Mammoth English Movie Review 2009
Cast & Crew:
Director: Lukas Moodysson
Genre: Drama
Movie Type: Ensemble Film
Themes: Dysfunctional Families, Kids in Trouble, Parenthood
Main Cast: Michelle Williams, Gael García Bernal, Sophie Nyweide, Tom McCarthy, Marife Necisito, Run Srinikornchot
Release Year: 2009
Country: US
Run Time: 125 minutes
Plot
Swedish movie maker Lucas Moodysson (Fucking Åmål, Lilja 4-ever) has created a touching story of the world today, how families are separated and connected only with mobile phones and how important our families really are - this is Mammoth.
Leo (Gael Garcia Bernal) is a "game guy" who a few years ago started a community in the web, which then grew into one of the biggest gaming communities. He is no business man but more of a nerd and he has other guys to take care of the business. However, his signature is needed and he is forced to fly to Bangkok for singing a big deal.
His wife (Michelle Williams) is a surgeon who often works at nights. They have a 7-year-old daughter Jackie (Sophie Nyweide) who is taken care of by a Philipino nanny Gloria (Marife Necesito) most of the time. When mother is always working, she and her daughter start to drift apart, and Jackie gets more connected to her nanny. Gloria however has her own heart breaks: her two small sons are back home in the Philippines taken care by their grandmother when she is trying to earn the family money to build a new house by working in the US.
When the husband is facing the many worlds of Thailand, the wife must deal with dying kids in the hospital and the lack of time to spend with her own daughter, the nanny must cope with longing to be with her own kids especially in the time when they really need her...
Mammoth is strong with emotions: love of mothers and fathers to their children, love of husbands and wives, love for the world. It reminded me a lot of Alejando Gonzales Iñarritu's Babel (review of Babel in here) with the story happening at the same time in very different environments of New York, Thailand and in the Philippines.
The first half of the movie I was convinced on awarding the film five stars, but in its latter half things started repeating themselves a bit, and the story started losing its emotional grip. Somehow I believe that due to the strong emotions on children, Mammoth will affect more those people who have children on their own. After all the biggest idea behind the story is that children and parents need time together.
Mammoth is visually stunning, and just like Babel, it focuses on very different views in different parts of the world. It shows the children collecting garbage and selling themselves for tourists in the Philippines, it shows both the beauty and the ugliness of the tourism in Thailand, and it shows also how a seemingly normal life in New York can be so filled with emotions that are not getting fulfilled. And also it shows that in a world full of technology that should keep people more easily connected to other people, people still need each other in person and not just as a voice, sms or email.
