You, the Living movie review & film summary (2009)

So it goes. There are 50 vignettes in this film, almost all shot with a static camera, in medium and long shots. Sometimes the characters look directly at us and complain. A psychiatrist says he has spent 27 years trying to help mean and selfish people be happy and asks, what’s the point? A girl imagines her marriage with the rock guitarist she has a crush on. The tuba player is hated by his wife and his downstairs neighbor. A bass drum player is also unpopular when he rehearses.

This is the kind of comedy where you don’t laugh aloud, I think, although I’ve not seen it with an audience. You laugh to yourself, silently, although you’re never quite sure why. Andersson choreographs the movements of actors who enter and leave rooms, call off-screen or interact with other people we see in other rooms beyond them. He films in bedrooms, living rooms, kitchens, a bar, restaurants, offices, a courtyard, a barbershop and a bus stop in the rain.

Or it looks like he does. I learn that every space in this movie was constructed on a set. It took three years to shoot, was financed from six countries and 18 sources, and used mostly plain-looking non-actors. It is meticulous, perfectionist, in its detail. Andersson’s tone has been compared to Jacques Tati’s, and certainly they’re similar in constructing large, realistic sets that allow them to control every detail of the decor, sound and lighting.

There’s joy in watching a movie like “You, the Living.” It is flawless in what it does, and we have no idea what that is. It’s in sympathy with its characters. It shares their sorrow, and yet is amused that each thinks his suffering is unique. The alcoholic woman who complains over and over that no one understands her is all too understandable. She calls her mother a sadist for serving non-alcoholic beer with dinner: “What’s the point of living if you can’t get drunk?”

Several elaborate set pieces are masterful. One involves long banquet tables lined with joyous people in eveningwear who enact a peculiar, traditional ritual involving them standing on their chairs. Another involves a man who proposes to yank a tablecloth out from under all the dishes on a table. And then there’s the scene of the young woman imagining her honeymoon with the rock guitarist. This one I won’t say a word about: You have to watch it as it plays. Keep in mind that the film was all shot on soundstages. I believe the publicity blurb that states 26,200 screws were used in this production.

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