Combustible Celluloid


New movie reviews, DVD reviews, interviews, and all things film.

 
Home | Archive | About | Cinematical.com | Lists | News | Links | E-mail me | Sign up for my weekly newsletter!  
 



2009 Oscars
District 13: Ultimatum **1/2
From Paris with Love **1/2
Edge of Darkness **
Fish Tank ***1/2
Legion **
When in Rome *
More
 




Adam
The Bourne Identity [DVD/Blu-Ray hybrid]
The Bourne Supremacy [DVD/Blu-Ray hybrid]
The Bourne Ultimatum [DVD/Blu-Ray hybrid]
The House of the Devil
Import Export
More Than a Game
Ong-Bak 2
Zombieland
The 25 Best DVDs of 2009
More
 

Film Features

2009: The Year's Ten Best Films
The Decade's Ten Best Films: 2000-2009
My 2003 Interview with Brittany Murphy
San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards 2009
Richard Linklater
John Woo
Jared and Jerusha Hess
Essential Halloween Movies
Michael Stuhlbarg
Jane Campion
Bobcat Goldthwait
Hugh Dancy
Kathryn Bigelow
Willem Dafoe: The 2009 CineVegas Interview
David Carradine
A 2002 Interview with Edward Asner
Vinessa Shaw
Henry Selick
2008: The Year's Ten Best Films
The San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards 2008
The 25 Best DVDs of 2008
Bruce Campbell
Darren Aronofsky and Marisa Tomei
Josh Brolin
A Tribute to Paul Newman
Steve Coogan on Hamlet 2
Manny Farber (1917-2008)
Bernie Mac (1957-2008)
Emily Mortimer
Brad Anderson
Don Cheadle at CineVegas
Abel Ferrara at CineVegas
Tina Sinatra
My Top 100 Films [Updated]
My Top 60 Directors [Updated]
The Top 50 Movies of the Past Ten Years (1997-2006)
Terry Zwigoff on the new Bad Santa Director's Cut
Alfonso Cuarón Interview
Guillermo Del Toro Interview
Christmas Movies
Combustible Celluloid's Big Guide to Halloween & Horror Movies
Cult Movies
Actress Interview Gallery
The Top 100
More Features and Interviews
 

Film Books

Not Quite a Memoir: Of Films, Books, the World, by Judy Stone
James Agee: The Library of America Collection, by James Agee
Just Making Movies, by Ronald L. Davis
Guide to Essential Movies, by Joe Leydon
Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood, by Robert S. Birchard
Profoundly Disturbing, by Joe Bob Briggs
A Third Face, by Samuel Fuller
Dark Lover, by Emily Leider
Agee on Film, by James Agee
Lulu in Hollywood, by Louise Brooks
Negative Space, by Manny Farber
5001 Nights at the Movies, by Pauline Kael
More Books
 



Home
Reviews A-C
Reviews D-F
Reviews G-J
Reviews K-M
Reviews N-Q
Reviews R-T
Reviews U-Z
 

The online film magazine Combustible Celluloid offers new movie reviews, DVD reviews, film reviews, actor interviews, actress interviews, director interviews, film books and all things cinema related for the thoughtful and passionate. Online for ten years! Over 3000 reviews!

 
SEARCH MOVIES / CELEB

Advanced Search

 
© 1997-2009 Combustible Celluloid



Songs from the Second Floor (2000)

Rating: 3 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

Sad 'Songs' Says So Much

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy Songs from the Second Floor on DVD

Forget everything you know about current mainstream cinema. Forget plot or storytelling. Think back to Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali or Jean-Luc Godard with a dash of Terry Gilliam thrown in. Take that, refrigerate it until it's cold and blue, then add some goofy, odd elevator-type music, and you've got Songs from the Second Floor.

According to the press notes, Swedish writer and director Roy Andersson divides the film up into 64 distinct episodes, all filmed on a huge two-stage studio built just for this film. The result is a strikingly artificial, desensitized view of a dreary gray-blue society on the edge of something and looking down. Several characters turn up again and again, such as a furniture store owner named Karl who's burned his own store to the ground to collect the insurance. Each time we see him, he's covered in soot and ashes.

Karl constantly complains about his store and his son, who apparently, "wrote poetry until he went nuts," and now lives in an institution. The film starts us off with a quote: "blessed is the one who sits down," and this quote is repeated over and over by Karl's other son, a healthy lad who takes over the sick son's taxi driving job.

The problem with driving the taxi is that this particular Swedish town suffers from a seemingly permanent traffic jam. Cars line the streets, honking and blaring, and never moving. The sound of the horns is never far off -- no matter where we are we can hear them. A group of businessmen and women also walk the streets, chanting and thwacking each other with thick chunks of rope.

Despite the smothering dreariness, this somehow all becomes funny. In one bizarre scene, an immigrant searches for someone in an office building and a group of thugs finds him and beats the stuffing out of him. The beating takes place in wide shot with that weird, happy elevator music playing on the soundtrack, and though the scene is amazingly cruel, it struck me as oddly funny.

Likewise the scene of the magician performing the old sawing-a-man-in-half trick; only this time it doesn't work. He actually cuts into the poor man, who spends the rest of the film groaning in pain each time he turns up.

The film uses faith symbols in a similar way. A sleazy salesman at a convention tries to unload his collection of plastic crucifixes, complete with plastic Jesus (in the background, one Jesus comes undone and swings back and forth from one arm). The film takes place just before Y2K, and the salesman's predicting that everyone will turn toward faith. But later, this same salesman tosses all the Jesuses, large and small, onto a trash heap.

Songs from the Second Floor seems to be asking us point blank, "if the world is so grim, what's the reason you get up in the morning?" Is it faith in humanity, or faith in something higher? In one scene, a meeting of corporate giants is interrupted when someone notices the building across the street moving. Everyone rushes to the window except a soothsayer (complete with crystal ball), who stays in her seat. Another symbol of faith perhaps, leaving the "black arts" behind? Or just another joke?

I believe I've only scratched the surface of this bizarre, complex, hilarious, and highly artificial film. The reasons for living are numerous and not something we tend to think about daily. That alone makes Songs from the Second Floor a valuable and rare movie experience.

(This review originally appeared in the San Francisco Examiner.)

DVD Details: This great DVD comes with more extras that New Yorker normally comes up with: "work in progress" footage, deleted scenes, production notes, a making-of documentary and a director commentary track (in Swedish with English subtitles). It also comes with a Songs from the Second Floor trailer, plus four other trailers for other recent New Yorker releases. This beautiful film probably works better on the big screen, but its still, carefully composed frames will work just fine at home. For some reason, my copy did not come with a counter time code, which always aggravates me to no end...

Starring: Lars Nordh, Stefan Larsson, Bengt C.W. Carlsson, Sten Andersson
Written by: Roy Andersson
Directed by: Roy Andersson
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Language: Swedish with English subtitles
Running Time: 98 minutes
Date: August 17, 2001

Home
News
Search Reviews
Classic Movies
DVDs
Features
Film Books
Gallery
Links
About
The Rating System
Email Me
All scribblings © 1997-2010 Combustible Celluloid