You, the Living

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Simon T @MovieTart Nov 14, 2023 Roy Andersson is the Jacques Tati of Swedish cinema. Drily bleakly funny, his films are almost plotless, a chain of surreal sequences, the camera locked off, his actors usually affectless when not screaming. In a grey city a collection of unhappy pale-faced citizens wrestle with the small vicissitudes of living. Even their dreams offer no solace. Are they even alive? Uniquely engrossing. See more

Petros T @PetrosTserpelis Nov 9, 2022 Andersson knows how to create simultaneously naturalistic and surreal scenes that are relatable, poetic and even life-affirming. "Du levande" has a lot of those and the result is not only eye-catching but also occasionally resonant and funny. Yet at the same time it's merely the sum of its parts and nothing more. The first twenty minutes are the strongest: as soon as it becomes apparent that the many vignettes will never come together to convey anything concrete, they start to lose their power. See more

jordan m @starballer Jun 23, 2022 This trilogy as a whole didn't grip me the way it seems to have other people, but this installment is the best one and it really is quite good. It suffers from the same diminishing returns as the others where its premise of disconnected vignettes is just not strong enough to sustain a feature-length movie but several scenes in this one were genuinely funny and the half-hearted attempt at social commentary they put at the end was decent for what it was. The best part by far was the lighting; as a person who maxes out the brightness on every videogame I deeply appreciated them practically bleaching every scene with light. Also, this feels a little weird to even write, but the sound effects were noticeably good. Maybe it's because there wasn't much else to distract me from them but every sound effect was mixed well enough that it sounded like it came from the scene instead of being piped in. Anyway, even with some strong scenes it felt like they were dragging things out so as to make it to their 90-minute goal. See more

Apr 9, 2021 In a sad world and a sad city, sad people lead sad lives and complain that they hate their jobs and nobody understands them. The result is in some ways a comedy with a twist of the knife, and in other ways, a film like nobody else has ever made. Its director is Roy Andersson of Sweden. I've also seen "Songs From the Second Floor" and A Pigeon Sat On a Branch Reflecting On Existence". They are truly unique films of a singular type. "Songs..." is the one I still enjoyed the most, but this one is also a pretty remarkable movie, made with meticulous attention to detail in the sparse sets, that do so much to help set the sad, maudlin, desperate but also very familiar and relatable tone. The acting, again, is performed by unknowns, giving it even more authenticity by the rawness of their performances. But don't let all this fool you into thinking it's just one huge bummer. Andersson is quite skilled at bringing out laughs with his use of the absurd, the ridiculous, and the darkly comical in everyday life. If a sketch/scene or two get you feeling too lost, down or disinterested, the next one is liable to have you laugh out loud. Also, don't piss off your barber. 3.8 stars See more

Feb 27, 2021 Told in a series of comedic vignettes, "You, the Living" is an expertly-crafted look at the human experience, while also expressing a nation's fear and fascination of wartime. See more

Feb 13, 2019 One of my favorite films. Roy Andersson has this amazing talent of making you laugh just by arranging the elements in the frame in a certain way. See more

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You, the Living

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