sharky_55 This is Andersson's follow up to Songs From The Second Floor in what is supposed to be a loose trilogy, spanning more than a decade and each seven years apart. And it is not dissimilar. Songs was about a bleak and futile beginning of the new millennium, about the past coming back and haunting our characters, about the pervasive sense of disillusionment that converges so brilliantly in the final scene. Here, because Andersson injects more humour into the film, it resembles his many commercials much more than Songs, and becomes a complaint heavy film. There are characters complaining about not being understood, characters complaining about bad haircuts, about neighbours practising loudly with their brass instruments, and sometimes they are valid, sometimes they are not. The backdrop is the same; the same sense of dread at the future, of financial and emotional instability, of life being wasted, but while Songs did not provide a remedy, You, The Living provides a compromise. A whole cast of characters look up from their menial day-to-day tasks, and as a whole squadron of bombers prepares to bombard the city, a warning is heeded. But it is funny first and foremost, and I think this is the major difference from Songs. That had the same city of characters, but each of them seemed to be going through the same life crisis. In You, The Living, Andersson prepares no less than fifty living canvases of different classes, careers and aspirations, and shows all their unique woes and worries, and then lightly laughs at them for this (a psychiatrist has begun to feel the weight of all his patients, and refuses to treat them anymore, or a man bemoans the loss of his retirement funds during sex). The beginning is as telling as ever; a heavyset punk middle-aged woman moans about how no one understands her, how all she wants to do is get away from it all, and then starts to sing in time to a brass tune that pumps up and introduces the opening credits. And here is another difference; Songs was tranquil in its soundtrack, and the weeping of its city took over, but here a Dixieland jazz theme by Benny Andersson seems to creep in and out of scenes (along with a thunderstorm), whether it belongs or not. An example of this would be at the funeral of the CEO; the sudden cut seems to signal the key message, that life can end so suddenly, and therefore it is that much more precious.The film touches upon each of these characters, and explores how they differently deal with grief, or pain, or suffering. It is the same kind of suffering, but it becomes so funny and unique how they retreat to different areas of their imagination. A carpenter spends an eternity narrating in traffic jam a dream whereupon he fails to perform a magic trick, and much like the failed sawing of the volunteer in Songs, it is funny, but moreso in an absurd way, instead of depressive. The comedic timing here milks the failure for all its worth, and then keeps going; the sentencing is done via auction, and look for the the man quickly thumbing through the instruction manual for the electric chair moments before the execution is to be carried out. A hairdresser has been taking a barrage of xenophobic comments over the years, and lashes out, but amends by 'fixing' it, and that becomes a rather pointed comment at the businessman's age. A woman begins a well-meaning prayer about the pervasive problems of society (and I have seen many describe this as the bleakest scene in the film, an electric condemnation), but it quickly descends into a rather ironic and hilarious bit as she begins to pass harshly judgement herself, as the list grows and grows without any attempt to slow down, and as she keeps the church waiting. And we see how various inhabitants react to the incessant and loud practising of the brass band. There are also moments of such starkness that oppose this comedy, and Andersson manages to take such simple and common problems and explore how unique our reactions to them are. He depicts not a marriage couple fighting, because the insults hurled are of course childish and of no real meaning, but the aftermath, split into two separate scenes, where their worries spill into their careers, and others offer their advice. A girl has bumped into her idol singer, before being directed to the wrong address, and turns up instead to the brass band's rehearsal (and here we see subtly how Andersson weaves the stories together). Each scene in You, The Living is a long take, but her daydream is the most vivid of them all. Who hasn't let their imagination run wild into endless idyllic territory? Andersson's construction of this cosy apartment block mounted atop a train becomes so heart-lifting in its symbolism, as the crowd gather and congratulate their marriage. Where will you go, they ask? Does it matter? It is also one of the only times a character directly addresses the camera, and we can feel the young girl's heartbreak through the screen, even for a fantasy so far-fetched. Songs, seven years ago, would have reacted to this with such cynicism and bite that crushes her dreams instantly. But here, she is allowed to be vulnerable, to have a little hope. The characters are self-absorbed, wallowing in pity, and each think their lives are over, but that is the depth in them. That someone could be so petty, or hypocritical, or so lost in imagination. That delightfully warmed bed is sometimes just so, so comfortable.

Payne McMillan I've been wracking my brain to figure out a good comparison in popular media to Roy Andersson's dark comedy You, the Living or Du Levande (2007). The best parallel I can draw is to Tom Wilson's comic strip Ziggy. If you are familiar with the comic, it revolves around a rather mundane little man, Ziggy, who always winds up being the butt of his own jokes. Luckily, Wilson's comic only appears once a week and is four short newspaper frames at most. You, the Living sadly perseveres for an hour and a half.The film is made up of dozens of vignettes. Some are very brief glimpses while others last uncomfortably too long. Almost every scene is taken in a single shot with a wide angle, with the camera positioned in one spot. Occasionally there are slow zooms, or pans that shift so slowly that the viewer is unsure whether the camera is actually moving or if they are just becoming drowsy from staring so long at an unchanging scene. I have never seen anything filmed like this before, with so few shots and perspectives. Most filmmakers try to engage the audience with diverse composition; this felt more like I was watching a play because of the static angle. It also had a theatrical quality because of the set. I found the set to be very pleasing to the eye. It reminded me a lot of Wes Anderson's films because everything in it seemed very deliberate, like it was in exactly the right place. This contrasted with the subject matter; the majority of characters were disheveled and were going through existential crises. They seemed not to belong to the pristine world of this elaborately constructed set. Many of the vignettes began with a character breaking the fourth wall and addressing the viewer, "Last night I had a dream," and the set successfully created the dreamy quality that many of the characters described. Andersson used colors that were very bright, vibrant shades and vibrant, but they were all washed out shades and seemed to be watered down. The fact that this film took place in contemporary time in an urban setting (an imitation of Stockholm) but all of the scenery was designed also added to the dreamy quality in which you know that you are in a specific place but it is different for some reason than the way you know it in reality.Though it was aesthetically well put together, when it comes down to it, I think this is a film that you'll either love or hate. I happened to hate it. It had aspects of the absurd in which there were scenes that could certainly happen, but they never actually would because they are far out. All of the characters were caricatures whose actions were disgruntling. They found themselves in awkward situations which were laughable and pathetic. It was like Family Guy because it was so stupid that I felt bad laughing, though that is not the strongest comparison because that humor is slapstick, whereas Andersson makes you cringe and chuckle at other people's misery. Usually, what began as humorous lasted half a minute too long, leaving me as a viewer anticipating the next bizarre event, tapping feet hoping to escape the current misery. Andersson admits that he has an expressionist influence, which I saw come through in this piece. The film was not so much plot driven as theme driven. It never focused on one character for too long but would switch between characters whose lives vaguely intersected. If any take away from You, the Living it would be, "when something is bad, it can only get worse." In one of the early scenes, a man is practicing the tuba in his apartment. It cuts to the man in the apartment below, frustrated with the noise bleeding through the ceiling. He bangs a broom against the ceiling to signal the tuba player to stop, but his broom banging ends up knocking down his chandelier. This pretty much sums up the "heads you win, tails I lose" motif. You don't get to really learn any intricacies of the characters. Instead they are all seen as one dimensional and are defined by a certain type of action rather than as multi-faceted. There is no passion for any of them, and ultimately, you don't really care that they are in miserable predicaments because none of them have depth. This is ultimately a very bleak film and even if you find it more amusing than I did, it will likely still leave you disheartened.

museumofdave Some people are happy with a Matt Damon thriller, as well they might be; some folks want a weeper, a well-made tear-jerker like Hachi, which is well and good. Those of us who have lived long enough and seen enough films sometimes crave a new approach, not merely for newness itself, but because the challenge of a new viewpoint, the exposure to a cinema world unlike any other, is often fascinating and fulfilling.In his time, Griffith did created a new vision, as did Fellini, or Bergman, or Bunuel, most of their films not always huge at the box office, but leaving a mark simply because they changed the way people look or thought about things. Roy Andersson does just this, painting an extraordinary world without a conventional plot line, without the usual throbbing soundtrack, without even professional actors--but if you allow yourself an immersion into his strange, lonely world where all those folks suffer miserably like so many other desperate souls, you will experience something in its own way like Chaplin and Keaton, often weirdly hilarious and sometimes terribly sad. Andersson's world is distinctively unusual, sometimes appearing static and monochromatic, often springing briefly to live only to sputter out suddenly, leaving the viewer contemplating what might have just been before being taken into the next field, the next room, the next life. Both distressing and oddly hopeful, experiencing Andersson's You, The Living and it's match, Songs From The Second Floor is unlike any ordinary narrative but vividly memorable.

hansonkd This film is an exquisite exploration of the human condition. What makes us human and holds us all together is sometimes more important than the surrounding events that are taking place. This is the main premise for You, the Living, as we enter a peculiar world filled with grief, loneliness, and sadness. The film is set up as a staged performance. The camera rarely moves and the subjects are almost always sitting completely still and simply narrating or doing some other seemingly out of place action. When I first watched this movie, the first few scenes were something that I had never experienced before in my movie going past. I tried to figure out the genre of the film, but as more and more scenes went by the purpose of the scene construction became more and more clear. We enter into a dream like state. Everything in the movie when picked apart individually seems to be rather normal. But we still get a sense that there is just something off about the whole film. The timing is a bit awkward. People's interactions with one another are just a bit off. People's actions are out of place. What then can we say is the driving force behind the movie? There isn't a central plot to hold on to; we skip around to different characters that all end up in some way having interactions with each other. This strengthens the sense of dreaminess about the film as frequently you might have several seemingly disconnected dreams in a night but there is one thing that ties them all together. The construction of this film, when viewed in this way is extraordinary. You need the whole film to know what is going on. The film plot and story are not being acted out by actors, but rather the editing and the scenes themselves. You can look at just about any scene individually and write the movie off as almost being completely insane. A long shot of a man playing a tuba? A long hall with people standing on chairs and singing? People shopping for carpet to only have the clerk break down and pour out his heart about his marriage? These are all things weave together to address what we all feel as people. What we dream about, good, bad, rewarding is captured by this film. For example, we have a middle eastern barber who shaves the head of an arrogant customer. Anyone who works in a customer service industry knows what it is like to deal with pushy customers all day and how good it would be to just to act out. Another example would be the carpet salesman who all of the sudden went on a long rant about his wife. Or the Prominent man of the community who was interrupted before an important speech by his son asking for money. What about the old man who was sent to the electric chair because he broke his wife's dishes? These things when paired with the dreamy filming of the film make you question that perhaps the events that take place are simply internal anxieties that manifest themselves in the world. Perhaps that is what Andersson is saying about the human condition. Maybe our deepest anxiety is that we are truthful with one another and, in the words of the characters in the film, "nobody understands." Overall, this is a very strong film. It is a film that is unique from any other film that I have seen previously. As you watch you are memorized by the oddity that each scene takes on. Previous film techniques are almost forgotten. We have very little movement, almost no action, and the camera remains still throughout. On top of that the plot doesn't exist. Instead we are left with small episodes that offer little to no resolution of the problems they present. In each scene only the main character of interest truly "acts." The rest of the people present simply have little to no reaction to what is going on with that character. As such this is a film about lonely people who are desperately trying to seek out and connect with others. Some people will not like this movie. People looking for a typical Hollywood experience should stay far away from this film. However, if you go into the film with an open mind and stick with the film to truly find out what the film is about it is an absolute delight. It is quirky, witty, funny, and sad. Most importantly it reminded me of just how versatile film as an art form truly is. I would say that it is probably the most memorable and inspiring movies that I have seen.