Play
- 2011
- 1h 58m
An astute observation based on real cases of bullying. In central Gothenburg, Sweden, a group of boys, aged 12-14, robbed other children on about 40 occasions between 2006 and 2008. The thie... Read allAn astute observation based on real cases of bullying. In central Gothenburg, Sweden, a group of boys, aged 12-14, robbed other children on about 40 occasions between 2006 and 2008. The thieves used an elaborate scheme called the 'little brother number' or 'brother trick', involv... Read allAn astute observation based on real cases of bullying. In central Gothenburg, Sweden, a group of boys, aged 12-14, robbed other children on about 40 occasions between 2006 and 2008. The thieves used an elaborate scheme called the 'little brother number' or 'brother trick', involving advanced role-play and gang rhetoric rather than physical violence.
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What if all the adults shrug it off, won't help? What if there isn't a cop to be found in Gothenburg? Surely the "based on a true story" gambit will justify the nastiness of a way-too-long movie that also tortures its viewers.
So what if Afro-Swedish youngsters are villainized? Moral dilemmas over immigration fears and racism are hot topics - just check out the news. Bet on controversy to boost reviews and ticket sales while further polarizing a multiracial audience. Could it be that the film's oddball coda, laced with a dollop of extralegal citizen justice, was added to cinch its financing?
Ruben Ostlun delivers without redemption or enlightenment in an otherwise beautifully filmed movie notable for surprisingly solid, improvised performances by its non-pro cast. Not good enough. I would have passed.
As a foreigner, I found the cafe owner's reaction fascinating yet frustrating. When he simply said, "Please call the police," it felt like he was brushing off a serious issue, reducing it to a formality. My impression was that he'd never faced such problems before and had no clue how to handle them. This helplessness seems woven into the film's fabric-it's so realistic that I had to remind myself this might just be the nature of their society, not an exaggeration. It left me wondering: if a child walked into a cafe in 2025 with the same desperate request, would people still respond so passively? Or would the events in Europe over the past few years-rising tensions, social shifts-push them to act differently, to actually help?
The film also digs into deeper ideas. A society that tramples its own values and then gets attacked doesn't deserve pity-it needs to confront the oppressor head-on. Play shows this through subtle moments, like the bureaucracy on the train. That scene stuck with me: the train conductor, trapped by rules, can't make a simple decision. It's a perfect metaphor for how systems enslave people, stripping away their ability to act freely or morally.
Visually, the cinematography is striking. The long, steady shots create a cold, almost documentary-like feel, forcing you to sit with the discomfort. It's not a film that spoon-feeds you answers; it demands you think. Looking back, I appreciate how it balances art and social commentary without preaching. It's a slow burn, but one that lingers.
The film opens in a shopping centre with a disagreement between two Swedish boys over an amount of money one of them has dropped and lost. "500 Krona!?" one of them exclaims - 'it's nothing', replies the other. Across the way, however, a gang of black youths who are mostly their age are eyeing them up in order to essentially mug them. Within the first scene, Östlund wants us to realise this is a society characterised by differences in income and racial disparity.
Elsewhere in the film is the lament that authority has disappeared from Swedish society: bus conductors; mall security guards and shop assistants are either powerless to giving louts a good whack or vacant altogether, save for nearer the very end where they exasperatingly appear at just the wrong moment to punish the wrong people. The film enjoys its static camera-work and neo-realistic settings, wherein dozens of people wander around the public domain, but what seems to have been deliberately kept of screen above all else is the presence of a policeman.
Where this seems to lead, or will eventually lead, is an increase in vigilantism - parents and friends of those already victim to spates of crime taking matters into their own hands and administering their own forms of justice in the absence of a state enforcing the law: not unlike various London communities forced into defending themselves form the hordes in 2011, or other groups trying to do something about paedophile gangs operating under the radar in northern England. There are two instances of this in "Play", one closing the film which doubly encompasses Sweden's apparent ignorance to what is going on amongst its young that someone is labelled a racist for trying to obtain justice.
"Play" depicts a couple of hours in the life of three boys in the city of Gothenburg and its outskirts on a grey winter's day - they are Sebastian; Alex and John, although John is of Chinese ethnicity. Whatever the problem with immigration, or immigrant crime waves specifically, John has at least seemingly integrated. When we first encounter them, they are at the offices where one of their mothers works - an upscale law firm (we can read "Adact" on the wall) whose employees dress impeccably. Östlund loiters on the entrance of the office for a while after everyone has departed, almost pointlessly, until a staffer reveals the practice to be so bourgeois that they wipe clean a glass door that was already in perfect condition.
Sebastian et al. traverse to the local shopping mall, where the earlier group of black youths are still messing around having failed to lull the twosome from the opening scene into what will transpire to be a psychologically sadistic game of bullying and robbery. The two groups first come into contact in a sports shop, where Östlund quite brilliantly keeps the coloured gang off-screen as they holler and whoop while we focus on our increasingly anxious protagonists. By the time they have been followed outside and onto the tram home, it is evident something is wrong, and from there transpires the rest of the harrowing tale.
The film's beating heart, the idea that bullies belonging to a minority string defenceless white Swedish kids along to mug them, I read is based on a spate of actual incidences of this happening over a three year period. Meanwhile, adults are too ditzy worrying about broken porcelain in cafes and blocked aisles on trains to really notice what's going on. Writers and journalists such as Jonas Hassen-Khemiri and Åsa Linderborg have made accusations, veiled or otherwise, that the film is in some way racist, while America Zavala applauds it for attacking the pitfalls of a system characterised by class.
Thematically, the film seems to reach the conclusion that Sweden is a racially and culturally diverse place - whites don dreadlocks and listen to reggae; Native Americans busk in town squares and white girls dance to Zimbabwean pop music for school performance projects. It is, however, experiencing teething problems as it makes some sort of cordial transition into multicultural permanency.
When all is said and done, one does not have to do much research to find stories, radiating in particular out of the city of Malmo, which report chaos and a complete social breakdown on account of multi-racial ghettos rioting for reasons that even the police do not know. One may also read of 'no-go' zones and youth criminality in classrooms so rife that schools have even had to shut for periods of time due to teachers feeling unsafe. Whatever the answer to any of this, Östlund has above all other things managed to make something which actually feels like a piece of cinema - something free of convention; something unpredictable and both harrowing and atmospheric without any real need for pyrotechnics. It is wholly worth seeing for these reasons and more.
Did you know
- TriviaInspired by actual court cases, it portrays a group of black boys who rob a smaller group of white boys by means of a psychological game.
- ConnectionsReferences L'Arnaque (1973)
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Details
Box office
- Gross worldwide
- $103,990
- Runtime1 hour 58 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1