Just
as you can look at a Van Gogh and listen to Beethoven
many, many times, this is a film you can go back
to. It may sound pretentious, but even in cinema
you should be able to reach that level," says
Swedish director Roy Andersson. "What film
and art should always do is make life and
life conditions more clear, more obvious, to everyone.
Naturally you can neither solve, nor describe,
nor explain all the problems of the world in a
single picture, but I hope that Sånger
Från Andra Våningen (Songs From
The Second Floor) will help, as a reference
in discussions."
More
than anyone, Andersson knows that sometimes it's
best to hurry up slowly. Twenty five years ago
his second feature, Giliap, opened the Directors'
Fortnight at Cannes. Three hundred commercials
and a few shorts later, his third, Songs
From The Second Floor, took him four years
and $5.5 million to complete.
Referred
to locally as "the unknown genius of cinema,"
Andersson is the first Swedish contender for the
Palme D'Or since Bo Widerberg's Joe Hill was selected
in 1971. The musical score is a first by ABBA's
Benny Andersson, whose background is in Swedish
folk music and the film was sold to Denmark (Posthusteatret)
four years ago, simply on the basis of a rumour
that Andersson was making a feature comeback.
Sånger Från Andra Våningen
has only
45 cuts and stars first-time actors, some picked
up in the street or at restaurants, others chosen
among Andersson's friends, performing in a series
of carefully composed vignettes, apparently with
no logical context.
Portraying
the lives or "destinies" of 50 different
characters, it centres on Karl, a 60-year-old
furniture salesman, his mistress and his two sons,
in an episodic, slice-of-life pastiche of modern
urban society. " Sånger Från
Andra Våningen," Andersson explains,
"is about human vulnerability about humiliation
and respect but it is also about economics.
Guilt and reconciliation are important in the
story, but if I have to pick out a main theme,
it would be empathy.
"I
believe that the way of life in western society
inhibits human beings from realising their potential,"
he adds. "We are all swimming in this soup of
absurd values and heritage we were brought up
with. But perhaps we should start to accept that
we have ourselves created these circumstances
which render us helpless. When you see Songs
From The Second Floor you should get an
idea how stupidly we behave when you see
it, you are really looking at yourself. It should
give you the feeling of chaos getting closer and
closer."
Critically hailed as a masterpiece,
and an equal success with audiences, Andersson's
debut, A Swedish Love Story, won
the Berlinale Grand Prix in 1970. While the industry
was begging for a sequel, he waited for five years
to shoot Giliap, which in
spite of the slot in Directors' Fortnight
was slammed by reviewers and ignored by cinema-goers.
Discouraged, he withdrew from feature filmmaking
but set up his own production company, Studio
24, for shorts, documentaries and commercials.
The latter for, among others, Air France,
Volvo, Fazer, Lotto, Citroen and the Social Democrats
have brought him eight Golden Lions in
Cannes. "Many
people thought it was a shame for me that I did
not direct 'real' films, but in fact it was my
luck," he says. "I did not get involved in the
traditional film community, which always invites
compromise instead I found peace for work
and absorption. Naturally, in some ways I may
have made life difficult for myself, but I never
wanted to conform to conventions."
Working entirely in his studio at Sibyllegaten
in Stockholm, shooting with a skeleton storyline
and an initial investment of $900,000 out of his
own pocket, the project went on to attract further
finance from Scandinavian pubcasters DR-TV, YLE
TV, SVT, the Swedish Film Institute and the Nordic
Film and
TV Fund. Recent deals with ARTE's Co-Productions
Européennes and France's Studio Canal concluded
the packaging.
Set in an average town somewhere in the northern
hemisphere, the film takes place in an indefinite
time between the 1950s and the new millennium.
With only amateur actors, each scene was constructed
on the studio's two sound stages, whether a full
train station or a simple room with a skyline
seen out of the window. Some took up to five weeks
to set up, and required as many as a hundred takes
by one camera from a static position. If the director
was unhappy with the result, he would destroy
the set and start again.
"Nobody else is working the way he does," says
producer Philippe Bober. "He is practically
re-inventing film. In my opinion Songs
From The Second Floor is an absolute
masterpiece."
Jørn
Rossing Jensen
