You, the Living (Du Levande) (2007) directed by Roy Andersson

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Jungfrau Camping Chapter 01 by Anglisutuel

by Cornelia at 10:39 on 20 January 2008

Quoting Goethe’s line: ‘Be pleased then, you the living, in your delightfully warmed bed, before Lethe’s ice-cold wave will lick your escaping foot’ the director admonishes his fellow Scandinavians for their gloomy outlook. His tragi-comic masterpiece also indicts the materialism underlying their troubled society.

For us, the viewers, their strange rituals are a source of humour, akin to watching Buster Keaton’s hapless strategies as fate works against him. These 50 or slices of Stockhom life are in some ways like a series of washed-out, slowed-down Looney Tunes.

The apparently disconnected episodes are linked by locations –sparsely-furnished flats, offices and shops and a dismal bar-room - and recurring motifs and dialogue. ‘That’s life’, says a man condemned to death for breaking heirloom crockery, consoling his tearful attorney as the judges quaff foaming tankards of beer. In another of these tableaux vivants a naked woman of Brunhilde proportions in a brass helmet sits astride a skeletally thin man on a bed, gasping with pleasure as he tells her about the failure of his investments. A man and his wife try to buy a green carpet but a salesman substitutes a red one and then tries to cheat them over the size.

‘I like to deal with the existential questions though common and seemingly banal situations. We have seen neo-realism and absurdist cinema – today I am trying to introduce ‘trivialism’, says the director about his low-key scenarios. However, it’s clear that the director wants his audience to think about the meaning of his images as well as laugh at their apparent silliness.

Gustav Danielsson's flat , drained hues give an eerie feel to the interiors and the unnaturally heightened pallor of the characters. Andersson’s static camera aims for the effect of looking at paintings:‘If you don't move the camera and don't cut, you have to enrich the picture in deep focus that makes you very curious, and you become an active spectator.’

Water as recurring motif is present in the deluge of a spectacular storm, and in one of the many surreal moments a whole block of flats moves like a giant liner from the dockside, cheered on by a crowd. The ‘Titanic’ echo is inevitable, especially as the onboard protagonists are newly weds; the film’s relationships are generally doomed to banality at best. In another water-evoking vignette a tram‘s destination sign shows the single word ‘Lethe’, the oblivion-bringing river of Hades, as it disgorging ghost-like passengers into a grey dawn.

Bergmanesque dialogue mingles with Woody Allen style jokes and direct addresses to the camera. Death is omnipresent, not just in a funeral scene but in the symbolic brass ship’s bell rung by a sardonic bartender, repeatedly calling ‘Last Orders ‘ and recalling T.S. Eliot’s ‘Wasteland’, with its iconic ‘Time, Gentlemen, Please.’

A pair of Bunuel-inspired dream sequences yield some of the film's funniest moments. Both a taxi-driver’s Kafkaesque trial for breaking heirloom crockery and a punk teenager’s fantasy of marrying a celebrity are brilliantly framed by their respective locations - a static traffic queue and waste ground high above the city.

‘No one understands me’ wails the grotesuely overweight female half of a biker couple to her partner, a phrase whose repetition accentuates the universal aspect of the characters . Tethered to one another, they aggravate or fail to respond to need. Reminiscent of cartoons by Georz Grosz or the sturdy peasants of a subdued Breughel, most of the actors were found in the streets and restaurants of Stockholm or were part of the director’s circle of acquaintances.

As in early silent movies, music is crucial, offering a contrasting jaunty commentary. A punk-haired guitarist, a Louisiana jazz quartet and a woman who bursts into an impromptu song turns "You, the Living" into an operetta about the absurdity of human existence. The episodes build to a bizarre and immensely moving climax, resonating with the dour title prophesy of this amazing film.