| You, the Living | |
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 Swedish cinema poster | |
| Directed by | Roy Andersson |
| Written by | Roy Andersson |
| Produced by | Pernilla Sandström |
| Starring |
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| Cinematography | Gustav Danielsson |
| Edited by | Anna Märta Waern |
| Music by | Benny Andersson |
Production company | |
| Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 95 minutes |
| Countries |
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| Language | Swedish |
| Budget | 44 millionSEK |
You, the Living (Swedish:Du levande) is a 2007Swedishblackcomedy-drama film written and directed byRoy Andersson. The film is an exploration of the "grandeur of existence",[3] 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 problems and her rug-selling husband. The basis for the film is anOld Norse proverb, "Man is man's delight", taken from thePoetic Edda poemHávamál.[4] The title comes from astanza inGoethe'sRoman Elegies, which also appears as a title card in the beginning of the film: "Therefore rejoice, you, the living, in your lovely warm bed, untilLethe's cold wave wets your fleeing foot."[5]
The film consists of a fluent succession of fifty shortsketches, most with atragicomic 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 2007Chicago International Film Festival and has received critical acclaim. The film also received the Georges Delerue Award for Best Soundtrack/Sound Design atFilm Fest Gent in 2007.You, the Living was also Sweden's submission for theAcademy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the80th Academy Awards, but it was not selected as a nominee.
It is the second film in a trilogy, preceded bySongs from the Second Floor (2000) and followed byA Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014).
There is no 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 toDixieland jazz music being played by lone musicians, each in a different room in a different part of the city.
Stories in the film include:
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 ofB-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.
From very early on there was trouble with the financing. Andersson had to make regular visits to a pawn shop[6] and several times the team paused production to make commercials, using the proceeds for the film. After being refused funding from theSwedish Film Institute, Roy Andersson accused the consultant ofnepotism after he instead gave the money to a film directed by his father-in-law.[4] That film eventually ended up receiving poor reviews.[7] Eventually, with eighteen organizations from six different countries involved in financing the production, the total budget amounted to slightly over five million euros.[8]
For the casting, Andersson or an assistant approached people on the street and asked them to participate. Amateurs were preferred to professionals because of the greater selection and the problem of asking renowned actors to take small parts.[9] The exception was Bengt C.W. Carlsson, a professional actor, in the role of the CEO.[10] Actors from Andersson's previous feature films and commercials were also reused.[9]
The film was shot in Roy Andersson's own studio inÖstermalm,Stockholm. The filming of the scenes took three years to finish. "It is not the shooting itself that takes time, but the work on creating the environments. We built almost all the sets in the studio, even those that took place outdoors. Most of the time we started from Roy's sketches," said Johan Carlsson, production manager.[8] There is one single scene that wasn't shot in studio, featuring a bus shelter in heavy rain. It had to be shot outdoors because of the huge amount of running water.[4] Nothing in the film was made withcomputer-generated imagery. The city seen from above in the final shot was a large model built solely for that scene.[11]
The colour scape was designed to have a minimum of contrast, which the director believed would create more intensity. Lighting was arranged to leave no shadows: "I want light where people can't hide in – light without mercy."[12] Andersson is famous for his many takes of each scene, although this time he claimed it went smoother than usual: "max. 40–50 takes and sometimes under ten!"[9]
For the musical score, Roy Andersson originally approached formerABBA memberBenny Andersson, who composed the theme for the director's previous film,Songs from the Second Floor. Benny Andersson was however occupied with theMamma Mia! film adaption, and declined. Some of Benny Andersson's music fromSongs from the Second Floor was rearranged and used.[10] Much of the music is played asmarch music andtraditional jazz. "I have played this type of music myself and thought it was about time it got featured in a film. Moreover, I am fascinated by the unsuspecting music that existed in the 1930s when Nazism emerged," Andersson explained in an interview.[9]
A melody featured on several occasions is "En liten vit kanin", in English "A Little White Rabbit", a song that was recorded byEdvard Persson in the 1930s and became very popular in Sweden.[9] Another song used is the religious "Jag har hört om en stad ovan molnen", literally "I Have Heard of a City above the Clouds", originally based on a Russian folk melody and often played at funerals in Sweden. This song was originally planned to be used during the ending sequence, but eventually Andersson decided to use a more energizing jazz tune instead: "I want the audience to leave the theater with a little more lust for opposition."[10] Other songs include the German university song "O alte Burschenherrlichkeit" with Swedish lyrics by August Lindh, and the original song "Motorcykel", performed by Stockholm Classic Jazz Band and with lyrics by Roy Andersson.[13]
You, the Living premiered at the2007 Cannes Film Festival, as part of theUn Certain Regard selection.[14] It subsequently played at several other film festivals, includingToronto International Film Festival on 7 September 2007 andChicago International Film Festival on 8 October 2007, where Roy Andersson was awarded the Silver Hugo for Direction "for his extraordinary, quirky vision and humor."[15][16]
On 21 September 2007, the film was released in Sweden. It was sold to fifty countries,[17] including theUnited Kingdom where it was released on 28 March 2008. On 29 July 2009 it premiered in the United States, limited toFilm Forum inNew York City.[18]
The film was well received by Swedish critics, with an aggregate rating of 4.1 out of 5 based on 22 reviews at Kritiker.se, which made it by far the highest rated Swedish film of 2007.[19] Carl-Johan Malmberg atSvenska Dagbladet called Andersson "the black diamond of comedy in Swedish film life." Further, he compared the casting toVittorio De Sica's 1948 filmBicycle Thieves, and the usage of the cast to "a fastidiousSamuel Beckett".[20]
The international response was also positive. The film holds a 98% approval rating onRotten Tomatoes, based on 43 reviews, with an average rating of 7.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Composed of humorous sketches of human behavior, Roy Andersson'sYou, the Living is an eccentric but highly entertaining and unforgettable work."[21] OnMetacritic the film has a score of 81 out of 100, based on 14 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[22]
Peter Bradshaw atThe Guardian gave it 4 out of 5 and called it "the work of a real original – I might almost say a genius. He is radically different from anyone else, with a technical, compositional rigour that puts other movie-makers and visual artists to shame. And he really is funny."[23] In an early Cannes review forVariety, Justin Chang was mainly positive although he still found that "a certain repetitiveness does eventually seep into the structure, and one could complain that the individual scenes don't ultimately build to anything (or that the arrangement of scenes is fairly arbitrary)."[24]
Mexican directorAlejandro González Iñárritu listed the film in his top ten favorites for the 2022Sight and Sound poll.[25]
In addition to the awards and nominations,You, the Living was also Sweden's submission for theAcademy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the80th Academy Awards, but it was not selected as a nominee.[26]
| Award | Category | Name | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chicago International Film Festival[16] | Best Director | Roy Andersson | Won |
| European Film Awards | Best Director | Roy Andersson | Nominated |
| Fantasporto[27] | Directors' Week Award – Best Director | Roy Andersson | Won |
| Film Fest Gent[28] | Georges Delerue Prize | Benny Andersson | Won |
| Grand Prix | Nominated | ||
| Gothenburg Film Festival[29] | Audience Award | Roy Andersson | Won |
| 43rd Guldbagge Awards[30] | Best Film | Pernilla Sandström | Won |
| Best Director | Roy Andersson | Won | |
| Best Screenplay | Roy Andersson | Won | |
| Best Cinematography | Gustav Danielsson | Nominated | |
| Nordic Council[31] | The Nordic Council Film Prize | Roy Andersson, Pernilla Sandström | Won |
