|
''You, the Living'' ((スウェーデン語:Du levande)) is a 2007 Swedish film written and directed by Roy Andersson. The film is an exploration on the "grandeur of existence,"〔Andersson, Roy "(You, the Living )." Royandersson.com. Retrieved on 2009-08-04.〕 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 issues 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."〔(Johann Wolfgang Goethe: ''Erotica Romana, elegy XII'' ) – Project Gutenberg, English translation. Linked 2012-10-25〕 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 positive reviews. It is the second film of a trilogy, ''Songs from the Second Floor'' being the first and ''A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence'' being the third. ==Plot summary== There is no central 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: * A middle-aged woman (Elisabeth Helander) laments her misfortunes while being completely self-absorbed. Her boyfriend (Jugge Nohall) tries to comfort her and invites her to dinner. The woman later rejects an admirer in a trenchcoat (Jan Wikbladh) who tries to give her a bouquet of flowers. * A carpenter (Leif Larsson) has a dream in which he is condemned and executed for breaking a 200-year-old china set while trying to perform the tablecloth trick. * A pickpocket (Waldemar Nowak) steals the wallet of a high roller (Gunnar Ivarsson) at an expensive restaurant before he has paid the bill. * A psychiatrist (Håkan Angser) has lost faith in people's ability to be happy because of their selfishness, and now only prescribes pills. * A business consultant (Olle Olson) gets his hair butchered by an angry barber (Kemal Sener) before attending a meeting where the CEO (Bengt C. W. Carlsson) dies of a stroke. * A sousaphone player (Björn Englund) earns money by playing in funerals, including the one of the CEO. * A girl (Jessika Lundberg) finds her musical idol Micke Larsson (Eric Bäckman) in a tavern. He invites her and her friend for a drink, but ditches her by giving her the wrong directions to his band rehearsal. A while later at the tavern, she tells the people at the bar of the dream she had about him. In the dream, they have just married, and their apartment building travels on a railway into a station where people cheer for the happy couple. * A husband and wife (Pär Fredriksson and Jessica Nilsson) have a fight and they both dwell on it, causing them to get into trouble at work. 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. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「You, the Living」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|