Sightlines · reception
How The Square was received
2017 · Ruben Östlund · The Square on Sightlines
The arc
Its 2017 Palme d'Or win was a genuine surprise — plenty of critics called it baggy and smug even as others hailed it — but it's since settled in as the film that announced Östlund's cringe-satire mode, retroactively looking like a warm-up for Triangle of Sadness.
What’s debated
The perennial fight: razor-sharp skewering of the art world, or an overlong satire shooting fish in a very obvious barrel?
Its footprint
The ape-man dinner scene — Terry Notary in performance-art mode terrorizing a gala of tuxedoed patrons — is the film's calling card, endlessly clipped, memed, and invoked whenever art-world pretension needs puncturing.
Where it stands
A divisive Palme d'Or winner that's become Letterboxd shorthand for 'social cringe cinema' — the film you cite to prove Östlund is either a genius or insufferable.
Did you know? The film grew out of a real art installation: Östlund and producer Kalle Boman actually created 'The Square' — a marked-off zone of trust and altruism — and exhibited it in Värnamo, Sweden, in 2015, before the movie existed.