Du levande / You, the Living

Roy Andersson: Du levande / You, the Living (2007).

Sinä elävä.
    SE © 2007 Roy Andersson Filmproduktion and six other companies.
    P+D+SC: Roy Andersson.
    92 min.
    Finnish subtitles by Anitra Paukkula.
    Released by Cinema Mondo.
    Viewed on Friday, 2 November 2007, at Maxim 2, Helsinki.

AA: Roy Andersson's fourth feature film in his 40-year career. His unique style has a resemblance to early cinema: long shots, long takes, no camera movement, depth of field, faces heavily made up. There is a strange pallid light in the film. Andersson's is a personal version of surrealism, with absurd things happening in mundane surroundings. One could compare his film with a collection of poems. This one has a motto from Goethe's Roman Elegies:

Therefore rejoice, oh thou living one,
blest in thy love-lighted homestead
Ere the dark Lethe's sad wave
wetteth thy fugitive foot

Andersson's observations are on the depressive side, yet permeated with humour. The audience laughed a lot, in the right places.