Songs from the Second Floor (2000)

Why so much hype?

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR is the most incisive of Andersson's films. Every theme that we see in his later productions started here on a high note. In contrast to You, the Living and Pigeon. Here you might notice the plot, which evolves around furniture salesman Kalle (Lars Nordh) - even if you could see plot in movies reviewed above, I don't think it mattered there, but here one person is clearly in the spotlight. Two technical components are kept throughout all trilogy: scenes with no cut, directed from one angle and the silence.When it comes to themes, present in Andersson's movies, religion and Nazism, here they are extremely exposed. With the former I even had a feeling like the director was referring to Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal through the figure of flagellants. At the same time he feels perfectly fine with mocking the religion but not as a philosophy or ideology, but it's symbols or people associated with it. So a priest, to which Kalle comes, seeking some sort of council, responds like an entrepreneur. So selling figures with Christ on a cross is a great business. People gather around a former general to celebrate his 100th birthday and he, perceiving this as an elevated moment, wants to send greetings to Göring and does heil Hitler.Roy allowed himself to be bigger. He uses monumental frames and engages enormous amount of people. Neither of this is seen in the other two movies, where scenes are mostly from shot from a flat with couple of characters. Emotions grew with the size of the scenery and the crowd. Not like in You, the Living and the Pigeon here anger and despair are shown, not just articulated. I'm not judging whether is better or worse approach - although seeing all the emotions phlegmatic and stable shocked me more than all the expressions and outbursts.This is the weakest Andersson's movie in terms of interpretation possibilities. Scenes have either very clear message (an airport with bunch of people, dragging a pile of luggage is a criticism towards consumptions, people present there want to leave Sweden permanently and it's obvious, still they inform the viewers about that) or characters present directly their thoughts on life (life is a market; we cannot decide on our jobs, on anything, everything is controlled by fate). Andersson shows Kalle's compunction through conversations with a deadman and we don't have to guess that he did something to rush his descent.

This could be a good test to identify the top one percent of art house movie fans. For an average movie goer this film is a real hell to sit through. Don't expect a fun movie by looking at the "comedy" tag. It is an absurdist comedy, set in a bleak, gloomy city filled with pale people who are somehow devoid of humanity. It will leave a bitter taste in your mouth and probably haunt you. I myself wasn't in the mood for such a thing at the time I watched it and didn't enjoy it at all but I can see why some people like it. While I wouldn't give songs from the second floor a very high rating I suggest Roger Ebert's positive review, it sums up this movie pretty well.

I watched this movie the first time and I found it intriguing but kind of hard to stay with. When I saw it the second time two years later I laughed myself sick. The third time around, one more year gone by, I could hardly wait to see it again. To know this film was a masterpiece was not difficult, already the first time. To feel it, though, required the second time. It just physically works that way. The camera takes in so much with each shot, you can't keep up with it. And it's not simply that there are too many details in each and every composition. More than that, it's the difficulty of taking them all in digestion-wise. All the small pieces of information you may gather from watching add to an extremely dark view of the world. 'Mister Andersson' planned it all very carefully. It's like he was really-really fed up with everything in the matrix, you know, and decided to let his anger go by preparing for years for every single destructive shot included in the 'movie' (movie is not a really appropriate word, since it's rather static in fact), so that he could reveal the most about the ugliness he saw around himself. He invites you to a corner at some party you may not have enjoyed anyway, to a corner from which you can see all those present at the same time, and then he shows you how all those people around kill, maim and torture each other. And, to get you even more desperate, he also points out the strings attached to them: they are all puppets on strings, you see, they are doing what they are doing because their characters and their whole lives are structured in a given way stemming from reasons beyond anyone individually. Then he finally gives you some consolation by somehow putting what you see into an angle from which you can't help but laugh, not really cruelly, because it's about your own fate, too. It's just the emergency exit for the mind, for which the safest way out is delving into something totally different after watching this twisted reality show.

Brilliant film that is as funny as it is moving usually in the same frame. One of the great advertisement makers has used all his skill to make the funniest most beautiful and astonishing attack on all that advertising holds dear. He asks the question, Why is it not enough to be a good man amongst men? Inspiring stuff and worth a couple of visits. After all the shitty blockbusters coming out of this part of the world it is great to see a film maker and a country still pushing the boundaries with impassioned, brilliant and humane movie-making. makes me want to give up making crappy television.Danny Mulheron