I've been wracking my brain to figure out a good comparison in popular media to Roy Andersson's dark comedy You, the Living or Du Levande (2007). The best parallel I can draw is to Tom Wilson's comic strip Ziggy. If you are familiar with the comic, it revolves around a rather mundane little man, Ziggy, who always winds up being the butt of his own jokes. Luckily, Wilson's comic only appears once a week and is four short newspaper frames at most. You, the Living sadly perseveres for an hour and a half.
The film is made up of dozens of vignettes. Some are very brief glimpses while others last uncomfortably too long. Almost every scene is taken in a single shot with a wide angle, with the camera positioned in one spot. Occasionally there are slow zooms, or pans that shift so slowly that the viewer is unsure whether the camera is actually moving or if they are just becoming drowsy from staring so long at an unchanging scene. I have never seen anything filmed like this before, with so few shots and perspectives. Most filmmakers try to engage the audience with diverse composition; this felt more like I was watching a play because of the static angle.
It also had a theatrical quality because of the set. I found the set to be very pleasing to the eye. It reminded me a lot of Wes Anderson's films because everything in it seemed very deliberate, like it was in exactly the right place. This contrasted with the subject matter; the majority of characters were disheveled and were going through existential crises. They seemed not to belong to the pristine world of this elaborately constructed set. Many of the vignettes began with a character breaking the fourth wall and addressing the viewer, "Last night I had a dream," and the set successfully created the dreamy quality that many of the characters described. Andersson used colors that were very bright, vibrant shades and vibrant, but they were all washed out shades and seemed to be watered down. The fact that this film took place in contemporary time in an urban setting (an imitation of Stockholm) but all of the scenery was designed also added to the dreamy quality in which you know that you are in a specific place but it is different for some reason than the way you know it in reality.
Though it was aesthetically well put together, when it comes down to it, I think this is a film that you'll either love or hate. I happened to hate it. It had aspects of the absurd in which there were scenes that could certainly happen, but they never actually would because they are far out. All of the characters were caricatures whose actions were disgruntling. They found themselves in awkward situations which were laughable and pathetic. It was like Family Guy because it was so stupid that I felt bad laughing, though that is not the strongest comparison because that humor is slapstick, whereas Andersson makes you cringe and chuckle at other people's misery. Usually, what began as humorous lasted half a minute too long, leaving me as a viewer anticipating the next bizarre event, tapping feet hoping to escape the current misery.
Andersson admits that he has an expressionist influence, which I saw come through in this piece. The film was not so much plot driven as theme driven. It never focused on one character for too long but would switch between characters whose lives vaguely intersected. If any take away from You, the Living it would be, "when something is bad, it can only get worse." In one of the early scenes, a man is practicing the tuba in his apartment. It cuts to the man in the apartment below, frustrated with the noise bleeding through the ceiling. He bangs a broom against the ceiling to signal the tuba player to stop, but his broom banging ends up knocking down his chandelier. This pretty much sums up the "heads you win, tails I lose" motif. You don't get to really learn any intricacies of the characters. Instead they are all seen as one dimensional and are defined by a certain type of action rather than as multi-faceted. There is no passion for any of them, and ultimately, you don't really care that they are in miserable predicaments because none of them have depth. This is ultimately a very bleak film and even if you find it more amusing than I did, it will likely still leave you disheartened.
The film is made up of dozens of vignettes. Some are very brief glimpses while others last uncomfortably too long. Almost every scene is taken in a single shot with a wide angle, with the camera positioned in one spot. Occasionally there are slow zooms, or pans that shift so slowly that the viewer is unsure whether the camera is actually moving or if they are just becoming drowsy from staring so long at an unchanging scene. I have never seen anything filmed like this before, with so few shots and perspectives. Most filmmakers try to engage the audience with diverse composition; this felt more like I was watching a play because of the static angle.
It also had a theatrical quality because of the set. I found the set to be very pleasing to the eye. It reminded me a lot of Wes Anderson's films because everything in it seemed very deliberate, like it was in exactly the right place. This contrasted with the subject matter; the majority of characters were disheveled and were going through existential crises. They seemed not to belong to the pristine world of this elaborately constructed set. Many of the vignettes began with a character breaking the fourth wall and addressing the viewer, "Last night I had a dream," and the set successfully created the dreamy quality that many of the characters described. Andersson used colors that were very bright, vibrant shades and vibrant, but they were all washed out shades and seemed to be watered down. The fact that this film took place in contemporary time in an urban setting (an imitation of Stockholm) but all of the scenery was designed also added to the dreamy quality in which you know that you are in a specific place but it is different for some reason than the way you know it in reality.
Though it was aesthetically well put together, when it comes down to it, I think this is a film that you'll either love or hate. I happened to hate it. It had aspects of the absurd in which there were scenes that could certainly happen, but they never actually would because they are far out. All of the characters were caricatures whose actions were disgruntling. They found themselves in awkward situations which were laughable and pathetic. It was like Family Guy because it was so stupid that I felt bad laughing, though that is not the strongest comparison because that humor is slapstick, whereas Andersson makes you cringe and chuckle at other people's misery. Usually, what began as humorous lasted half a minute too long, leaving me as a viewer anticipating the next bizarre event, tapping feet hoping to escape the current misery.
Andersson admits that he has an expressionist influence, which I saw come through in this piece. The film was not so much plot driven as theme driven. It never focused on one character for too long but would switch between characters whose lives vaguely intersected. If any take away from You, the Living it would be, "when something is bad, it can only get worse." In one of the early scenes, a man is practicing the tuba in his apartment. It cuts to the man in the apartment below, frustrated with the noise bleeding through the ceiling. He bangs a broom against the ceiling to signal the tuba player to stop, but his broom banging ends up knocking down his chandelier. This pretty much sums up the "heads you win, tails I lose" motif. You don't get to really learn any intricacies of the characters. Instead they are all seen as one dimensional and are defined by a certain type of action rather than as multi-faceted. There is no passion for any of them, and ultimately, you don't really care that they are in miserable predicaments because none of them have depth. This is ultimately a very bleak film and even if you find it more amusing than I did, it will likely still leave you disheartened.