"The Guitar Mongoloid": Fucking Joteborg By Sergei Anashkin

The main characters of the Swedish film The Guitar Mongoloid are marginals, losers (or idiots, if somebody prefers Lars von Trier’s definitions for this kind of people).

Three independent storylines are combined rather freely, but don’t contact with each other very closely.

12 year-old Erik meets time to time with his eldest friend, and both looms have foolish fun, sing their own stupid songs, play guitar punk style tunes in barbarian way.

The next story deals with the group of youngsters, who kill their time stealing bicycles from their fellow citizens for making cruel tricks (for example they push it from a bridge to let it drown in the river).

The third plot is about a middle-aged woman with some mental problem. She tries to find her stolen cycle, asking everybody to help her and bring it back, but from the ordinary people’ point of view she just looks like a stupid and troublesome person. Therefore, no one wants to listen to her.

The leading characters from all three stories meet with each other occasionally.

One can think that this film is a dark drama with a strong message of social criticism. Making his first feature, film director Ruben Östlund try to make it without emphasizing any kind of didactics. His main interest is connected with dreams and feelings, with the atmosphere of the everyday life of outsiders, people who create their own parallel world. Even the name of his native city Östlund wrote in an incorrect way — Joteborg, but not Göteborg.

Maybe one can find some similarity of subjects between The Guitar Mongoloid and famous works by Lars von Trier (Idiots) and Ulrich Seidl (Dog Days). The young filmmaker actually draws on some influences from older colleagues. However, he tells the story in an unusual way with a punk style of thinking.

At the end of the film, our young hero makes an aerostat by himself, agglutinating garbage packets. It flies over the city, and the inhabitants of Joteborg observe this strange air-balloon and can’t understand anything. Aerostat is made from garbage packets and it is a very important sign of the film and a good metaphor of the punk philosophy DIY (Do It Yourself). Your work can be ugly, but it has to be unique.

It seems to me this motto marks not only the film characters’ way of thinking, but the film director’s opinion too.