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Roy Andersson's film "Songs From The Second Floor" is finally starting to get a limited theatrical run here in the US after taking the Prix du Jury @ Cannes in 2000. Has anyone in the US seen this? Is this being released at all in the U.K.? So far, the press that I've read about this has been very enthusiastic. To wit:
"One rarefied objet d’art that actually entertains. It’s a laconic yukfest, in fact, where each static, surreal sequence invariably ends with a mute, imploding punch line the long buildup heightens a climactic ka-boom that should have Kafka, Beckett, and Dali convulsing in their graves ‘til Judgment Day."
- Dennis Harvey, San Francisco Bay Guardian
"One of the most highly crafted [films] in recent memory...Confirms Andersson as a formidable talent workingwith a total control and freedom equaled only by the late Stanley Kubrick."
- Derek Elley, Variety
"Combines the visual jokes of Jacques Tati, the absurdist humor of Monty Python and the sick wit of Charles Addams"
-Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter
Composed of a series of immaculately staged tableaux, SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR is a stylized black comedy-turned-nightmare. A mysterious urban landscape is home to: a hapless office worker, unceremoniously fired after not missing a day of work in 14 years; a soot-covered furniture store owner who makes a clumsy stab at arson; an endless row of luggage-dragging travelers lined up at the airport; a traffic jam extended to infinity; a magician whose saw-trick goes frightfully wrong.
Critics have compared the film's wildly original humor to Beckett, Kafka and Buster Keaton, and its contemporary take on surrealism to the canvases of Otto Dix and Salvador Dali.
FilmForum link w/ film trailer
Roger Ebert's rather glowing review here
The director's website which comments on the film
And if you have a NY Times account, there's a lengthy review here. If not, here's the copy:
Where Drama and Farce Meet Like Old Friends
By ELVIS MITCHELL (NY Times)
Two years ago the beguilingly entertaining absurdist comedy "Songs From the Second Floor" played the Cannes Film Festival, and scenes from the picture still float in my head. (It received a special prize from the festival jury.) "Floor" opens today at the Film Forum.
The writer-director Roy Andersson uses the wide screen to compose chillingly beautiful shots and locks the camera in place as the often humorous action unfolds. The slightly off-putting stillness and the unmoving frame give the comic tableaus the force of art, which reinforces the humor: it's a combination of Bergman and Feydeau. Or for those of us with pop sensibilities, Jacques Tati as rendered by "The Far Side" cartoonist, Gary Larson.
All the action takes place within the static frame, a series of random anecdotes. The movie eschews conventional narrative, choosing to build, in discrete episodes, on the horrifyingly hilarious revelation that Fate rolls into everyone. ("Blessed is the one who sits down" echoes like a goofy, pseudoserious refrain.)
In scenes in which a man, begging for his job, clutches the ankle of his golf-playing boss, the mood is barely a heartbeat away from unbearable melodrama. But Mr. Andersson understands the membrane-thick line between comedy and pathos. He creates tension with the frame, knowing that the same crackle that fuels drama can also energize comedy. His resolve to ensure deadpan — the camera regards the activity like a passive, stoned observer — is the move of a wily director using restraint as an act of will. Mr. Andersson's compulsion to keep the camera at the same distance and to capture each act in a single take adds the ghostly resonance of a REM state to "Floor."
You come to admire Mr. Andersson's willfulness. You might jitter with anxiety yourself as he steadfastly refuses to shift angles during a maddening and calamitous traffic jam. Scenes like this, directed at a remove, give this film a random, almost post-apocalyptic feel.
The picture's mordant, almost ghoulish tone suggests Odin watching the failures of modern society — and its alienating effects on the human race — through a snow globe. All the people here are unable to communicate; Mr. Andersson has laminated his cast members, and the antiseptic seal that keeps them from generating the friction that makes life worth living also has each of them living in a plastic bubble.
The director's success in maintaining this hard-won tone has its down side. After the first hour, the continual practice of his technique casts a fatigue. His concentrated consistency loses its punch, and the movie then feels like being trapped in a dream.
At this point you may feel "Songs From the Second Floor" needs a second act, or else it's like Elizabeth Kubler Ross's five stages of death boiled down to one: denial. The director is capable of gesture and flourish, but the climaxes, guaranteed to evoke the same response, are a little numbing.
Still, "Songs From the Second Floor," an example of an unsung genre, is a heartbreakingly thoughtful minor classic, the work of a genuine and singular artist.
In short, I really want to see this. |
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