Do Marxists Really Have More Fun?

Together (Tillsammans)
Written and directed by Lukas Moodysson
IFC Films, 2000 (107 minutes)

In “Imperial Bedroom,” Jonathan Franzen’s How to Be Alone essay addressing the blurring line between the public and the private in modern society, the author explains his chosen title this way: “In a coast-to-coast, shag-carpeted imperial bedroom, we could all just be messes and save ourselves the trouble of pretending. But who wants to live in a pajama-party world?”

Pajama-party world—the phrase brings to mind a certain casualness, an intimacy, a degree of exposure and shared experience that Lukas Moodysson brilliantly evokes in the Swedish film Together, released in 2000. Here the pajama party takes place in a collective in Stockholm in 1975, where meat and Christmas are not allowed but highly vocal sex with a man not your husband is; where Pippi Longstocking is decried as a capitalist, and the sudden appearance of a television in the living room is seen as a fine reason to move out.

The collective’s residents include the good-hearted Göran and his wife Lena; Anna and Lasse, who have divorced because, for political reasons, Anna has decided to become a lesbian; and Anna and Lasse’s son Tet, named for the Tet Offensive. When Göran’s sister Elisabeth and her two children are driven from their home by Elisabeth’s abusive husband Rolf, the collective is reluctant to add three more to their number.

“Solidarity is a word we have to strive for in some way,” pleads Göran, and he ultimately wins the argument, welcoming Elisabeth and her adorably stone-faced and cynical kids into the house’s cluttered spaces. That’s where the story really begins, with Elisabeth’s liberation from Rolf causing reverberations that drive each member of the collective to see the truth about the arbitrary principles and self-destructive habits they’ve been clinging to.

Together makes it clear there’s such a thing as too much sharing, as Anna discusses her yeast infection while standing half-naked (the bottom half) in the collective’s kitchen, and Lena’s experiment in open relationships spirals out of control. Göran, our hippie hero, inadvertently points out the other downsides of the collective arrangement, when he falls into a dreamy reverie while making porridge for the children. “First we’re like small oat flakes—small, dry, fragile, alone,” he muses. “But then we’re cooked with the other oat flakes … and become soft. We join so that one flake can’t be told apart from another. We’re almost dissolved.”

Togetherness as Göran describes it sounds like a bit of a mess, and sometimes that’s pretty close to the truth. Its joys, on the other hand, are more simply stated by Birgir, Rolf’s lonely neighbor, who long ago drove away his wife in pursuit of a romantic vision of solitude. Birgir now calls Rolf to fix his toilet when all he really wants is the company, and although he’s the least-seen character in the film, he’s still the one who nails the message that the collective has lost in the midst of all of its politicizing:

“‘There’s strength in being alone’—that’s just bullshit,” says Birgir. “The only thing worth anything is being together.”

~ blair campbell