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DVD Review: Songs from the second floor

A man, a typical "office-slave" gets fired from his job. None of his co-workers care and hide behind the doors.

An old magician fails to do the "saw the man in half"-trick and saws an innocent man in the stomache.

An old gay couple is living a boring life. One of them is worried about that he fired a man from his job and the other one studies the amazing trafficjam outside the window.

Karl has finally burned down his furniture store and hopes that the insurance company will believe it was an accident.

Karl is the main character in the movie, but we´ll see all these different kind of people everywhere, just worrying about their lives and what´s happning to the city. Why is there trafficjams everywhere and why is the world going completely mad? It´s hard to describe the story in Roy Andersson's "Songs from the second floor", it´s more of a series of paintings, carefully planned and executed on the screen. Roy did this expensive movie without a scrip, relied on amateur actors and with a very downplayed dialouge. Most of the leading actors where found on the streets or in a store, either by Roy or someone else in his team, and using them was probably one of the best things he did with this movie.

Roy Andersson have been Swedens leading TV commerical director since 1968 and have recieved numerous awards for his very special and very personal TV commercials. Most of them are filmed like this movie: just one take, amatour actors and minimal dialouge. In 1970 he did "A swedish love story" and got a big hit on his hands. That resulted in more jobs with TV commercials and it wasn´t until 1975 he did his next film, the massive flop (but now considered a masterpiece) "Giliap". He went bankrupted and continuted succesfully with commericals. So it wasn´t until the year 2000 he did his third, and hopefully not his last film, the mighty doomday vision "Songs from the second floor". Even more inspired from his excellent short movies World of glory (a must-see... it´s impossible to describe) and "Something have happened" about the AIDS plauge and the roots of it, he has finally created the ultimate Roy Andersson-movie.

The film consists of 46 different scenes and set-pieces. Each of them are filmed in one take and with no camera movements (except for one scene, a slow tracking shot on a trainstation). The actors are mostly "ugly" (normal looking and not "movie stars"), painted very pale and bleak. There´s hardly any dialouge, and everything happens to the newly written, lowkey, music by ABBA´s Benny Andersson.

It´s a satire of the deconstruction of social welfares, the society and the people with the power. Ok, it´s a very Swedish movie. Depressing for some people. Extremely funny for others and just to arty for most of the crowd. To me it´s a very funny movie, black comedy at its best, but I believe most people will not describe it that way. But it´s still a powerful drama about lonely people and ghosts from the past. It´s a shame though to talk about it in Sweden, since our nation's way to act during WW2, which is still quite embarresing, but Roy have for the first time brought this up in a Swedish movie for the first time and have made one very funny scene, but still tragic and to some people very controversial. The scene shows a high military man, celebrating his 100th birthday and is totally way up in the blue, at the same time as his colleagues is gonna make a speach about his greatness. When they play a fanfare the old general´s hand is moving up in a nazi-salute and he says with a weak voice "Say hello to Goering..."

The film turns more weird and weird, and in the end the apocalyptic theme is very close. With the sacrifice of a pure child, dead rises from the earth and ghosts are haunting Karl. It never becomes a horror- or fantasytale, just a story about a man and his problems with the society around him. It´s heavy on symbolism, both a good and bad thing. Bad? Mostly because it´s almost to literal and that the film lacks of speed in the middle.

Technical it´s a triumph both for the Swedish filmindustry and for the art of film itself. This wasn´t a cheap film and Roy financed the film mostly himself, mostly without the help of the bad and very poor Swedish filmindustry. The sets built for this movie is HUGE...all, but one take, it´s carefully built sets that´s a must see, specially the airport that never ends, and the trainstation.

The Swedish DVD is excellent and filled with deleted and alternate scenes, a great one hour long documentary, test-clips of three scenes (just faboulus material), audio commentary and some b-reel footage. The picture and sound is sharp and clear, and for those who cares, it´s also in anamorphic widescreen. The bad thing about the extras are this: you can´t remove the audio commentary during the deleted scenes. It´s sad, because in one of them ("the lobster party") there´s dialouge which is impossible to hear now. The cover of the DVD also states that a trailer is included, although there's no trailer on it. Not good. It´s also a bad thing that this edition isn´t avaible with english subtitles.

I hope all you guys and girls out there are gonna have a chance to see this strange movie, even if some of you might find it lousy and boring but the rest the total opposite! :)

/Fred Anderson

(And a big thank to my close friend Rob who helped me correct some of the english spelling)