Everyone with Netflix Streaming, you need to give this movie a shot. A pull-quote on the box compares it to Monty Python and Ingmar Bergman, and it’s not far off. It’s simultaneously drab and melancholy and yet what bubbles underneath is an understanding of this existential angst and depression that is nothing but joyous. I knew I would love this movie the second she started singing*. My jaw dropped and I marveled at what Du Levande was. How could you not? If we all only had motorcycles and dogs that were a little more grateful for the walks we take them on.
The film is constructed of 50 short vignettes (some shorter than 30 seconds, others a bit longer). We see Swedish brass band enthusiasts practicing solo and aggravating their loved ones and neighbors, we see marriages new and old in varying states of desperation, old men alone (or with Norwegian Brunnehildes straddling them) despairing about their savings, doctor’s despairing about their patients (so desperate to get to his office for their appointment in the morning, they make the doctor take the stairs!).
The director, Roy Andresson, has been characterized by the Village Voice as a “slapstick Ingmar Bergman,” which is a similar approach to the Monty Python fusion, but lacks the even deeper understanding of our chronic existence that Andresson seems to have, which makes many scenes hilarious and heartrending, the best kind of funny where you can feel the knife being twisted into you. The skit-like approach to the material only makes it work better, because it’s never trying your patience. It’s just a routine for these people, every day at the bar going up at last call for a final drink before calling it a day, going to their doctor’s appointments, practicing their music, speaking to their children, attending bizarre, ritualistic functions where people stand on their chairs, and everyone’s having an excellent time, but – ah, alas! – your son calls you to ask for more money and you cannot participate.
All of the set pieces are at the same time so unique and yet so familiar and close to our own personal experiences. And speaking of the set pieces – every scene in this film was constructed on a set, and looks incredible, particularly when Andresson continues to move further into the background (such as with the tuba player in the beginning, when we see him through the married couple’s window practicing with the man ruining his light fixtures on the floor below). Much of the film’s true darkness lingers in the unsaid, such as the tablecloth scene. What is ‘revealed’ is left unacknowledged but left for all to see.
The other filmmaker that lurks in the background of Andresson is Luis Buñel, though Andresson’s lens is more focused on an individual’s place and purpose, rather than Buñel’s class-based sociopolitical works, like The Discreet Charm of the Bourgioisie, where it’s clear these are not so much characters as actions locked in perpetual motion. Really, do yourself a favor and check out this movie – just commit to watching the first 5 minutes via Netflix Streaming, and if you’ve gotten that far and aren’t totally smitten with it, then I think you should start it over and try again, you just might see yourself for a second.
*Though by the same token and to be fair, I thought the scene with the old guy and the viking helmet was unbearably pretentious. Back.
(Oh, and for fun – contrast the Swedes’ !sadness! in this movie with that of those in Where the Wild Things Are and tell me which seems more human. And don’t tell me they were monsters. I know they were monsters.)
