The Reverse Mohawk
This could be a dream, or a series of dreams.
Roy Andersson's You, The Living consists of fifty or so short episodes staged in striking compositions in front of a locked-down camera with a wide angle lens. There is dullness and anguish, isolation and humiliation, but it's all treated with a strong sense of the absurd and seen through a sympathetic eye.
After his second feature flopped back in 1975, Andersson spent 25 years working in commercials, honing a very particular droll style. And though the segments here last longer than a thirty-second spot, the director's obviously very comfortable with the limitations of that form. A great percentage of his playlets pay off, and once you meet their rhythm you can appreciate the care with which each has been crafted. Scenes are mostly static, sets can be spare, the palette - beyond the bold brass splash of a sousaphone -- is muted, and movement within the frame is unexcited. But the image swallows the eye.
Characters are trapped in fixed situations and determined perspectives. Doomed to deep-focus gags and Dixieland jazz and skits of mundane despair. There are so many windows, so many expressionless faces staring through them; they're both powerless intruders on others' lives and hopeless victims of their own. Andersson's world is more awkward and arranged than surreal, but against images bleak and lovely he gives his prisoners some of the promise and all of the dread of dreams coming true.
