Make snow mistake
Lazy adaptation of Force Majeure does nothing but go downhill fast
Can you imagine what it would be like if someone took a popular, beloved movie and churned out an inferior remake in another language? Well, you don’t have to, because it’s been done. Ever heard of È già ieri? It’s a 2004 Italian comedy. The title translates as It Is Already Yesterday, but it was released internationally as Stork Day, because there’s no Groundhog Day in Italy.
Yes, È già ieri is a remake of the 1993 classic Groundhog Day. And by all accounts it is not worth the film stock it’s printed on. Among its many missteps is changing the setting from blizzard-struck Punxsutawney, Penn., to the sun-dappled Canary Islands. This after Bill Murray’s character had already asked in the original why he couldn’t relive a day he once spent in just such a place?
Similarly, if you try to remake Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund’s 2014 masterpiece Force Majeure — well, there’s really only one direction you can go. Which brings us to Downhill. On the surface, the plot is very similar to that of the Swedish-language original.
The Stantons — played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Will Ferrell and two tween boys — are on a skiing holiday in the Austrian Alps.
On the second day of their trip, a controlled avalanche starts
rolling down the mountainside. Cameras are brought out to record its beauty. But as it gets closer, with no signs of slowing, expressions of awe turn to terror. Just before the whiteness envelops them, Billie (Louis-Dreyfus) grabs the kids and pulls them under the table. And Pete (Ferrell) makes a run for it.
(Full disclosure: I just cutand-pasted that last paragraph from my original review of Force Majeure. Hey, if “writers” and directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash can do it, so can I.)
For a while, no one mentions Pete’s apparent act of cowardice. Instead, the Stantons take turns being ugly Americans — not understanding the local language, complaining to anyone who will listen, etc.
It’s sometimes strained and awkward, sometimes mildly funny. But the original was quite often both those things at once, a difficult mix but one that Östlund and his cast managed to perfection.
What’s more, that original film’s quiet nature, occasionally interrupted by soothing images of snow-making machines, backed by an accordion version of Vivaldi’s Summer concerto from The Four Seasons, gave viewers time to sit back and ponder the bigger questions of modern masculinity. Among them: What do you think of Pete? What would you do? Are you sure?
For those who have seen Force Majeure, comparisons are inevitable. For instance, Kristofer Hivju, who played Tormund Giantsbane on Game of Thrones, appeared in the original as the Pete character’s best friend. Here he’s thrown away in the role of a complaints desk clerk, while the best-friend role goes to the milquetoast Zach Woods.
Researching the filmmakers, I find that Faxon & Rash have: a perfect name pairing for an
’80s legal sitcom; a long history of acting; an Oscar, shared with Alexander Payne for their work on the screenplay for The Descendants; and a single previous feature film, 2013’s The Way Way Back, a wicked comedy.
They also wrote the screenplay for that one, based in part on things that actually happened to them. And therein lies the lesson: Stick to what you know. I look forward to their next project, an original screenplay called The Heart, about an organ donation delivery gone wrong. As for this one, I couldn’t schuss away fast enough.