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You, the Living
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You, the Living
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).
There is no plot, but some of the vignettes connect loosely. All the stories show the essential humanity of the characters and address themes of life, existence and happiness.
The film makes repeated use of distinctive cinematic techniques. One of these is dreams and how they reflect the fears and desires of the characters. Another is the use of music, in conjunction with dialogues and editing, both as background music and as performed on camera. The film starts with a monologue which ends up being sung to Dixieland jazz music being played by lone musicians, each in a different room in a different part of the city.
Stories in the film include:
The film ends with a montage of characters who stop in the middle of everyday chores to look up into the sky. Dixieland music is once again played as the camera is put on the wing of an airplane. A large formation of B-52 bombers appears in front of the camera as they fly menacingly in over a large city. This bookends with the opening scene where a man wakes up and tells the audience that he had a nightmare about bombers coming.
From very early on there was trouble with the financing. Andersson had to make regular visits to a pawn shop and several times the team paused production to make commercials, using the proceeds for the film. After being refused funding from the Swedish Film Institute, Roy Andersson accused the consultant of nepotism after he instead gave the money to a film directed by his father-in-law. That film eventually ended up receiving poor reviews. Eventually, with eighteen organizations from six different countries involved in financing the production, the total budget amounted to slightly over five million euros.
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You, the Living
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).
There is no plot, but some of the vignettes connect loosely. All the stories show the essential humanity of the characters and address themes of life, existence and happiness.
The film makes repeated use of distinctive cinematic techniques. One of these is dreams and how they reflect the fears and desires of the characters. Another is the use of music, in conjunction with dialogues and editing, both as background music and as performed on camera. The film starts with a monologue which ends up being sung to Dixieland jazz music being played by lone musicians, each in a different room in a different part of the city.
Stories in the film include:
The film ends with a montage of characters who stop in the middle of everyday chores to look up into the sky. Dixieland music is once again played as the camera is put on the wing of an airplane. A large formation of B-52 bombers appears in front of the camera as they fly menacingly in over a large city. This bookends with the opening scene where a man wakes up and tells the audience that he had a nightmare about bombers coming.
From very early on there was trouble with the financing. Andersson had to make regular visits to a pawn shop and several times the team paused production to make commercials, using the proceeds for the film. After being refused funding from the Swedish Film Institute, Roy Andersson accused the consultant of nepotism after he instead gave the money to a film directed by his father-in-law. That film eventually ended up receiving poor reviews. Eventually, with eighteen organizations from six different countries involved in financing the production, the total budget amounted to slightly over five million euros.