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Michelle Williams, Gael García Bernal, Sophie Nyweide, Tom McCarthy, Marife Necisito ... see more see more... , Run Srinikornchot , Jan Nicdao , Martin Delos Santos , María del Carmen , Perry Dizon , Joseph Mydell , Doña Croll , Caesar Kobb , Matthew James Ryder , Piromya Sootrak , Pasakorn Mahakanok , Thanita Nitna-na-nan , Ian Stevens , Rune Kippervik , Peter Tuinstra , Pennapa Udomsin , Ofelia B. Ruivivar

Three years after his "experimental" phase wrapped with the jarring, iconoclastic Container, Swedish enfant terrible Lukas Moodysson returned for this sprawling, ambitious social drama. Echoing Alejan... read more read more...dro González Iñárritu's Babel and featuring two Hollywood A-listers as his leads, Mammoth also marked the director's premier English-language project. Michelle Williams and Gael García Bernal co-star as Ellen and Leo, New York marrieds; she's an emergency-room surgeon, he's a listless, vaguely dissatisfied Internet game designer. They have a family, albeit an unconventional and dysfunctional one: seven-year-old daughter Jackie (Sophie Nyweide) is practically being raised by a 24/7 Filipino caregiver, Gloria (Marife Necesito), who dotes on her incessantly. This provokes the envy of Ellen and the resentment of Gloria's two geographically estranged sons, Manuel (Martin Delos Santos) and Salvador (Jan Nicdao), who repeatedly phone their mom from Manila and plead with her to come home. Gloria's mother grows so distressed by this behavior that she attempts to show Salvador just how easy his life is in comparison to that of others, which leads to unanticipated tragic consequences. Meanwhile, Leo teams up with a shifty associate, Bob (Tom McCarthy), flies to Thailand, and encounters a freewheeling, laid-back working mother named Cookie (Run Srinikornchot). Step by step, the actions that Leo takes while abroad create a domino effect and alter everyone's lives in irreversible ways. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Flixster Users

65% liked it

6,635 ratings

Critics

50% liked it

40 critics

R, 2 hr. 5 min.

Directed by: Lukas Moodysson

Release Date: November 20, 2009

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DVD Release Date: April 20, 2010

Stats: 318 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (318)

  • romy861
    May 5, 2012
    romy861
    Good movie. Have been seeing this going cheap on Blu ray for a while now. Was tempted to buy it, but glad I watched it on tv instead, as I don't know that it is a movie I would want to watch again. (though I did like it).
    It's pretty much a movie about unhappy people. I could s... read moreee what they were aiming for with the parallels. Ie, Michelle Williams plays a working mum who doesn't have enough time to spend with her family. Meanwhile the Filipino nanny is working for her, practically raising her daughter, while she misses her own little boys at home in the philippines. I found both these women sympathetic. Less so the husband.
    The story about what happens to the young son of the nanny is horrific. I think the stories were a comment on life today and priorities, but I couldn't get the point about the husband. So he cheats with a young girl and gets away with it. Were we meant to pity him in some way? I certainly didn't!
    Overall a good movie which maybe I didn't quite get, but good acting and great soundtrack.
  • fb1216165431
    September 16, 2011
    fb1216165431
    Fragmented, but coherent, Mammoth comparatively narrates domestic drama in different social-cultural settings. Heaving with stereotypes, Mammoth concluded in accomplishment of imparting a definite set of emotions with the audiences.
  • bookmunki
    July 3, 2010
    bookmunki
    'Where do all the children play?' Disregard the film synopsis. These interwined stories, from varying cultural standpoints, confront and question post-modern values. The pursuit of money to better our lives and childrens' exacts a high price. Each character determines if the c... read moreost is worth it. This film's direction, symbolism and 'message' is far from subtle.
  • xas5
    June 23, 2010
    xas5
    The film is gritty, with all the characters interrelated, yet somehow all unrelated. A thought provoking film from Lukas Moodysson in his first English piece as writer and director.
  • mvieaddict
    February 13, 2010
    mvieaddict
    Mammoth was the story of a rich New Yorker couple and their daughter and their nanny and her family. The one thing the woman, the man, and the nanny all have in common were the sacrifices they made for their kids. The couple, both had very successful jobs, and the nanny worked in... read more the US to earn money for her kids in the Philippines. Each of the actors were superb, Gael García Bernal was simple marvelous in his role as Leo and Michelle Williams portrait a successful surgeon who was very sentimental active in her job. The story sounded a bit like in the style of Babel and Crash,but this movie was in some ways a more intimate version of that kind of storytelling.
  • fb1413120010
    February 22, 2012
    fb1413120010
    What can I say? This film is an extreme emotional experience. A mammoth of one, even. Some moments are extremely sentimental, sure. But the characters are all so real and alive that these overly sentimental moments hit you really hard. And it helps that Michelle Williams, Ga... read moreel Garcia Bernal, and Marife Necisito all deliver quality performances. Really, the biggest strength is in the intricacy of the writing, as Lukas Moodysson has written an extremely complex story about attachment and the relationships between parents and children. Sure, this isn't perfect, but damn it if I'm not man enough to admit that this is the first film in QUITE a long time to actually bring me to tears!
  • NoxInvictus
    February 4, 2012
    NoxInvictus
    The trailer for this movie sucked. I didnt want to see it but because of Gael I gave it a shot and it wasnt bad.
  • pontxo
    January 25, 2012
    pontxo
    It's not so bad as many have said and written about. Yes it does resemble Babel, but it's the film style but the writing from which a film begins from (aren't most movies a copy of another? and Babel is not the one that started this style, it's just the most popular today).

    The ... read morefilm is well structured, balanced and connected in the formulaic 3.

    It's a story about sacrifices and those we sacrifice because of said sacrifices. Everyone kills something within themselves. Children and motherhood are the main characters. At the end we can see that the cycle restarts once again.

    Overall it's an OK film... depressing, well produced and chuck full of details that the spectator must stay aware of.
  • zutron
    November 29, 2011
    zutron
    A beautifully acted, beautifully shot, poorly edited film about the fucked upness of life today -- pretty much everwhere. Every child is being raised by the wrong person, every parent longs to be with her child, larger social forces keep everyone on an unsatisying grind. Overly... read more long for no good reason.
  • gumnerf
    April 29, 2010
    gumnerf
    I did not find this at all engaging. Acted and technically good enough that I kept waiting for something to happen. The businessman does not change his life, nor even have a significant quandry about it. Some bad things happen but the only message I got is, "well, life sucks."... read more so, what's your point?

View All Mammoth (Mammut) Reviews

Critic Reviews

David Edelstein
November 23, 2009
David Edelstein, New York Magazine

Too many films exploit the perils faced by children when the social contract is ruptured, but Mammoth earns its cruel, sensationalistic turns and then some. Full Review

Joe Neumaier
November 20, 2009
Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News

The overlapping stories, the emotional disconnect, the heavy-handed symbolism -- no, it's not a movie from the makers of Babel, its a mumbling, stammering copycat drama from Swedish director Lukas Moo... Full Review

Manohla Dargis
November 20, 2009
Manohla Dargis, New York Times

In Mammoth, when a rich child eats her lunch in New York, a poor boy in the Philippines cries. And so it goes, as privilege begets exploitation with grimly deterministic logic and pages and pages of b...

Joe Morgenstern
November 20, 2009
Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal

Mammoth manages to be as affecting as it is heartfelt. Full Review

Lou Lumenick
November 20, 2009
Lou Lumenick, New York Post

Any semblance of subtlety was unfortunately lost in translation. Full Review

Owen Gleiberman
November 20, 2009
Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

The movie is at once intimate and (in its softhearted way) preachy. Full Review

Roger Ebert
November 20, 2009
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

There are so many reasons to be outraged and depressed by this film, indeed, that it all but distracts from the real and immediate qualities of the four fine actors. Full Review

Melissa Anderson
November 17, 2009
Melissa Anderson, Village Voice

English, Tagalog, and Thai are spoken in Swedish writer-director Lukas Moodysson's Mammoth, but he communicates only in the idiom of Crash and Babel: the Esperanto of feel-bad humanism. Full Review

Alissa Simon
February 13, 2009
Alissa Simon, Variety

Comes with too much repetitive exposition and lacks an emotional payoff. Full Review

Alistair Harkness
January 10, 2011
Alistair Harkness, Scotsman

Having spent a decade purposefully alienating audiences, Swedish writer/director Lukas Moodysson claws his way back into the mainstream with this condescending, glossy slice of We Are The World-style ... Full Review

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