Swedish oddball director Roy Andersson’s new film tromps to the portly rhythm of brass band jazz whilst taking an unashamedly existentialist glance at an absurd and quasi-comic world. Tone and essence are the winners here over narrative and progression (of which there is little), leaving a film that is felt as much as it is understood.

Andersson’s form of inquiry presents itself through a series of acutely observed ‘everyday’ vignettes that respond and interact without properly intersecting. There’s the alienated and aging biker, the man left out in the rain whilst waiting for a bus, and the managing director who dies during a business meeting, to name but a few amongst many. Each tableau lasts only a couple of minutes, is uniformly shot in one (well constructed) take, and dances a line between the sombre real of our world and the overt comedy of near-grotesque exaggeration.

At the heart of proceedings, You The Living ticks to the bass drum of its opening quote; “Be pleased then, you the living, in your delightfully warmed bed, before Lethe’s ice-cold wave will lick your escaping foot” (taken from Goethe’s Roman Elegies). From beginning to end Andersson’s mind cartwheels along brazenly creative pathways, exploring miserablist trivialities whilst returning to the existentialist spirit of Goethe’s poem. It is, however, in relation to that one line where the film both sinks and swims.

As with Goethe, there is an intellectualist sensibility that is held together with a light touch throughout You The Living. Any director with the balls to make a feature film lacking in narrative whatsoever has to achieve real craft in maintaining his audience – and Andersson does so with impressive brio. The film’s fabric – it’s minimal mise-en-scene, festering palette, and perfectly nostalgic music – functionally replace narrative as the element that swallows our attention. After the first half hour, You The Living passes by surprisingly quickly, and Andersson seems to prove that you can suspend disbelief through tone as well as story.

And yet, whilst the film perfectly articulates the absurdity of man in the face of an indifferent universe, it sometimes loses the sneaking comedy of Goethe’s line in favour of an all-too-obvious attack. It’s rare, but Andersson does go wrong occasionally, as with the man who tries to join an empty queue in the supermarket, only for two people to quickly jump in front. The scene continues (he keeps switching and getting pushed back), and increasingly it’s as though you can feel Andersson standing on a stage behind the screen, microphone in hand, wailing ‘What’s up with that?!’. There’s a violation of Goethe’s measured humour in this stand-up routine, which is a shame since it’s upheld so thoroughly during the majority of You The Living.

Still, let’s not be too critical. Andersson’s film is gutsy, thoroughly heartfelt, and makes what is probably the best use of a tubby old trombone in cinematic history. It’s ending is also tremendous, and ensures that you, the living viewer, are not exempt from that lick of Lethe’s ice-cold wave.


4/5