Force Majeure

The film’s landscape is an emblem of the human relations it depicts. It’s a vast frigid emptiness that is dangerous but thrilling to traverse. It needs massive maintenance — in particular, controlled explosions to prevent a catastrophic uncontrollable explosion. Sometimes even a controlled explosion can run out of control. When skiers take on the landscape’s challenge they may approach it in couples or in groups but the challenge remains individual. Indeed the main challenge is to overcome the selfish impulse in order to serve the larger unit. On the other hand, the film challenges our conventional view of heroism that allows no lapse.

A prologue introduces Tomas, wife Ebba and their two children as a happy, smiling Swiss family holidaying in the French Alps. But the happy family is only posing — for a tourist photographer who arranges their shots and orders up their smiles. These snaps will be recalled later, when Tomas breaks down weeping, his weeping children crawl on him, and the daughter drags the detached Ebba down to join them. Now the family is not posing but sharing an intense exposure and grief, in a ball that has collected like the snow.

Tomas at first denies his humiliating cowardice in abandoning his family in fear of an approaching avalanche. After all, he left his job for this holiday to “look after his family.” In my reading Ebba arranges a chance for him to redeem himself in her, their children’s and in his own eyes, by enabling him heroically to rescue her in a white-out. The white-out effectively erases his earlier failure, allowing him to rewrite his story. Now when the family cling together he declares “We made it.” Incidentally, several interior family scenes end in blackouts, setting up the greater threat of the later whiteout.    

Like an avalanche a selfish moment in a relationship can have a snowballing effect. The repeated scenes of toothbrushing recall Lady Macbeth's attempts to physically cleanse away a moral failure. Tomas’s retreat — and, worse, his insistent denial — shatters his connection to Ebba. It spreads to their children’s insecurity and anger; they think their parents are divorcing. In the family as on the boy’s tablet “The network isn’t working.” It even threatens friend Mats’ relationship with his 20-year-old girlfriend. From a trust once lost, a selfishness once unleashed, the old balance is hard to restore. The tracks run deep.

Instead of ending on Tomas’s family recovery the film adds an epilogue. On the bus ride back the driver proves incompetent and dangerous. Now Ebba panics and flees the bus, albeit followed by the other passengers. Now Mats has the chance to prove — to himself and to his girl — that he can stay cool and responsible under pressure. An earlier bar scene with Tomas showed that is not Mats’ usual nature. Having seen "heroic" manhood in action, his girl isn’t impressed.
     Having forgiven Tomas Ebba now experiences the flight impulse under stress that had exposed him. Hence the title. In insurance (aka marriage) parlance a force majeure is an extreme incident that briefly exempts one from normal expectations. As the film opens with the one family posing, it ends with the family redefined as the bus community of survivors, who sensibly fled their shared danger. As the parents set their selfish needs aside to serve their family, here the family gives way to the larger community, striding together down the snaking mountain road of life.

     Two minor characters reflect on this dynamic. Ebba befriends a younger, attractive mother who has escaped her family to enjoy a swinger’s holiday of one-night stands. She and her husband share this open marriage confident their family won’t suffer from their indulgence. With her thirst for danger she alone stays on the endangered bus with the delinquent driver. We don't learn if her confidence is justified. Then there’s the hotel cleaner, a quiet observant man, who looks down on the disintegrating Tomas unaffected. This may be a life-shaking experience for Tomas and Ebba but the guy has seen it all before. He knows the slopes and he cleans up after the mortals who risk them.