Director/writer/editor: Roy Andersson
Photography: Istvan Borbas, Jesper Klevenas
Music: Benny Andersson
Cast: Lars Nordh, Sten Andersson, Stefan Larsson, Torbjorn Fahlstrom, Lucio Vucina, Hanna Eriksson, Peter Roth, Tommy Johansson, Sture Olsson
As I get deeper into the aggregated critical roundup list of best 21st-century movies over at They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? I find more and more movies and filmmakers that are new to me. A lot of them are generally more difficult than my perhaps entertainment-oriented values would like (hi Holy Motors, hi Tabu, hi Colossal Youth). I know now that Ari Aster, for one (and his mother too), has very high regard for Swedish director, writer, and editor Roy Andersson. But I had never really heard of Andersson in any meaningful way until the last year or two, when Songs From the Second Floor made a chart leap, up from several years in the range of #57 to #73 to its present position of #41. A friend (Steven Rubio aka Mon-Sewer Paul Regret) posted a review last fall that allowed Songs might be for others, but it wasn’t for him. Based on that, I put off looking at it for a first time last year, hoping it would fall again out of my reach. But no.
Thus I came to Songs with rock-bottom expectations (and this won’t be the last time this year!). Terms like “absurdist” and “existential” associated with Songs and Andersson did not help. But low expectations can sometimes be your friend if you can still bring yourself to look at something. Songs From the Second Floor is a loosely connected series of vignettes made out of single shots of long scenes that are indeed absurd. A stage magician starts to saw a volunteer from the audience in half—wounds him, actually. A parade of performative self-flagellants playing in the background of scenes creates a traffic jam that lasts for eight hours and more. A passenger choir on the subway erupts in song, like flash mobs can do now. A man has a son he says was driven insane by writing poetry. At least these scenes often have the virtue of being funny.
As I get deeper into the aggregated critical roundup list of best 21st-century movies over at They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? I find more and more movies and filmmakers that are new to me. A lot of them are generally more difficult than my perhaps entertainment-oriented values would like (hi Holy Motors, hi Tabu, hi Colossal Youth). I know now that Ari Aster, for one (and his mother too), has very high regard for Swedish director, writer, and editor Roy Andersson. But I had never really heard of Andersson in any meaningful way until the last year or two, when Songs From the Second Floor made a chart leap, up from several years in the range of #57 to #73 to its present position of #41. A friend (Steven Rubio aka Mon-Sewer Paul Regret) posted a review last fall that allowed Songs might be for others, but it wasn’t for him. Based on that, I put off looking at it for a first time last year, hoping it would fall again out of my reach. But no.
Thus I came to Songs with rock-bottom expectations (and this won’t be the last time this year!). Terms like “absurdist” and “existential” associated with Songs and Andersson did not help. But low expectations can sometimes be your friend if you can still bring yourself to look at something. Songs From the Second Floor is a loosely connected series of vignettes made out of single shots of long scenes that are indeed absurd. A stage magician starts to saw a volunteer from the audience in half—wounds him, actually. A parade of performative self-flagellants playing in the background of scenes creates a traffic jam that lasts for eight hours and more. A passenger choir on the subway erupts in song, like flash mobs can do now. A man has a son he says was driven insane by writing poetry. At least these scenes often have the virtue of being funny.
And what’s more, they turned out to be more funny a second time around, with a better idea about what this movie is up to. Take Kalle (Lars Nordh)—or possibly Lasse (Sten Andersson), I think I got various characters here confused, not sure whether it was me or this movie—the guy whose son is institutionalized and won’t speak. Kalle/Lasse fumes and loses control every time he visits his son in the hospital until he has to be bodily removed from his presence. “He wrote poetry until he went nuts!” he cries over and over. On one occasion, after being put out, he goes to a church to seek help. “I’m at my wits’ end!” he wails. The vicar responds, “At the end of your wits... So who isn’t? I’ve been trying to get my house sold for four years. No luck. I’m going to lose 200,000, at least.” Some guy with him chips in, “I paid for a trip and then the travel agency went bankrupt. The money’s gone.” The vicar sums up, “It’s all because of the stock prices.”
The picture is relentlessly mocking capitalism and corporate life—easy targets as always but, again, the laughs here can be good. A lot of these buffoons are (not surprisingly) in sales, reminding me somehow of my favorite E.E. Cummings line, “a salesman is an it that stinks Excuse / Me...” Kalle or Lasse is laid off after 30 years and grovels for his job, flinging himself on the floor and hugging his manager’s ankles, who drags him along trying to get away from him. The business subsequently suffers a fire—Kalle/Lasse confesses he did it to his wife—and later he is seen dealing with investigating insurer claims agents. Later still we learn he gets the payout.
It's more precisely mocking of “the modern condition,” let’s call it, which is so utterly suffused with capitalist insanity it’s easy to confuse the targets. Andersson also gets his digs in at Swedish cooperation with German Nazis in the 1940s—I understand it’s a regular feature in his pictures. Here we see a Swedish leader from the era who is celebrating his 100th birthday. He is in a care facility, decrepit, has just been placed on a bedpan (Andersson wisely refrains from sound effects), and obviously has severe dementia when the dignitaries show up to honor him with a pompous speech. He interrupts it midway with, “My best to Goering!”
There is much more. Songs is full of irresistible throwaways I kept writing down (in the mental institution a fixated patient declares, “Jesus... He wasn’t the son of God. He was just a nice guy”). The palette is queasy washed-out pastels. Ari Aster, in an extra on the Criterion channel, compares it to Play Time in terms of how constructed it is. The look of it put me in mind of another French picture, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Songs From the Second Floor (which is not French or a musical) is full of a sly deadpan humor that hits well and frequently, once you get past the idea of trying to make it make sense. It makes no sense. I thought it lost steam in the second half as the scenes become increasingly disconnected, though still often inspired. For me they start to become more bizarre than funny. But if funny is what you’re looking for you might find it here.
The picture is relentlessly mocking capitalism and corporate life—easy targets as always but, again, the laughs here can be good. A lot of these buffoons are (not surprisingly) in sales, reminding me somehow of my favorite E.E. Cummings line, “a salesman is an it that stinks Excuse / Me...” Kalle or Lasse is laid off after 30 years and grovels for his job, flinging himself on the floor and hugging his manager’s ankles, who drags him along trying to get away from him. The business subsequently suffers a fire—Kalle/Lasse confesses he did it to his wife—and later he is seen dealing with investigating insurer claims agents. Later still we learn he gets the payout.
It's more precisely mocking of “the modern condition,” let’s call it, which is so utterly suffused with capitalist insanity it’s easy to confuse the targets. Andersson also gets his digs in at Swedish cooperation with German Nazis in the 1940s—I understand it’s a regular feature in his pictures. Here we see a Swedish leader from the era who is celebrating his 100th birthday. He is in a care facility, decrepit, has just been placed on a bedpan (Andersson wisely refrains from sound effects), and obviously has severe dementia when the dignitaries show up to honor him with a pompous speech. He interrupts it midway with, “My best to Goering!”
There is much more. Songs is full of irresistible throwaways I kept writing down (in the mental institution a fixated patient declares, “Jesus... He wasn’t the son of God. He was just a nice guy”). The palette is queasy washed-out pastels. Ari Aster, in an extra on the Criterion channel, compares it to Play Time in terms of how constructed it is. The look of it put me in mind of another French picture, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Songs From the Second Floor (which is not French or a musical) is full of a sly deadpan humor that hits well and frequently, once you get past the idea of trying to make it make sense. It makes no sense. I thought it lost steam in the second half as the scenes become increasingly disconnected, though still often inspired. For me they start to become more bizarre than funny. But if funny is what you’re looking for you might find it here.
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