Mammoth
"Lukas Moodysson writes and directs this drama centered on three intersecting stories, one of a traveling New Yorker named Leo (Gael García Bernal), another of his surgeon wife, Ellen (Michelle Williams), and also the children of their Filipino nanny, Gloria (Marife Necesito), in the Philippines. A series of dramatic events unfolds after Leo visits Thailand, causing everyone to reexamine their priorities." - Netflix

Warning - I get carried away later and spill the punchline, so if you were saving this movie to watch for yourself, be warned, but I don't think it'll hurt you to know how it ends.

This is a story about people raising other peoples' children and the heartbreak that entails. The one sentence description I saw before watching it was something like "Life was wonderful then marital infidelity ruined everything." Wrong. There was some sex with a hooker on a beach in Thailand, but that wasn't the pivotal issue.

The traveling New Yorker is flying to Singapore on a private jet to sign contracts to sell a video game he developed for $42 or $45 million. His sort of sleazy business agent presents him with a fountain pen decorated with ivory from prehistoric mammoth fossils that cost $3000. That is where the movie got its name because eventually the game developer decides his life is empty and someday someone will make fountain pens out of his bones, and what a useless thing.

It took awhile for them to tell us how this unprepossessing sort of grungy guy makes all the money he obviously does. The reason we know they are rich is that the elevator in their New York City apartment opens right in their apartment - it's a private elevator.

Anyhow, his wife is a surgeon who works nights operating on children who come into the emergency room so their nanny sees more of her six-year-old daughter than she does, and here she is spending her time with other peoples' kids. The little girl even prefers to go to a church event with the nanny rather than a rare evening at home with the mom.

The nanny has two sons in the Philippines being raised by her mother, and she is trying to send enough money home to buy financial security for her family, but seems to waste a lot of it buying gifts to send home to make up for not being there. The hooker who the gamer (reluctantly) sleeps with has a baby in the countryside of Thailand being raised by her mother. He really did try to stay true to his marriage but the loneliness overcame him. Really.

So nobody is happy, and things get worse. One of the Philippines kids gets beat up by a pedophile so the nanny takes off for home in the middle of the night leaving the little girl alone, and she can't get in touch with her surgeon mother who is trying to save a child whose mother stabbed him but he dies on the table, and the gamer dad is sleeping with the teenage hooker in Thailand. The little girl is heart-broken because she was closer to the nanny than her own mother. The gamer dad decides this is nuts being separated from his family while his agent dickers over $3 million when he's going to get $42 million, he's going to donate some money to foundations so he won't end up like the mammoths, leaves his Rolex watch and the $3000 pen for the hooker, and flies home. The nanny is back with her children, and the hooker pawns the watch and mammoth ivory pen together for about $25.

Oh, gee. Did I just tell you the whole movie? Sorry. The message about the tragedy of parents in our society who are not raising their own children is a good one, and if you went to someone's house and they asked if you wanted to watch their Netflix DVD that came in the mail that day, and it was this movie, it would pass the time.