You The Living

IdleRich

IdleRich
Anyone seen this? A few years back I really enjoyed the last film from the same guy called Songs From The Second Floor. A film unlike any I've ever seen really (although I've heard people compare it to The Phantom of Liberty), I watched it very late at night, probably tired and drunk but the endless succession of seemingly unrelated scenes with a totally still camera (actually it moves in one scene with an effect as surprising as a match being suddenly struck in a pitch-black room after all that stillness) has stayed with me ever since although I wouldn't claim that I understood much of what was going on. I'm hoping for more of the same in the new one anyway and reviews I've seen seem to be good so I'm quite excited. Reckon I'll try and check it out on the weekend.

"Philip French
Sunday March 30, 2008
The Observer
You, the Living (94 mins, 15) Directed by Roy Andersson; starring Jessika Lundberg, Elisabeth Helander, Bjorn Englund, Leif Larsson
You, the Living, the masterly fourth movie by writer-director Roy Andersson, a 64-year-old Swede based in Gothenburg where he produces innovative TV commercials in his own studio.
Andersson has only made four films in 37 years. The one, Songs From the Second Floor, which shared the jury prize at Cannes in 2000, came after a gap of a quarter of a century. So the seven years that has passed between that and You, the Living is a mere breath in time.
Both pictures are shot in tableaux format in deep-focus long takes in washed-out pastel colours. The camera moves only once in the first film and just twice in the second. Both movies are tragicomedies. If they belong in an artistic tradition, it would be Surrealism or the theatre of the absurd and their particular affinities are with Buñuel and Ionesco.
Songs From the Second Floor was largely political: its targets the church, the capitalist system, fascism and a world running out of control. You, the Living is about everyday life, death and the human condition, 'about the vulnerability of human beings', as Andersson puts it. The title is a quotation from Goethe: 'Be pleased then, you, the living, in your delightfully warmed bed, before Lethe's ice-cold wave will lick your escaping foot.'
The film begins in a bare room with a man sleeping on a couch beneath a black-and-white reproduction of Picasso's Don Quixote. He wakes up saying he's had a dream that bombers are coming. In the 50th and final tableau, an armada of warplanes fills the sky over a neat little European town. In one shot, a tram announcing its destination as Lethe arrives at a misty terminus and its passengers disembark.
Every little scene (average length 90 seconds) makes a small point and moves on, some characters turning up in later shots, some not. Most of the time, there is conflict, open or concealed, as between a Muslim barber and a xenophobic customer.
A builder leans out of his van in a traffic jam to tell us about a terrible nightmare in which he pulls the tablecloth from a long table laid with a 200-year-old dinner service belonging to rich clients. Everything is smashed,he's put on trial before beer-swilling judges and sent to the electric chair. A sad girl keeps appearing in search of her lover, a rock guitarist, and imagines they've got married and that the bridal suite is moving like a train across the landscape and is met at a station by cheering crowds. Two other recurrent figures are a fat, tattooed biker and his embittered lover, an overweight slag with musical ambitions, who bicker about their dog. Meanwhile, individual members of a brass band rehearse to the annoyance of family and neighbours, but eventually gather to perform happily together. From time to time, Andersson returns to an austere, anonymous, overlit bar, an emblematic place where people sit staring into their glasses and only aroused when the bartender calls out for last orders. This is a funny, sad, cruel film, both crystalline and puzzling, hypnotic in its intensity.
These brief snatches from the lives of others are like a version of Hitchcock's Rear Window for which Samuel Beckett has been brought in to do a final rewrite."

http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/Critic_Review/Observer_Film_of_the_week/0,,2269270,00.html
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
OK, I did watch "You, The Living" at the weekend and seeing as the thread gathered so much interest I think I'll tell you about it. First off, it's definitely worth seeing; on the surface it's very similar to Songs From The Second Floor although this one has a lot more humour. Not that the previous one didn't have moments of black comedy but as far as I remember it didn't have moments that made you laugh out loud and there were certainly a few of those yesterday. Both films share the same device of a still camera and pale, unhappy people failing to connect with each other in miserable looking rooms (can Sweden really be that ugly?) and, if the film is about anything, it seems to be some kind of warning not to waste your life without making an effort to understand and relate to those around you. There are three scenes where the camera moves (actually four if you count the dramatic finale) and I wonder if those scenes are supposed to be in some way of extra significance, especially the one where the disillusioned psychiatrist says that he has given up trying to make "mean" people happy and now just prescribes them pills "the stronger the better". To me that seemed to sum up explicitly what was implied by lots of the other scenes.
There wasn't so much weirdness as in SFTSF which featured ghosts and an apocalyptic traffic jam that had lasted for days trapping everyone in a hopeless city and there wasn't quite the same aura of doom at first although soon when every scene is crushed by pouring rain there does seem to be some kind of hint of "end times". One of the people I watched it with suggested that all the characters are actually supposed to be dead - which would explain the title I guess and fit in with their peculiar pallor.
Anyway, anyone care?
 

woops

is not like other people
One of the people I watched it with suggested that all the characters - which would explain the title I guess and fit in with their peculiar pallor.
Anyway, anyone care?


We had the very same theory about the poor suckers in SFTSF.
I care a lot and I'll be watching out for this
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"We had the very same theory about the poor suckers in SFTSF."
Really? That's interesting, it wouldn't have occurred to me but as soon as someone said it seemed to make a lot of sense. I guess it's the kind of film where you don't necessarily have a totally straight answer but that is definitely one possible explanation, albeit not one that seems to have been mentioned by any reviewers that I've seen.
 

michael

Bring out the vacuum
These movies sound really intriguing. I don't know anyone in the flesh who's seen either of them, but I tend to enjoy at least the idea of having fairly formally restrained movies. Don't really like flashiness or spectacular stuff much (try being a New Zealander and saying you don't like Lord of the Rings and don't think Peter Jackson is a good director!).

Don't have much to add, of course, having not seen the things, but just wanted to at least acknowledge that despite very few responses this thread has stimulated someone to investigate the movies further...
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"Don't have much to add, of course, having not seen the things, but just wanted to at least acknowledge that despite very few responses this thread has stimulated someone to investigate the movies further..."
Thanks for that Michael, I just hope the movies turn out to be worth it when you do track them down. I think they will. I'd be interested to watch his earlier films as well but lovefilm don't seem to have them at the moment.
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
Yeah thanks for the recommendation, I've passed info about this to a couple of people who I think would like to see it, and I'll certainly look out for his work but I'm stuck in The Wire again at the moment so nothing else is going past my eyes for a while!
 

Octopus?

Well-known member
Just ordered a copy of "Songs From The Second Floor" and will definitely keep an eye out for "You The Living". Huge thanks for these recommendations, they sound fascinating!

I recently picked up the Sergei Paradjanov box set and the kinetic motion of "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors" was like being slapped in the face after viewing the serene mise en scène of "Color of Pomegranates".
 

slim jenkins

El Hombre Invisible
I feel that there is a lot of pressure riding on this suddenly - hope everyone likes it.

No pressure, Rich. I've got nothing else to do except sit at my dying mother's bedside but I'm sure she won't mind me going to see this, if it's really good. If it's not, well...I suppose I'll feel a little guilty...you might too...especially if she passes away whilst I'm there...









:)
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"No pressure, Rich. I've got nothing else to do except sit at my dying mother's bedside but I'm sure she won't mind me going to see this, if it's really good. If it's not, well...I suppose I'll feel a little guilty...you might too...especially if she passes away whilst I'm there..."
Take her with you, I think I can pretty much guarantee that it will revitalise her and she'll be up on her feet again in no time. Either that or she'll die quietly in the dark of the cinema holding on to your hand and we can both rest assured that we did everything that we could.
 

slim jenkins

El Hombre Invisible
How can we get the bed in the cinema?

I used to sleep regularly in The Scala...snoozing through an alldayer...allnighter...(sigh)...happy days...when London had a proper arthouse fleapit...
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"..happy days...when London had a proper arthouse fleapit..."
You're right, I can't think of one now. I guess a number of people do the odd screening of art films and stuff but I realise it's not the same. Someone was telling me that they show films on a Monday at Cafe 1001 on Brick Lane but I've never been. Also the Today is Boring video shop do idiosyncratic showings every now and again and they used to do showings at Passing Clouds on Kingsland Road but I think that got closed down. I'd be interested if you know anywhere else...
 

slim jenkins

El Hombre Invisible
Nothing can replace The Scala....by which I mean come close to the atmosphere and screening policy it had. 'Arthouse' now would be clean and expensive and corporate 'cutting-edge', probably...as everything 'alternative' seems to be nowadays. I don't go to the cinema much anymore. It's a rip-off. And film doesn't seem to mean what it did back then when support for certain screenings felt like we were expressing a kind of solidarity with a hip cultural revolutionary movement that probably only existed in our heads. Ah...those jazz all-nighters...
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
The Bothersome Man

Different film but I'll stick it in this thread because it has a lot of similarities to You, The Living. Basically it's another Scandinavian (Norwegian this time) bleak comedy that seems to be set in some kind of purgatorial afterlife where colours are washed out and people seem somehow dissociated from each other and their surroundings. In the very first scene the main character, as far as I can tell, registers his disgust with a hungrily snogging couple by jumping in front of a tube train. The next scenes have him, presumably dead, being delivered by bus to a desolate petrol station in the middle of a huge grey landscape. He is greeted there by a man who picks him up and drives him into a similarly bleak city and informs him of the whereabouts of his new house and job. The film concerns his life in this incredibly boring city where no-one can connect with anyone else and food has no taste and sinister care-takers pick up anyone who steps out of line.
I was struck by the similarities to You, The Living in terms of the type of humour, the appearance of the whole film and also the themes with which it is concerned. I guess that the purgatory portrayed in this film is a metaphor for our society now and it works in a very similar way to You, The Living (at least, if my interpretation of that is on the right lines).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2007/05/21/the_bothersome_man_2007_review.shtml
 

wonk_vitesse

radio eros
You the Living is a much more light-hearted film than it's predecessor. It's playful and not so profound, a series of little vignettes really. It'd be silly to compare it Songs from the 2nd Floor.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"disappointed"
Sorry.

"You the Living is a much more light-hearted film than it's predecessor. It's playful and not so profound, a series of little vignettes really. It'd be silly to compare it Songs from the 2nd Floor."
I'd agree it's more light-hearted and has more moments of humour - however to say that it's silly to compare the two films is far too strong. Just in superficial terms they are the only two films I'm aware of which consist entirely of tangentially related scenes shot (almost) entirely using a still camera and deliberately using a washed out colour effect which suggests that everyone is either dead or dying. Add to this the bleakness and dark humour of both which in both cases results from the dissociation of the characters from each other and their emotional deadness, not to mention the suggestion of endtimes that is implicit in both movies and the number of points for comparison is obviously large. Also, if anything the latter film has more connection between the scenes so if either is a series of vignettes it's surely Songs From The Second Floor. And just because something is playful that doesn't necessarily mean that it's not profound - I'd be interested to hear in which ways the first fim was more profound than the second (although as far as my memory serves I think I might agree with you).
 

woops

is not like other people
let's get silly

You the Living is a much more light-hearted film than it's predecessor. It's playful and not so profound, a series of little vignettes really. It'd be silly to compare it Songs from the 2nd Floor.

w_v is right but this lightness of heart was my main gripe with You, The Living. I felt Andersson was playing it for cheap laughs and would humbly add I saw some of the jokes coming a mile off.

YTL would have made a good sequel to Songs from the Second Floor, but instead, it was a rehash.

It was well made and so on. Thought-provoking.
 
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