With the recent announcement by its exiled founder that the Body Shop is an empty shell of commercialism, the 1970s, I suppose, are now officially over. “Together,” a sly, satirical Swedish film, shows the decade coming apart as early as 1975. In a commune in Stockholm, a mixed bag of adults, some with children, try to live according to their ideals, while human nature does its best to force them toward compromise, corruption, and worst of all realism.
Watching the film awakened memories of the time: a mother protesting against the gender-coding of pink and blue children s blankets. Arguments about men doing the dishes. Denouncements of Pippi Longstocking as a materialist and capitalist. A child named Tet, after the North Vietnamese offensive. “Open relationships,” which have a way of ending in no relationships at all. By the time the kids start picketing for the right to eat meat, we see their point.