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| Lars Nordh in Songs From the Second Floor |
Cast: Lars Nordh, Stefan Larsson, Bengt C.W. Carlsson, Torbjörn Fahlström, Sten Andersson, Rolando Núñez, Lucio Vucina, Per Jörnelius, Peter Roth, Klas-Gösta Olsson, Nils-Åke Eriksson, Hanna Eriksson. Screenplay: Roy Andersson. Cinematography: István Borbás, Jasper Klevenås. Film editing: Roy Andersson. Music: Benny Andersson.
As the date of its release suggests, Roy Andersson's Songs From the Second Floor is a millennial movie. It ends with crucifixes being heaped on a trash pile, and scene after scene suggests that capitalism is on its last legs. A conference room filled with executive types panics when one of them notices that a building across the street is moving, and the streets are filled with self-flagellating stockbrokers. Traffic is gridlocked, and ghosts from the past are stalking people. At one point, even human sacrifice seems to be attempted to free the world from its malaise. All of this angst is presented to us with straight-faced detachment as a series of incidents viewed through a murky atmosphere. It's a darkly comic apocalypse for a world in which everything, even a magician's attempt to saw a man in half, is going wrong. Songs From the Second Floor can leave you puzzled or depressed or even angry that the real world is too much like what it fantastically depicts, but it's not likely to leave you easily.
