You, the Living - 01 November 2009

You, the Living (Du Levande) is a series of comic sketches or snapshots featuring small groups of characters who seem unable to communicate with each other. People talk to the camera, rarely to each other. Each sketch portrays a simple delight in human dysfunction. A special kind of downbeat, often slapstick humour. It's a funny movie, yet one that keeps very gently tugging at a sense of existential seriousness. Something about dreams.

The film places itself under the sign of Goethe, with an opening title card that presents a quotation from the Roman Elegies: "Be pleased then, you the living, in your delightfully warmed bed, before Lethe’s ice-cold wave will lick your escaping foot". As all those classically-educated Swedes must know, Lethe is one of the several rivers of Hades, from which the shades of the dead drink to forget about their past lives on earth. Director Roy Andersson (Johnny Roova; Songs from the Second Floor) does not mean us to take You the Living entirely lightly, since he gives us a glimpse of a train bearing the destination "Lethe". There are echoes of Waiting for Godot in the combination of pained living and the chuckle-factor arising from others' (our own) distress.