20th Century Still-Life

Sånger från andra våningen (Songs From The Second Floor)(2000)

Directed By Roy Andersson

Songs From The Second Floor, is the second feature from director Roy Andersson, whose spent his career making according to fellow Swedish director and film legend Ingmar Bergman, "The best commercials in the world". This film the first in a stylistic trilogy beginning here, going onto "You The Living", and to conclude with what director Andersson says "a third enormous, deep and fantastic, humorous and tragic, philosophical, Dostoyevsky film." Anderson takes an advertisers eye to this film and inverts it, into around 40 or 50 short vignettes, some with recurring characters, like the man seen on the cover who has burned down his business to collect the insurance but bumbled the job, while most include walk-ons, and many characters drift in an out of scenes before the movie ends. These short vignettes are nearly all deadpan and absurdist tragi-comic advertisements for peoples lives broken or on the verge of breaking.The antagonist, if there must be one, is capitalism (a subject which the commercial making Anderson is very much aware), and it's de-humanizing effects on all its touch.As melancholy and bitter as all this sounds, the material is played more often than not for laughs. There's a scenes where a traffic jam has clogged the city, as if everyone were leaving at the same time, a girl is blindfolded and lead of a cliff by her village elders, her entire town, and gathered officials, a man accidentally sawed in half by a feeble magician, men and women in business attire walking down streets in parade's flailing themselves as an act of penance to God so he will prevent the further falling of stocks (an allusion to Bergman's The Seventh Seal, where flailing was done to ward off the black plague), and our hero a failed salesman who made a poor investment in large crucifixes, who suddenly is aware of, having conversations with and being followed around by the ghosts of friends and strangers from throughout time (we even see a vignette which tells the story of the one of the ghosts deaths).[throwing away Christ crucifixes he couldn't sell] "Business Man: I am so embarrassed, my face is red. I staked everything on a loser." If that weren't to dazzle your attention, each scene is composed with a static non-moving camera, giving every moment the detailed composition of a photograph or painting.The movie is an requiem for a homonogized (drained of color and life, like each set and character) culture and the global snare of first world capitalism (the gridlock the permeats the background, seen through windows or just down the street).It's characters are living just before the new millennium, and are entering plauged by ghosts, worshiping corporate gods, and damned to etnernal traffic gridlock. The film's unobtrusive stand off aesthetic and brief narrative structure prevents the audience, from any long term identification and investment in any particular characters, though our portly business man who sees dead people clearly gets the most screen time. The punch-line wit and unpredictable nature of each individual scenario is what slowly snowballs into the film head long into a savagely clever and unique black comedy avalanche. It's a slow crawl getting there, like the Night Of The Living Dead throwback, as the ghosts slowly close in our hero, yet scatter like squirels as he throws rocks at them. It's like a lyrical Monty Python film, or a bleak, bleached, Wes Anderson, and yet again it's a film all it's own, structurally, conceptually, and aesthetically, if your interested in where film-making may be going in the future and right now, Songs From The Second floor, is the movie to see, and one of the best of the new millennium. Kalle: "He wrote poetry till he went nuts!"

A Children's Book Of Hauntings

Fanny And Alexander(1982)

Directed by Ingmar Bergman

The first half of the movie seemed so light and inconsequential, I was tempted to turn it off. Later I realized the carefree beginnings were there to contrast with the second half, were the movie really begins.
By the time of the fathers collapse, during the performance of Hamlet, it picks up in a very satisfying way. "I can play the ghost now".
There are some problems though, most obviously the title, Fanny is essentially furniture to this story of primarily Alexander, and maybe his grandmother.
Also the androgynous Ismael was a bit of a dissapointment, how many evil, dangerous, malicious androgynous characters are used in films purely to equate sexual ambiguity with dysphoria, the persian king in "300", Satan, in Mel Gibson's "Passion", etc.
However at the other end of things, the scene where Alex encounters God, is not just irony and schock(though it has both values), but an astute theological observation, reminding me of the only Deridda quote that ever really stood out to me, about how "One cant name one's monsters, because naming them instantly reduces them to pets.", a thousand bad horror films can attest to that, and if you replace, "name" with "see", and "pets" with "puppets", and "monsters" with "God" it works here as well.
In the long run though, this does feel like Bergamn's most mature effort, like Tartovsky's "The Sacrifice",(also that directors last film, which was a bit like a Bergman film too, come to think of it), rose above typical euro art film tragic cynicism, with a helpful dose of late in the game magic realism. Magical Jews save the day!
But this magic isnt just the result of a need for a happy ending, but a crucial statement about how to get out of the pit of the despair, that so many of Bergman's earlier characters find themselves hopelessly trapped in.

When all else fails it takes the impossible and the absurd sometimes to balance things, if only momentarily.

At the end Alex is still haunted as he probably always will be, but perhaps in time he can, in another way, learn come to make a pet of his ghosts.
I only watched the three hour version though(apparently there's a 5 hour one....), so its possible and likely I am completely off, but that's what I got out of it.

It's not perfect, but it's engrossing, effective, unique, and charming. And not at all as wierd I make it out to seem, not at first anyway.
A simple story about some kids whose father dies, the mother remaries and they are all unhappy untill....
Also a brief cameo from a glow in the dark mummy.

Young People Today

Låt den Rätte Komma In (Let the Right One in) Directed by Tomas Alfredson(2008)

It's easy to like a film this laid back and comfortable with it's character driven very cute, but not sentimental, vampire story about 12 year olds.
The plot is pretty self explanatroy, new girl moves in(at night), and shy boy next door slowly be freinds her. We, the audience, of course know what's going on long before all of the characters do, and it comes as minor revelation; what's a little vampirism in the face of young wuv. I'm not sure though, that this movie is all sweetness, as Eli (the girl next door), we know is not a 12 year old, and as this sinks further in, and you look at her relationship with her "Father/Henchmen/Renfield" in the movie, Oskar and Eli's relationship seems much more unhealthy/uncertain.
The special effects were used at a minimum, which gave the moments when it was in full effect, their weight and gravitas. Except for the scene with the cats, which was a hilarous misfire (or intentionally comic), either way it was funny. "Let The Right One In" is as much a cautionary tale of vampires, as it is of relationships, and who we allow into our lives, (The vampires in this film can't enter your home until invited). Some will find it too slow. I thought it was charming and pretty, which is unusual for a vamp flick, especially now-a-days.
The pool scene is great. The audience applauded. A good start for the Six Shooter film series (a project designed to give the best 6 genre films from around the world, Stateside distribution.)

Portrait Of The Artist As Young Men

Reprise

Directed by Joachim Trier(2006)

Good direction, great soundtrack, dialog, editing, a surprisingly full movie from a first time director.
Two Norwegian friends in their early twenties Philip and Erik, submit there first manuscripts on the same day, one is accepted and becomes a critical darling, the other swims in a sea of rejection letters. In the first five minutes we see at least two altered timeliness of what might have happened to these characters had they both been accepted or had they both been rejected, Run Lola Run style in accelerated montage lead by voice over.
The world which could have been, is then followed by six months later, when Erik is getting out o mental institute after a having suffered a breakdown sometime before, Philip is sticking with him, keeping a spare key, making sure he takes his medication on time, and still trying to get his own work published, which it shortly is.Erik and Philip, and their motley crew of friends like the the crude Morten singer of such classic punk songs like "Fingerfucked by the Prime Minister", and the intellectually over-zealous "Porno Lars", all hang out and well just hang out.Erik is trying to recreate his obsessive relationship(against Dr.'s orders), going as far as to meticulously re-create a trip they took to Paris. Philip is debating whether or not to dump his girlfriend so he can sew his whitely oats, and trying to escape the shadow of Eirk and their hero Stein Egl Dahl, their favorite author who also happens to live in their home town.
As the title suggests, the film is about these characters trying to re-create, re-capture the past, which can be both a good thing and a bad thing. Are you holding onto your dreams or are you clinging to them, are your friends a support group or a crutch to keep out the "real world", do you really love her, or is she just an obsession, should you leave him, or are you just selfish. Is there any way to escape cliche and live "genuinely"? These are questions which are especially pertinent to the coming of age twenty somethings in the film, but they are universal questions everyone probably at numerous times in their life will have to face. And this film captures them, the highs, the lows, and the cream filled centers...good stuff.