2007: You, The Living (Aka Du levande) (95th!)

What else happened this year? On a personal level, I spent the year working, getting ripped and gorgeous, an enjoying my salad days with a variety of women who are now mothers. The rest of the world was of no interest then, and that remains so.

What is the plot - in one sentence? We follow a series of vignettes of life (and dreams) from a bunch of ill-looking people in an unnamed Scandinavian city.

I don't have time, just spoil it for me? It starts with a guy dreaming about bombers flying in to destroy the city, we see people, hear from others, and then it ends with bombers flying in to destroy the city – the main link seems to be a brass band who turn up at various points.

What is the meaning of the title? According to wikipedia The title comes from a stanza in Goethe's Roman Elegies, which also appears as a title card in the beginning of the film: "Therefore rejoice, you, the living, in your lovely warm bed, until Lethe's cold wave wets your fleeing foot. - it's a reminder of the inevitability of death.

Everyone is this kind of sickly pale colour. It made me miss Scotland.

Anything that's not aged well? Does a woman get slapped around? There’s no direct violence, but there’s a bit of dog cruelty possible, and a guy is racist to a barber, who in turns shaves his head in revenge – with his shaved head, he looks exactly like Louis C.K. - which is something you’d want more in 2007 than in, 2022 (I can’t believe it’s 2022).

Any thoughts? I think the point of this movie is to show how stupid various rituals we do are: there’s a funeral, a wedding, a weird thing where rich people dance on a table, but mainly it’s a chronicling of unhappy people living unhappy lives. Rich and poor, Nazi (yep) or not, they all have only a single place to drink, so they’re always there.

Other than members of a brass band being present in most scenes, there’s nothing to link it together but misery, so it’s a bit like a game of the Sims where everyone is depressed. The colour pallete and make-up are so that everyone looks like shit, so that might be something – is this hell?

One thing I will say, there is too much depiction and discussion of dreams in this movie.

Would you recommend this? For one thing, there were too many descriptions of dreams, and visualisations of said dreams. It’s unclear which were real and which weren’t. It kind of reminded me of 22 short films about Springfield episode, but not funny. It wasn’t terrible or anything, just interesting.

Final thoughts? Despite how recent this year was comparatively, it took me a long time to find a movie from here. When I found this, I had started, and it got removed from the online playlist, so it took me forever to find and watch again, and that frustration definitely influenced my viewing experience.

There’s one bit, however, where a young woman and a guitarist are in an apartment, which becomes a train (from a dream sequence) and the scene is excellent – their apartment travels through the country and comes to a stop at a train station where they're welcomed by friends. It’s very well done.

 Speaking of well done, you can read the rest of these, unproof-read musings if you click here!