[Dixielandjazz] "You, The Living"

[Stephen G Barbone]

Have any list mates seen this Swedish Movie, released last year? Note  
the third paragraph in the below review. <grin>

Steve Barbone

www.barbonestreet.com
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband



'You, The Living': a droll take on the daily grind

Swede Roy Andersson’s You the Living isn’t a narrative film so much as  
a series of existential vignettes about people with pallid complexions  
and dreary lives. The outlook is bleak but hilarious.

Much of the film's 94 minutes are spent recreating the elaborate  
dreams had by a steady stream of protagonists, whose waking states are  
so dour and depressing you wonder if they'd ever bother to set an  
alarm clock. Sight gags litter the landscape and a droll undercurrent  
results in each scene building to a darkly comic payoff. A suicidal  
woman is coaxed away from thoughts of topping herself by the promise  
of a baked dinner. A bad-tempered middle manager en route to a  
meeting, incurs the wrath of his barber. A weary psychiatrist  
complains about the self- indulgent patients that fill his waiting room.

Plus a wife who hates her husband's tuba and the miserable members of  
a Dixieland marching band which provide the film’s oddly inappropriate  
soundtrack.

The production values have the geometry and attention to detail of a  
Jeffrey Smart painting, albeit with a more restrictive colour palette  
of grey and um, slightly less grey. If you’ve seen Andersson's earlier  
work, Songs from the Second Floor, you're familiar with this truly  
unique filmmaker's deadpan delivery of a life-affirming message. It's  
cold, damp, dark and depressing. And it's brilliant.