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Sånger från andra våningen (2000) More at IMDbPro »

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94 comments in total

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55 out of 72 people found the following comment useful :-
a modernist masterpiece, 15 maaliskuu 2001
Author: Alice Liddel (-darragh@excite.com) from dublin, ireland

One of capitalism's favourite pretences, especially when making bogeymen of alternative ideologies, is that is is natural, the obvious orientation for any society, the inevitable result of progress, while all other systems are theoretical, foreign, applied. 'Songs from the Second floor', which could be subtitled 'Fall of the Western Empire', takes this assumption literally , and makes late capitalism the natural environment in which its drama plays itself out.

The ethics of capitalism are figured in architecture, in the way people compartmentalise and miniaturise their lives, the way they treat other humans, the mechanical way they move. The film's look is updated Kafka - the nightmarish bureaucracy, the endless corridors, where the individual is arbitrarily humiliated, furtively watched by a frightened audience behind adjacent doors. The recurrent motif of the film, besides the endless triangles, is of frames - there is not a single composition that doesn't give onto other frames: windows, doorways, corridors, elevators, streets, etc. - like a kaleidoscope, the mere switching on of a light can radically reconfigure these spatial arrangements. This might seem to open up a very claustrophobic world, suggesting another world beyond the rigid frame we watch; rather, it creates a hall of mirrors effect, one world reflecting itself, in a whole city, society, culture - a never-ending repetition of the same lifeless tableaux that comprise this way of life; a prison literalised in the infantilising case of the senile military commander.

Because this way of life is made to seem natural, feeding into the very buildings in, and gestures with, which people live, its collapse is not sparked by an external force, but results in an implosion of the environment, buildings toppling, the ground tilting like a sinking ship, the body, mind and society breaking down, a whole world grinding towards sterility and inertia.

This is where Andersson's career as the 'world's greatest advertising director' (dit Bergman) comes in. Normally a career in advertising results in films of glossy shallowness. Andersson takes a theme of Fellinian decadence - think 'Satyricon', 'Casanova', 'Ship of Fools' - where a sophisticated society begins to decline, where immutable buildings begin to crumble, crowd hysteria is let loose, where public rites frame primitive barbarism (the sacrifice of young girls to appease the pagan gods) are all filmed like an Ikea advertisement, full of antiseptic sheen.

The film could be described as 'The FAst Show' directed by Bunuel. The narrative consists of connected, but self-contained vignettes or sketches with a recurring set of characters. Most of them would be simply funny jokes in a TV show - the magician who really saws a volunteer's chest etc. All have the concentrated brevity of an advert, all the visual imagination and surprise necessary to capture the viewer's attention. But what the film is advertising is the decline of a soulless consumer society, a society where the minimalist surroundings reflect minimalist humanity, where human relationships (especially in families) are grotesquely alienated.

Despite its post-modern sheen, the film's source are very - gloriously old-fashioned modernist or classic auteurist - Fellini (especially the scene at the airport, where the escapees are bogged down by bulging luggage), Dreyer (the sensitive poet gone mad because of his society); Godard (the apocalyptic traffic jam and barbaric bourgeois behaviour); Antonioni. BUt the presiding spirit is Bunuel, with the 'Milky Way'/'Phantom of Liberty'-like surrealist picaresque narrative, full of bourgeois-baiting and random violence; the 'Exterminating Angel' scene where the civic and clerical worthies are paralysed in the hotel, frothing like distempered dogs; the perverse anti-clericism that convincingly creates a vision of hell climaxing in an ambiguous scene of resurrection (the crouching crowd in the fields) and despair (the rubbish heap of crucifixes).

What Andersson truly shares with Bunuel, however, is a skewed comedy, never letting the Big Themes get in the way of the rich detail - the wonderful scene with the tramp, rats and ex-girlfriend especially. For all its alienated style and dehumanisation, 'Songs', like Bunuel, is devastatingly, humanly angry, and somehow very moving. the meticulous smoothness of the filming actually creates an oppressive violence in the viewer, a desire to smash the whole glasshouse down.

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36 out of 38 people found the following comment useful :-
Haunting, 16 maaliskuu 2004

Author: bartman_9 from Belgium

A magician screws up and saws a volunteer from the audience in half. A man is trying to claim insurance from the shop he burnt down himself, while outside a procession of flagellants whip themselves into a frenzy. The city is plagued by an enormous traffic jam because for some inexplicable reason, everybody seems to be heading in the same direction.

In a series of loosely connected, beautifully shot, meticulously framed and brilliantly designed tableaux vivants, director Roy Anderson gives his unique vision on Western civilization, a vision that is often angry, absurd, dark, surreal and hilariously funny. It is set in a gray, sombre, anonymous city filled with grey sombre anonymous people who are all lonely, frustrated and searching in vain for salvation in a cold and uncaring universe. If there is a better metaphor for Mankind at the end of the twentieth century - or the beginning of the twenty-first - than this movie's final image I have not seen it.

'It's not easy being human' says one of the characters in this movie. No, but it's movies like these that make it worthwhile.

****

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25 out of 31 people found the following comment useful :-
THE FIRST MASTERPIECE OF THE CENTURY, 9 helmikuu 2001
Author: Kabult from Mexico

This film is just so amazingly interesting and well done. This surrealistic masterpiece is the first one of this century.

People calling it a series of meaningless vignettes clearly couldn't understand anything, if there's one thing in this whole movie, is MEANING. Meaning in every little detail of each one of those 46 shots. This is a movie about human condition and how we live with it.

The story is set on an apocalyptic night when, we asume, the world is about to end, se people, and us, start to think about our place in the universe and our place in our own hearts. The main character, a family man who burns his own bussines just to get the insurance money is just the first metaphore of our consumist, unhappy and life wasting society, in which everyone makes it all to satisfy their needs, even, of course, the sacrifice of their youth (which is shown in one of the most memorables scenes in movie history).

It's critical and often so cynical you just want to go, cause it's too cruel to listen to what it has to say, but in it's basicly human characters, you'll find the heart beneath the sarcasm, and you just might get moved.

This is terrific, like nothing I've ever seen before, and although I'm still waiting to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, I know this is the first really challenging and memorable (unforgettable) movie from the 21st century, a definitive masterpiece and a true classic, and as far as I'm concerned, one of the best movies I've ever seen.

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20 out of 24 people found the following comment useful :-
Sweedish Opera, 30 huhtikuu 2004

Author: of_mice_and_monks from United States

Songs From The Second Floor has been described as a poem put to film, but after viewing this emotional work of art, I can't help but to feel that a Swedish Opera put to film is a more accurate description.

Directed and written by Roy Anderson, Songs From The Second Floor is a visual and emotional masterpiece. Showing Swedish and to a greater extent all of society, through grey colored glasses.

The cast primarily consists of non actors who made an impression on Roy upon him seeing them in everyday life. All of whom make similar impressions on us the viewers upon seeing them in this film.

Kalle (Lars Nordh) is the heart and star of this movie. It's through his story (one of several) that we fully experience this Swedish Opera. The pain, sadness, guilt, and hopelessness of Songs From The Second Floor, can be felt in every slow moving moment of his life.

Religion, love, poverty, and poetry are all common themes throughout this film. Giving it an identity all of it's own. You could watch a hundred films with similar descriptions, and still consider Songs From The Second Floor the strangest and most original film you've ever seen......Highly recommended for those who liked Northfork and Russian Ark.

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14 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
Symbolic masterpiece, 12 marraskuu 2000

Author: Oskar Lidåker (lidaker@home.se) from Uppsala, Sweden

This is a masterpiece, with no doubt the best swedish film since Ingmar Bergman's "Fanny and Alexander" in 1984, probably one of the best ever. What could compete with it? Bergman's best films and maybe some of Bo Widerberg's, but it's hard too compare.

It's extremely symbolic. I haven't seen such a symbolic film before. Every scene is filled with details that forms a great and definitely personal way of expression. Roy Andersson has his own way to make films.

Though it takes a stand for the week in society, I can't say I experienced the film as being political. It more criticizes our hole civilization. It's too "odd" too win an Oscar, but more than any other film I've seen it truly deserves one.

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15 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
A breathtaking masterpiece, 26 toukokuu 2003

Author: Emma from Sweden

I would just like to say that, those who don´t like this movie must have a heart of stone and a mind that´s so blocked that you can´t see the connections to our society and the ways of man. Our loneliness, our longing for love, our inability to communicate. This film broke my heart, but at the same time it was a wholesome experience, and I was glued to the screen for as long as it lasted. I will never forget the pictures from this film, they still linger inside of me. It´s just so beautiful.

I recommend everyone to see this film! If you´re prepared for an inner journey.(And I know that some people are afraid of this kind of "deep" stuff)Not if you just want entertainment for the moment. If you want to see an action-loaded flick or a nice love comedy instead, fine, do so. But I say: If you´ll only see one and only one more film in your life, see this one!

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12 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
"Slapstick Bergman" indeed, 13 kesäkuu 2003

Author: -88 from new york

One critic described this film as being "Slapstick Ingmar Bergman"; it's a great joke, and in many ways a true one. I've never seen a movie like this before, and I haven't laughed so hard at one in years. Every single scene has something off-beat or funny happening in it, so that you may want to see it more than once. (I watched it twice in one day!) The best bit occurs when the businesspeople decide on a rash course of action to save the faltering economy. I won't spoil it for you but trust me, it's one of the blackest comic moments in all of film. Don't miss it!

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10 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
Bizarre and brilliant, 3 helmikuu 2005

Author: Ed Cowell from Cleveland, OH

SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR is honestly one of the best films I have seen so far in my years of cinematic appreciation. Alice, below, nailed it in her analysis, and there's little I can add that would be useful. I also agree with the critics who compared it to what would happen if Monty Python set their sights on Bergman. The film is both a character study and a meditation on humanity, filled with transcendent moments of beauty that left me completely stunned. It is also a biting satire of corporate greed and its effects on society, and the search for hope in a dying, empty world filled with people who've basically given up. SONGS is a great film that everybody should see.

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11 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
wonderful and touching movie about the misery of human life, 8 tammikuu 2002

Author: jozsefbiro from Budapest, HUNGARY

This film makes you probably sad and depressed, but it is a wonderful and touching movie about the misery of human life: the ultimate loneliness and hopelessness, which we do not like to think of, but have to face. As the film is based on poetry (by the to me unknown Cesar Vallejo), it does not have a straightforward story. Rather, it is a collection of scenes that all move you at an emotional level, as you see the vulnerability of all the people. The film is moving from reality towards surrealism, although you could see the strong surrealistic pictures as the real and hidden nature of our society, which fails to offer any help to these eternal problems. I should probably go to see this movie again so that I could grasp more from its symbolism, enjoy its excellent and unique film-making, and last but not least to feel it again. This film does not give you hope, but perhaps it makes you more sympathetic to other people, let them be alcoholics, immigrants, old, stupid, mentally ill or just simple "boring philistines".

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11 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
an extraordinary examination of a society not so far away, 28 helmikuu 2001
Author: (axel@lns.se) from Lund, Sweden

I have only seen this movie once and that is certainly not enough. The pictures contain more than our perception can handle. The general impression of the film is however, that Roy Andersson has performed a splendid diagnosis of our society, a society whose individuals no longer communicate, no longer interact. He shows us the result of a system that proclaims egoism and neglect. The message is clear: Only together, people can find a way to endure the tragedy of life, only together, we can enjoy the small fragments of happiness that life offers.

I encourage all non-Swedish people to see this film, 99,84% of the world population is not Swedish. This movie concerns all of you.

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