You, the Living (2007)

Original title

Du levande

Directed by

Roy Andersson

Genre

comedy drama, music-themed film

Country

Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden

Runtime

1h 34m

Rated

NR

Rating

7.1 of 10 from 261 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

The film is a series of short sketches about a group of unhappy people in a Swedish town. There is an overweight woman, a mean psychiatrist, a heartbroken groupie, and a carpenter among others. It looks at the small absurdities and sorrows of everyday life.

slow-burntragicomicbleakalienatingstaticwhimsicaldeadpanmelancholiccontemplative

What happens

You, the Living (Swedish: Du levande) is a 2007 Swedish black comedy-drama film written and directed by Roy Andersson. The film is an exploration of the "grandeur of existence", centered on the lives of a group of individuals, such as an overweight woman, a disgruntled psychiatrist, a heartbroken groupie, a carpenter, a business consultant, and a school teacher with emotional problems and her rug-selling husband. The basis for the film is an Old Norse proverb, "Man is man's delight", taken from the Poetic Edda poem Hávamál. The title comes from a stanza in Goethe's Roman Elegies, which also appears as a title card in the beginning of the film: "Therefore rejoice, you, the living, in your lovely warm bed, until Lethe's cold wave wets your fleeing foot." The film consists of a fluent succession of fifty short sketches, most with a tragicomic undertone. The cast is mostly non-professional, and alienating techniques are employed such as presenting the characters in grim make-up and having them talk directly to camera. The financing was difficult and the shooting took three years to complete. The film won the Silver Hugo Award for Best Direction at the 2007 Chicago International Film Festival and has received critical acclaim. The film also received the Georges Delerue Award for Best Soundtrack/Sound Design at Film Fest Gent in 2007. You, the Living was also Sweden's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 80th Academy Awards, but it was not selected as a nominee. It is the second film in a trilogy, preceded by Songs from the Second Floor (2000) and followed by A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014). (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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