The Square (2017)
Directed by Ruben Östlund
No — The Square is not especially woke, scoring 33 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
The Square arrives bearing the Palme d'Or and the solemn burden of being about something.
Consciousness Markers
A sustained satire of the contemporary art world, its wealthy patrons, and the museum's greed and commodification of 'trust and caring' into branding — a clear eat-the-rich, elite-hypocrisy target.
The film carries thematic messaging about trust, political correctness, and elite bad conscience, but delivers it through absurdist provocation rather than direct preaching.
The Arab boy subplot and the viral ad depicting an impoverished child touch on race and class inequality, but the film treats these as provocations for the elite's discomfort rather than as a racial-justice statement.
The Anne subplot and the condom argument gesture at gender dynamics and a critique of male evasiveness, but the film's gaze is satirical rather than feminist advocacy.
A man with Tourette's syndrome disrupts a public event, drawn from a real incident; the depiction is present but used for absurdist satire rather than neurodivergent advocacy.
A predominantly white Swedish/Danish production with English-speaking leads; the one notable non-white character (the Arab boy) functions as a plot device for the protagonist's guilt rather than as representation.
No LGBTQ+ characters, themes, or subtext anywhere in the film.
No environmental or climate themes present.
No body-positivity themes or messaging.
No historical revisionism; the film is a contemporary fiction.
Why it received this score
The Square arrives bearing the Palme d'Or and the solemn burden of being about something. Ruben Östlund's satire of the Stockholm art elite is a long, patient exercise in watching comfortable people discover that their compassion has a price tag. Christian, the museum curator, loses his phone, distributes threatening letters through an apartment block, and finds himself haunted by a boy he wronged. The film treats trust as a commodity, which is the joke, and the joke lands.
Where the film engages the current cultural moment, it does so sideways. The Arab boy functions as a device to trigger the curator's guilt, which is a use of a character, not a statement about race. The Tourette's outburst is drawn from a real incident and staged for absurdist effect. Anne's condom argument gestures at masculine evasiveness without mounting a case. The museum's wealthy patrons, performed at by an ape, are the clearest target, and here the film's contempt for money and branding is genuine and sustained.
The advertising clip, showing a begging child blown up for clicks, is the film's most pointed provocation, and it is aimed at the audience's appetite for outrage as much as at the institution. Östlund prefers to discomfort rather than instruct, which keeps the sermonizing to a minimum. The film knows its targets are easy and shoots anyway, with a marksman's calm. It is a cold, intelligent work about the difficulty of being good in a world that rewards the appearance of it. We leave amused, implicated, and slightly tired.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
A prestigious Stockholm museum's chief art curator finds himself in times of both professional and personal crisis as he attempts to set up a controversial new exhibit.
Questions about The Square
Is The Square woke?
No — The Square is not especially woke, scoring 33 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Based.
Does The Square have any woke elements?
3 of the 10 markers register at 30 or above, led by Eat the Rich (60), Lecture Energy (35) and Racial Consciousness (30). On Eat the Rich: A sustained satire of the contemporary art world, its wealthy patrons, and the museum's greed and commodification of 'trust and caring' into branding — a clear eat-the-rich, elite-hypocrisy target.
How does The Square compare to other 2017 movies?
It ranks #60 of the 309 films from 2017 we've scored; their average is 19. The wokest is I Am Not Your Negro (92).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.