Flak Magazine: Review of Songs from the Second Floor, 9-3-02

Sure, the economy may be in the toilet, but you won't complain about the current state of affairs after watching Roy Andersson's dreary, comic portrait of economic desperation and social collapse. The bottom falling out has caused Kalle, the rotund anti-hero of Andersson's third feature, Songs From the Second Floor, to burn down his business to collect insurance. Those fleeing this gray, anonymous Swedish city have caused an endless sea of traffic. The nation's wealthiest man sits captive in his hospital bed, desperate and alone. A young girl is pushed from a cliff as a sacrifice to stop all this. Yet it's one of the funniest films of the year.

These loosely tied vignettes circle around Andersson's opening mantra, "Blessed is the one who sits down" — an appropriately vague statement of intent, since Andersson never fully reveals what's happening in these characters' tormented minds. Each comes with either a grain of salt, like the inept Kalle periodically visiting his committed son who "wrote poetry 'til he went nuts," or a tongue in a cheek, like the wealthy, elderly mute invalid who draws crowds of speechless adherents. Divided into about 60 short scenes and a half-dozen non sequitur storylines, the film resonates with a tone as foreboding as the best of Terry Gilliam or David Lynch, and with similar wit.

With Songs, the Swedish director makes a mockery of dread, ennui and quiet desperation in a world where God won't respond. When a friend of Kalle's turns to crucifix sales — a sure profit-maker in these uncertain times — how can we help but laugh when he later curses the things as he hurls them into a pile and flees town? Andersson's ability to find humor in the awkward makes Songs work as a fiendish dark comedy. But knowing this was made before the current drop in the world economy (Songs won the jury prize at Cannes in 2000 but is just now making its way stateside) turns the film into an eerily nondescript prophecy. As the millennium approaches, Andersson's characters find their world falling apart around them, with few options as their sanity begins to slip away. Their anarchic lives are juxtaposed with absurdist humor, such as the enthused magician who mistakenly hacks his audience volunteer during the saw-through-the-box trick, or the whimpering, laid-off employee clutching his boss' leg as co-workers secretly peer out their doors to see him dragged along. In this town, tragedy makes comedy.

Andersson refuses camera movement, opting instead to set his camera down (perhaps in a nod to the film's mantra) and compose meticulous scenery for his characters to drift through. It's a daring move that doesn't once fall flat; in fact, it's especially entertaining to see the screen filled so creatively, as we are given opportunity to ingest the lush cinematography and set design. For example, as Kalle watches his crucifix-cursing friend head back towards the city in the distance, several of Kalle's personal demons appear from the ground in the opposite direction and slowly drift towards our hero; in an attempt to scare death off, Kalle yells and flails, and the undead lie down, disappearing into the ground, only to reappear when he turns his back. There's constant onscreen motion in this simple, prolonged take, but the camera stays perfectly still. In another scene, Kalle stands on the Metro, soot-covered from his act of arson, when suddenly his fellow passengers break into the ethereal song playing on the film's soundtrack. Kalle can ignore this song from upstairs because, as Andersson's protagonist, he knows that God is dead, and his days are numbered too.

Throughout the film Andersson deals thematically with the silence of God as the world crumbles around his cast, all but name-checking fellow Swede Ingmar Bergman, well-known for his "Silence of God" trilogy. Bergman once cited Andersson's commercials — the work for which he is primarily known — as "the best commercials in the world." These spots, airing primarily in Europe, have won several awards over the years, including the Golden Lion at Cannes in 1995. Now that he has presented us with Songs, perhaps the faltering international economy doesn't seem so bad after all — maybe a depressed advertising market will push Andersson out of the commercial realm for good and keep him creating original, intelligent cinema.

— Kevin Dolak (kdolak at mindspring dot com)