Watch You, the Living For Free

Wow! Such a good movie.

How sad is this?

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

You will learn few things about what cinema (and you) can be until you learn to train and practice your perception against the flux of images, and this means to be the still point from which everything else is viewed to be in motion, letting it be what it is as it makes its journey to reach you.This is comic, at first sight, tragic, about modern alienation, failure, ego, compromise, desperation. People die. Lose their pension fund. Lose love. All for no real reason that we see of so just the way life strikes us most days. A gloom because it's all faced dead-on, simply the pain without story-drama that justifies. The same as his previous film except a little lighter even, with actual songs this time.But if you are still long enough, then what? A woman sings in a funeral about a next world without grief, loss, want. But of course the funeral itself like every other vignette here is not filmed to sadden or crush. There is a distance here from which all this gloom is filmed which is the distance in which whatever real grief, loss, want, we would normally perceive in these lives (say, in a melodrama) evaporates as if absorbed by the dingy walls.The same woman repeats the song a little later but now casually in a bathtub, her husband is putting on a shirt in the background, a window looks out to bright day. There is a routine in what we do, yes. Elsewhere characters measure a carpet, rehearse their bass drum for parade, shake hands for a business meeting. They all look like they haven't had a good day in years, none of them a hero, all of it inglorious. But just what of all this we see isn't a world without grief, loss, want? Characters suffer, or seem to, but do we as we watch? The whole thing was like a breeze of air lifting human pettiness and desperation and showing them to be flimsy curtains that can flutter and let air and light through rather than just hang.Where you put in life to always have a lover or a pension fund? If any of these go, like the guitarist lover the girl searches for, they have been returned. Something lingers in the air, a beautiful dream here of a moving house. And when you are negligent of the 200 year old china that you smash trying to perform an impossible tablecloth trick because it was a boring dinner-party (a hilarious moment in the film), does anything prevent you, if it comes to that, from taking punishment with the same smile as part of only another absurd game?Some poignant satire, but even better, the mind that would fret and despair over suffering is not here, a stoic mind is.A marvelous image encapsulates this worldview, a brass band is rehearsing in an empty room, one of them is standing before huge windows playing his clarinet while outside a storm is heard booming and roaring. We are small, yes, and the outside is vast. But what prevents him from playing his music against the storm? If something does, he will stop then.

No film has captured the essence and opulence of existence like You, the Living a 2007 Swedish film written and directed by Roy Andersson. You, the Living cuts to the core of what it means to be human and the existential dread that plagues society. The characters portrayed are everyday people each with their own caricatured personality trait that makes them identifiable as plagued by some facet of the human condition. The composition of the film is masterfully accomplished with a finesse and style that exemplifies the brilliance of Roy Andersson as a director. Arguably the most prominently apparent theme is that of existentialism. The opening sequence immediately sets the tone of the film with the lamentations of a middle-aged woman who tearfully proclaims that nobody loves her to the dismay of her boyfriend. She rejects his condolences and even shuns the love of her dog. Despite her boyfriend's attempts to console her and assure her that things are not as bad as she believes them to be, she is determined to be miserable. As her boyfriend stalks off she sings a song about how a motorcycle would make her happy to the tune of a swinging jazz band. Her requirement for material possessions in order to be happy is a fundamental flaw that pervades modern society. As the film progresses it introduces a carpenter who is executed for botching a magic trick, a pickpocket who robs a pompous wealthy man, a psychiatrist who has given up on counselling people and now just prescribes pills, a girl who dreams of marrying her rock star idol, and a couple dwelling on an argument throughout the day. The profound discontent of the portrayed people is framed by the juxtaposition of the psychiatrist's monologue. The immense unhappiness exhibited by each of the characters is clearly self-inflicted; they fail to recognize and appreciate everything they have going for them.The sets in the film are bleak and minimalist, almost devoid of colour, in order to draw attention to the lives of the characters. The vast emptiness and geometric simplicity of the scenes is a visualization of the way the discontented characters view their world. Andersson's consideration and removal of all distractions from the core of the piece make the message of the film that much more clear. Furthermore, the stationary camera shots and complete lack of any sort of change in perspective during a scene is nigh unique amongst mainstream films. Consequently, every aspect of every scenes is focused on the characters. The camera work combined with the washed out colours gives the audience the perspective of a third party observer with the exact same outlook on life as the characters portrayed. When combining the cinematographic styling and the lack of any sort of plot to speak of the film takes on a sort of breadth of humanity discourse. Roy Andersson goes a step further than just a discursive portrayal of self-inflicted human suffering. In a brilliant series of cuts Andersson shows each character stop their daily routine of feeling sorry for themselves as they look to the sky. What is a common sign for a search for redemption in American film becomes a dark and poignant scene when the film cuts to a shot from above the wing of a bomber flying over the city. The miserable lives of the characters is symbolically brought to an end illustrating Andersson's resentment of the pitiful and self-absorbed lifestyle that was rampant throughout the film.You, the Living is a masterfully rendered machination of Roy Andersson. His control of the creative process engenders a complete and unified work that at its core thrusts at a single point and never wavers. You, the Living is a film that forces viewers to think about the manner in which they live their lives. The lifestyles portrayed in the film are rejected as unfulfilling and proposes that instead we enjoy and appreciate as the title card suggests "Therefore rejoice, you, the living, in your lovely warm bed, until Lethe's cold wave wets your fleeing foot."

I wonder if I enjoyed this film in spite of itself? The message seems bleak even by Nordic standards. Love is repeatedly unrequited, people feel sorry for themselves directly as in the woman who launches the film, or indirectly like the woman visiting her grandmother in the nursing home.Dreams taunt or haunt the dreamers. Dreams do seem to merit the longer scenes in this panorama parade. The guy stuck in life/traffic recounting his death by dinner party dream, young Anna and her rock and roll fantasy. Granted the apartment on wheels was nicely done, showing how she wants to move on...and gradually drawing your attention to the window, where eventually adoring strangers throng.Music might be the most beautiful thing that men or women can create in this film, often at the displeasure of their spouses or neighbors. Nature, or specifically the weather, garners more respect than anything else. The powerful declarations when the thunder spoke, and then towards the end, the sort of beatific visions of people looking away from not just their friends and family, but from themselves to the clouds in the sky.Or is it to the planes. And are they bombers? Poking fun at bureaucracy worked well. Something about the barber scene was very enjoyable. The psychiatrist's confession also resonated with my more abject attitudes. The scene in the rich man's restaurant is likely to be a fan favorite.There's probably more going on than I pulled out of viewing this over a couple of nights between my own (pathetic) living. Stark and spare walls in all scenes make things seem even emptier than they are. But when Don Quixote appears on a wall, and bus is headed to/from Lethe, these are surely more than mere signs.Not sure, but I wonder if in America if Coen Brothers' fans might like the sort of treatment of the less than photogenic people going about their small lives. Plenty of drab and flab on dismal display.Is this a film for We, the Dead to laugh at You, The Living? Or just a mirror...

Ah yes, Roy Andersson. That humble, down-to-earth guy, famous creator of oodles of award winning commercials with a Scandinavian sense of super dry dead-pan humor peppered with a touch of surrealism and the absurd. He's also undisputed champ of static shots and builder of pitch-perfect studio sets, a director who prefers vignettes over a consistent story to make a picture, and quite an essential (post-)modern film-maker. Located somewhere between Bergman, Fellini, Buñuel, some say even Monty Python, he draws from all of them in a way, and yet is entirely unique by doing his own thing - filming losers, life, people caught in the clutches of capitalism, haunted by guilt, with death, destruction and the dark cloud of the apocalypse always hanging over life, the universe and everything. "Songs from the Second Floor" (2000) marks part one of his still unfinished trilogy. "Songs" is bleak, depressing, revealing, thought-provoking with dark comedy mixed in it, and, naturally, a must-see."You, the Living" (2007) returns to the same world in a comedic way, sort of. "Sort of" because among other things there's of course that streetcar named "Lethe", the name of one of the rivers of death in ancient Greek myth, and people stream out into their lives from it, zombie-like blocking its path... Fitting to the river of forgetfulness a bartender regularly reminds us again and again: "Last drink!" Other people have little to remember, but dream their lives away, in romantic fashion far removed from reality, feel nightmarish bombers looming or embarrass themselves by trying to impress others, and get the death penalty before they wake up. At least they finally provided entertainment that way, as popcorn is handed out at the electric chair. Between dreams, hopes and impending doom life has to be lived, and it's full with its little quirks, pumped up by Andersson to the point of hilarious grotesqueness however presented realistically. Or the other way round. By marrying these apparent extremes without focusing on a central story in a painterly style we enter a state of mind that helps us to evaluate, appreciate and apprehend the fun way: you know, learn more about those guys addressed by the movie that are just mirrored on screen, supposedly known as "the living". Because we shouldn't be surprised that while we hold our heads high towards heaven our life as we know it will be extinguished at the end. That bombshell of a bummer would be the point when we - as the living - should have figured it all out, or at least have an inkling what all that Dixieland jazz is actually about...