FREE ON CINEGEEK.De Lukas Moodysson - Together 

 At one point a customer had rented the DVD of Lukas Moodyssons Together and never returned it. I waited and waited; it never came back. In the meantime, you kept asking, "Is Together back?" "Is my favorite movie back?". That's right! Together is the favorite movie of quite a few of you! You know, the movies we love the most, we claim them. Like they're "our" movies! Others we then try to missionize to like these "our" favorite movies too. I'm sure some of you will perceive Together as a flashback back to your own childhood. After all, here we see children whose parents are in the downward spiral of separation. It goes like this: Father Rolf (Michael Nyqvist) beats his wife Elisabeth (Lisa Lindgren) and therefore Elisabeth takes the children to brother Goran (Gustaf Hammarsten). Goran lives in a commune called Tillsammans = Together. Tillsammans is located somewhere in the suburbs of Stockholm and it is 1975. Goran lives there with like-minded communards like his mistress Lena (Anja Lundqvist). Certainly Lena and Goran had once agreed to have an open relationship and now Lena sticks to the principle a bit more than Goran. And that's where Anna, who is now a lesbian, lives. And Anna's ex-husband Lasse and the children. Then there's gay Klas and revolutionary Erik. My uncle in '68 told me that "revolutionary" was a normal term for those who planned the revolution. In their Stockholm suburb. My uncle said all his friends were "revolutionaries" and they met to question each other about Marx or Lenin. For such ideological conversations, Together offers chickpeas and porridge, red wine and arguments about who does the dishes. The sweaters are clumsy, the hair fluffy. So comic characters? No! That's the art of Lukas Moodysson and that's why so many choose Together as their favourite film. All our prejudices against such people are gradually being dispelled in the film. Underneath the confusing, chaotic reality appears. At some point we even feel sympathy for a man who beats his wife after all and indignant frustration towards those who want to live a utopia here (and neglect their children in the process). Nothing is worse than ideologists! In contrast to Hollywood movies, the children here are not little clowns, but fully developed individuals. It's as if they are acting in their own film within the film, as their interests don't want to fit in with those of the "adults" at all. The "adults" argue about the difference between added value and profit, play torture and determine who General Pinochet has to be. And at this point we have to clear up a misunderstanding that also affects Moodysson's "Fucking Amal": Together is commonly called a Feel Good comedy (just like "Fucking Amal"). No!!! Uplifting might be Toether and you even hear Abba once. But the life of the commune is drawn deeply ironic and there is very little sunshine. Deep in the heart Together is a film about loneliness and the desperate attempts to get closer to each other. Together, that's all that matters, isn't it? Unfortunately, the characters in the film don't know it.