… More
Good movie. Have been seeing this going cheap on Blu ray for a while now. Was tempted to buy it, but glad I watched it on tv instead, as I don't know that it is a movie I would want to watch again. (though I did like it). It's pretty much a movie about unhappy people. I could see what they were aiming for with the parallels. Ie, Michelle Williams plays a working mum who doesn't have enough time to spend with her family. Meanwhile the Filipino nanny is working for her, practically raising her daughter, while she misses her own little boys at home in the philippines. I found both these women sympathetic. Less so the husband. The story about what happens to the young son of the nanny is horrific. I think the stories were a comment on life today and priorities, but I couldn't get the point about the husband. So he cheats with a young girl and gets away with it. Were we meant to pity him in some way? I certainly didn't! Overall a good movie which maybe I didn't quite get, but good acting and great soundtrack.
Jan Marc M

Fragmented, but coherent, Mammoth comparatively narrates domestic drama in different social-cultural settings. Heaving with stereotypes, Mammoth concluded in accomplishment of imparting a definite set of emotions with the audiences.
Stefanie C

'Where do all the children play?' Disregard the film synopsis. These interwined stories, from varying cultural standpoints, confront and question post-modern values. The pursuit of money to better our lives and childrens' exacts a high price. Each character… More
'Where do all the children play?' Disregard the film synopsis. These interwined stories, from varying cultural standpoints, confront and question post-modern values. The pursuit of money to better our lives and childrens' exacts a high price. Each character determines if the cost is worth it. This film's direction, symbolism and 'message' is far from subtle.
Christopher H

The film is gritty, with all the characters interrelated, yet somehow all unrelated. A thought provoking film from Lukas Moodysson in his first English piece as writer and director.
Daisy M

Mammoth was the story of a rich New Yorker couple and their daughter and their nanny and her family. The one thing the woman, the man, and the nanny all have in common were the sacrifices they made for their kids. The couple, both had very successful jobs, and the nanny worked in the… More
Mammoth was the story of a rich New Yorker couple and their daughter and their nanny and her family. The one thing the woman, the man, and the nanny all have in common were the sacrifices they made for their kids. The couple, both had very successful jobs, and the nanny worked in the US to earn money for her kids in the Philippines. Each of the actors were superb, Gael García Bernal was simple marvelous in his role as Leo and Michelle Williams portrait a successful surgeon who was very sentimental active in her job. The story sounded a bit like in the style of Babel and Crash,but this movie was in some ways a more intimate version of that kind of storytelling.