Friday, March 12, 2010

Ты, живущий / Du levande / You, the Living (2007)




You, the Living (Swedish: Du levande) is a 2007 Swedish black comedy film written and directed by Roy Andersson.
This is an absurdist take on the everyday foibles of human nature. Andersson couples his iconic visual style (stationary shots, a monochromatic palette of grays and greens) with a meticulous eye for composition (compared by some critics to the work of German painters Otto Dix and Max Beckmann) to yield a brilliant succession of dreamlike tableaux: a bride and her electric guitar-playing groom sail along in a house moving like a train; a distraught man complains of his financial woes while his wife tries to make love to him; a drunken woman shouts “No one understands me” to a bar full of silent patrons; a man waiting in line to buy a train ticket changes queues repeatedly, to no advantage. Running the gamut from quotidian struggles to big philosophical questions of love, sympathy and purpose in an uncaring world, Andersson brings a blast of distinctive Nordic humor to our universal woes.

Directed by: Roy Andersson
Cast: Elisabet Helander, Jessika Lundberg, Bjorn Englund

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