Review of Songs from the Second Floor (2000) by Eric B — 28 Mar 2011

Like it or not, "Songs from the Second Floor" sustains a unique, precarious tone. I suppose it must be labeled a comedy, but it's the bleakest comedy imaginable. Perhaps it's a case of characters being so devastated that the audience is left with no response beyond weary, nihilistic chuckles.

Roy Andersson's detached portrait of a gray, joyless society introduces multiple characters, but this is a film about snapshots rather than stories. There's the incompetent magician, and the poor man he almost saws in half. There's the furniture salesman who burns down his store for the insurance money. There are his two sons: one ineffectual and lovelorn, the other institutionalized and mute. There's the other desperate salesman, who has decided representations of the crucified Jesus might be the one way to turn a profit. There's the adulterous doctor, and the senile real-estate mogul. There's the bedraggled executive planning to flee town. There are even a few ghosts walking around (naturally, their deaths were violent and unpleasant). Most haunting of all is the quiet little girl who is solemnly sacrificed, presumably as a last-resort ploy to generate prosperity. Meanwhile, traffic is at an apocalyptic standstill, and a pack of urban professionals trudges through town, miserably whipping each other. Are you laughing yet?

The narrative doesn't really advance any of these situations. Everyone is stuck. Even the camera is stuck -- it only moves once, and just barely. Most characters are made up to look ghoulishly pale, and this severe, dehumanizing touch makes it hard to even relate to them as people. Nuggets of philosophical wisdom pop up here and there -- "beloved be the ones who sit down," "it's not easy being human," "life is time, and time is a stretch of road," "it's all about buying something you can sell with an extra zero" -- but the script offers no solutions to the desolation it portrays.

Clearly, Andersson is an intriguing director. His carefully composed, geometric scenes make extravagant use of deep focus, sometimes to startling effect. A long conference table of withered department heads, a distant field suddenly filling with black-clad people, a procession of travelers pushing overloaded luggage carts...such images are not easily forgotten. But this is such a deadening film to watch. By the time you see an old man vomiting on a bar counter, dripping his yellow spew onto a floundering drunk girl below, you may be wondering if it's time to check out and pop in a Disney DVD instead.