This film is totally absurd and that’s why I loved it. The film is like an Ingmar Bergman film if Bergman was a member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. The film starts off with absurd vignettes that establish a modern city, at the turn of the 21-century, that has gone into total chaos. In light of the fact that the Y2K catastrophe was just another miscalculated overreaction, the events of this film seem even more poetically ridiculous.
Director Roy Andersson takes pot shots at everything and knows the old statement that tragedy is comedy. What ties together the absurd gags is Kalle (Lars Nordh, LEADING ASTRAY) who, at the beginning of the film, wanders into a café with his face full of soot and yells at his son Stefan (Stefan Larsson, ANJA) for not taking the fact that his father’s business just burning down as all that tragic. Soon enough we find out that Kalle burnt down his furniture store on purpose to rook the insurance company into thinking he sold more expensive sofas than he really did. Kalle has another son named Tomas (Peter Roth, VÄGEN UT), who “wrote poetry until he went nuts.” One of the funniest scenes in the film takes place at the asylum when we first meet Tomas and it’s only a side gag like something out of AIRPLANE!
You truly have never seen another film like this one. It’s surreal like David Lynch’s MULHOLLAND DRIVE, but funny -- and equally as brilliant. The reason the film works so well is that through the various episodes Kalle serves as our guide and Stefan serves as the moral center in the midst of the insanity. What makes the film so brilliant is that anything can happen. Kalle randomly starts seeing ghosts. The soulless workers all look like zombies. Only the people who understand the phrase “beloved are the ones who sit down” seem to have any color in their faces. Everything that happens in this film is ridiculous, but we relate to it all because its humor is based on truths and the theme of corporate traditions sucking the hope and life out of everyone. Though things may seem random, they all connect to those themes, which are carried throughout every scene.
The film screened at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival and didn’t reach theaters in the States until 2002. This is one of the best comedies I’ve probably ever scene. It’s just that good. This is a requirement to see. You might not like it as much as I did, but you will certainly not forget it.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
