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Looking on the dark side of life
27 Mar 2008
Swedish director Roy Andersson’s follow-up to his wry Cannes prize-winner, Songs From the Second Floor, is another mordantly entertaining comment on the meaning of life — as near to Monty Python as a depressive Nordic bard can get.
It presents us with a succession of glum characters living out their lives in a dingy urban landscape.
A dog on a lead gets dragged haplessly across the screen by an old man. A psychiatrist worries about his finances while being straddled in bed by his Viking-helmeted wife.
An Arab barber revenges himself on a racist customer by cutting off all his hair. However embarrassing any situation appears, the onlookers simply ignore it.
If the director is a miserabilist who makes Bergman look like a regular happy chappie, at least his observation of us all is almost as good as that master’s.
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