Critics reviews

Strangely enough, even though none of the three films is very cheerful, Andersson's trilogy triggered optimism in my heart and in my mind. What exactly causes that, I don't know. But I do know that the Swedish director has created a very effective trilogy about us, the living, hearing songs from the second floor all the while we sit on a bench reflecting on existence.

Not merely setups for one-liners, Andersson's situations offer plenty to contemplate; even in his sparsely appointed sets, the deep, diagonal compositions are rich in amusement. But you have to pay attention.

Though this film is set in Stockholm, it is universally germane; the fifty-plus vignettes of beautiful hysteria could have matured anywhere. Andersson uses his static camera to capture the weary, talentless and idle... The story is not in why we tell it, but how—and in the practical joke that is human existence, it seems no one except Roy Andersson is privy to the punch line.

Andersson has expressed his regret that, for once, he was unable to film that entire honeymoon scene in one, unbroken, choreographed take. He shouldn't worry too much: the cut that takes us from inside the lovers' room to out on the platform, amidst the crowd, as the train rolls on—Micke, all the while, playing a live guitar solo on top of the music playback—is among the most glorious in cinema, perfectly timed and positioned in the surprising way it relates two, very different camera positions.

This is comedy that is drier than a Churchill martini, so deadpan it makes Buñuel look like The Three Stooges. YOU, THE LIVING is a hilarious, frequently surreal series of tableaux that may or may not take place in the afterlife. It's even better than Andersson's previous film, SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR, utilizing many ingenious trompe-l'oeil effects. It's dreamlike and anything but ponderous.

You, the Living is film comedy stripped down to its essentials, every shot, utterance, gesture, edit, sound or movement serving some kind of comic purpose.

Andersson frames the universal desire to be loved and understood as both entirely understandable (really, who doesn't feel that way?) and basically untenable (really, who has time to try to understand other people?). He doesn't condemn his characters' solipsism, but nor does he attempt to validate it. You, the Living suggests that we must battle that which is innate, lest we simply succumb to the tender trap of dreams.

You, the Living flips through 50-some single-panel vignettes, many very funny, arranged by Roy Andersson, a Swedish director best known for his commercial work and 2000's Songs From the Second Floor. An (almost always) stationary camera captures a procession of lugubrious Stockholmians; the caption to most of the stills could be "I can't go on."

Andersson the grand humanist eviscerates the very idea of the "walking punchline." Instead, people have odd little hobbies like the Dixieland jazz band, or stop us mid-film to show us their bizarre dreams. And when Andersson does have an outright joke to tell, he does it visually and with virtually no comment. The tablecloth trick is the set-up, but the bare table's design is the satirical left-hook, and Andersson trusts his audience enough to just leave it there.

Yes, some people will never be satisfied, and we might just blow ourselves up because we don't seem to know any better. But seeing the world as populated with miserable grotesques is more than a caricature; it's a deeply misanthropic world view that really doesn't offer much to movie audiences but a chance to feel mean and superior, too.