You, the Living

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Simon T Roy Andersson is the Jacques Tati of Swedish cinema. Drily bleakly funny, his films are almost plotless, a chain of surreal sequences, the camera locked off, his actors usually affectless when not screaming. In a grey city a collection of unhappy pale-faced citizens wrestle with the small vicissitudes of living. Even their dreams offer no solace. Are they even alive? Uniquely engrossing. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 11/14/23 Full Review Audience Member Andersson knows how to create simultaneously naturalistic and surreal scenes that are relatable, poetic and even life-affirming. "Du levande" has a lot of those and the result is not only eye-catching but also occasionally resonant and funny. Yet at the same time it's merely the sum of its parts and nothing more. The first twenty minutes are the strongest: as soon as it becomes apparent that the many vignettes will never come together to convey anything concrete, they start to lose their power. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/11/23 Full Review jordan m This trilogy as a whole didn't grip me the way it seems to have other people, but this installment is the best one and it really is quite good. It suffers from the same diminishing returns as the others where its premise of disconnected vignettes is just not strong enough to sustain a feature-length movie but several scenes in this one were genuinely funny and the half-hearted attempt at social commentary they put at the end was decent for what it was. The best part by far was the lighting; as a person who maxes out the brightness on every videogame I deeply appreciated them practically bleaching every scene with light. Also, this feels a little weird to even write, but the sound effects were noticeably good. Maybe it's because there wasn't much else to distract me from them but every sound effect was mixed well enough that it sounded like it came from the scene instead of being piped in. Anyway, even with some strong scenes it felt like they were dragging things out so as to make it to their 90-minute goal. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review luca j Roger Ebert described it as "It is flawless in what it does, and we have no idea what that is." Which is very accurate - although I think I would have enjoyed 'what it does' more if it was a little shorter. It was very good though, utterly hilarious in places and heartbreaking in others, and it's totally unique in what it is and how it looks Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member In a sad world and a sad city, sad people lead sad lives and complain that they hate their jobs and nobody understands them. The result is in some ways a comedy with a twist of the knife, and in other ways, a film like nobody else has ever made. Its director is Roy Andersson of Sweden. I've also seen "Songs From the Second Floor" and A Pigeon Sat On a Branch Reflecting On Existence". They are truly unique films of a singular type. "Songs..." is the one I still enjoyed the most, but this one is also a pretty remarkable movie, made with meticulous attention to detail in the sparse sets, that do so much to help set the sad, maudlin, desperate but also very familiar and relatable tone. The acting, again, is performed by unknowns, giving it even more authenticity by the rawness of their performances. But don't let all this fool you into thinking it's just one huge bummer. Andersson is quite skilled at bringing out laughs with his use of the absurd, the ridiculous, and the darkly comical in everyday life. If a sketch/scene or two get you feeling too lost, down or disinterested, the next one is liable to have you laugh out loud. Also, don't piss off your barber. 3.8 stars Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/26/23 Full Review Audience Member Told in a series of comedic vignettes, "You, the Living" is an expertly-crafted look at the human experience, while also expressing a nation's fear and fascination of wartime. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/27/23 Full Review Read all reviews

You, the Living

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