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Movies / Upcoming / You, the Living
You, the Living

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You, the Living (2009)

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Reviews Counted:34

Fresh:34

Rotten:0

Average Rating:7.7/10

Consensus: Composed of humorous sketches of human behavior, Roy Andersson's You, the Living is an eccentric but highly entertaining and unforgettable work.

Runtime: 90 mins

Genre: Foreign Films

US Box Office: $0

Synopsis: Film Forum is proud to present the U.S. theatrical premiere of Roy Andersson’s You, The Living, an absurdist take on the everyday foibles of human nature. Andersson couples his iconic visual style... Film Forum is proud to present the U.S. theatrical premiere of Roy Andersson’s You, The Living, an absurdist take on the everyday foibles of human nature. Andersson couples his iconic visual style (stationary shots, a monochromatic palette of grays and greens) with a meticulous eye for composition (compared by some critics to the work of German painters Otto Dix and Max Beckmann) to yield a brilliant succession of dreamlike tableaux: a bride and her electric guitar-playing groom sail along in a house moving like a train; a distraught man complains of his financial woes while his wife tries to make love to him; a drunken woman shouts “No one understands me” to a bar full of silent patrons; a man waiting in line to buy a train ticket changes queues repeatedly, to no advantage. Running the gamut from quotidian struggles to big philosophical questions of love, sympathy and purpose in an uncaring world, Andersson brings a blast of distinctive Nordic humor to our universal woes.

Although he has directed just four features in four decades, Roy Andersson is one of Sweden’s most acclaimed filmmakers. His previous feature, Songs from the Second Floor, won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000 and had its U.S. theatrical premiere at Film Forum in 2001. In the mid-1970s, Andersson began a second career as a maker of humorous, exquisitely photographed, world-renowned television commercials for such clients as Citroën, Volvo and Lotto (which Ingmar Bergman once called “the best commercials in the world”). In 1981, Andersson founded Studio 24, a production studio in Stockholm, in order to produce his own movies in total freedom. The Museum of Modern Art will hold a full retrospective of Andersson’s work September 10 – 18, including the premiere of a documentary on the making of You, The Living. --© Film Forum [More]

Director: Roy Andersson

Director: Roy Andersson
Producer: Johan Carlsson
Studio: Tartan Films

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Reviews for You, the Living

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1 - 20 (sorted by rotten rating; Australian critics are listed first)
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Some of the sketches don't really work or don't blend with their cousins, but the snapshot approach means they are short.

Full Review Source: Urban Cinefile | comment Comment
08/03/08
Andrew L. Urban
Andrew L. Urban
Urban Cinefile
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Roy Andersson’s film is slow, rigorously morose and often painful in its blunt reckoning of disappointment and failure. It is also extremely funny.

Full Review Source: New York Times | comment Comment
07/29/09
A.O. Scott
A.O. Scott
New York Times
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Made of 50 short, stiff scenes of human behavior, shot as dispassionately as wildlife, Andersson is either stretching the definition of cinema or returning it to its roots

Full Review Source: Boxoffice Magazine | comment Comment
06/27/08
Amy Nicholson
Amy Nicholson
Boxoffice Magazine

a surreal still life that provokes the audience to find the absurdity rather than the tragedy

Full Review Source: Killer Movie Reviews | comment Comment
10/04/09
Andrea Chase
Andrea Chase
Killer Movie Reviews

this litany of human disconnection, misery, frustration and despair... would be an almost unbearably bleak mosaic of our living deaths, were it not for Andersson's profound appreciation of Chaplin's observation that comedy is tragedy seen in long-shot.

Full Review Source: Channel 4 Film | comment Comment
03/21/08
Anton Bitel
Anton Bitel
Channel 4 Film

More laughs -- belly-deep, thought-provoking ones -- are to be had in the first 10 minutes of Roy Andersson’s You, the Living than in all of Judd Apatow’s Funny People.

Full Review Source: New York Press | comment 4 Comments
07/29/09
Armond White
Armond White
New York Press

Surreal and absurd, yet oddly captivating and filled with a dry, sardonic sense of humor, stunning visuals along with provocative critiques of modern society.

Full Review Source: NYC Movie Guru | comment Comment
07/30/09
Avi Offer
Avi Offer
NYC Movie Guru

Again a very successful look at the desperate mess of modern life.

Full Review Source: european-films.net | comment Comment
05/24/07
Boyd van Hoeij
Boyd van Hoeij
european-films.net

Andersson is, at heart, an expert absurdist; to him, there is meaning in the meaningless and salvation in the ridiculous

Full Review Source: Filmcritic.com | comment Comment
07/28/09
Chris Cabin
Chris Cabin
Filmcritic.com

Jacques Tati’s puckish humor meets Ingmar Bergman’s angst in this erratic, eccentric gem.

Full Review Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune | comment Comment
04/17/08
Colin Covert
Colin Covert
Minneapolis Star Tribune

You won’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Full Review Source: Time Out | comment Comment
03/27/08
Dave Calhoun
Dave Calhoun
Time Out

Recalling the work of Jacques Tati, this is a grim but amusing and ultimately successful effort.

Full Review Source: Empire Magazine | comment Comment
03/27/08
David Parkinson
David Parkinson
Empire Magazine
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

“Keaton-esque” hardly begins to describe this brutally deadpan comedy by Swedish director Roy Andersson (Songs From the Second Floor), who seems to have translated the entire range of human misery into a loosely connected series of slapstick gags.

Full Review Source: Chicago Reader | comment Comment
08/20/09
J. R. Jones
J. R. Jones
Chicago Reader

Isn't quite the masterpiece it sets itself up as, but has lots going for it.

Full Review Source: Little White Lies | comment Comment
03/27/08
Janey Springer
Janey Springer
Little White Lies

A cold soup mix of Buster Keaton, David Lynch, Jerry Lewis and Terry Gilliam, hawking deadpan jokes as well as chilly, disheartening mean streaks in his blocky, deep-space single takes.

Full Review Source: Combustible Celluloid | comment Comment
06/07/08
Jeffrey M. Anderson
Jeffrey M. Anderson
Combustible Celluloid

To complain that Andersson's skits are difficult or boring to sit through because they seem too close to the pain of daily life is to pay them some kind of a compliment.

Full Review Source: MovieMartyr.com | comment 1 Comment
01/10/08
Jeremy Heilman
Jeremy Heilman
MovieMartyr.com

Essentially indescribable, You, the Living offers little help to anyone trying to get a handle on it in terms of a traditional narrative. But it can be quite funny if you're susceptible to Andersson's curious way of capturing the human comedy.

Full Review Source: Seattle Times | comment Comment
09/10/09
John Hartl
John Hartl
Seattle Times

One of European cinema's most distinctive stylists, and darkest humourists, returns with another tragi-comic panorama of the human condition.

Full Review Source: Screen International | comment Comment
05/31/07
Jonathan Romney
Jonathan Romney
Screen International

A morosely comic symphony on the meaning (or is that meaninglessness?) of life, Roy Andersson's You, the Living can be seen as a gentler companion piece to his 2000 Cannes prize-winner, Songs From the Second Floor.

Full Review Source: Variety | comment Comment
05/24/07
Justin Chang
Justin Chang
Variety
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

No one views the world like Roy Andersson does. That fact alone is enough to recommend the Swedish director’s latest collection of interconnected, often single-take vignettes.

Full Review Source: Time Out New York | comment Comment
07/30/09
Keith Uhlich
Keith Uhlich
Time Out New York
 
 
1 - 20 (sorted by rotten rating; Australian critics are listed first)
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