■Title: "You're Alive"
■Director: Roy Anderson
■Starring: Jessica Ludberg
■Release date: September 21, 2007 (Sweden)
■Reader: Europa
■Recommendation index: ★ ★★★★☆
■One-sentence comment: Through the eccentric residents of the small town, the film provides a playful scan of the living conditions of modern Swedes.
Breaking down European films in different regions, you can see that they are so different. The poetic long mirrors of Eastern Europe will not be produced in the British Isles, and the warm Iberia Peninsula is far away from the cold Scandinavia. As determined by the climatic environment, Nordic films are born with a "cold" temperament. Cold, can be noted as calm, cool and cool colors, from Sweden's Ingmar Bergman to Finland's Aki Golismaki, and so on. In Roy Anderson's "You're Alive", Leng can also have a "cold joke". Roy Anderson has been dubbed the "funny version of Ingmar Bergman," and his work looks rather serious at first glance, but he finds dark humor and absurdity everywhere. But it's not appropriate to call Roy Anderson a cold-faced comedian. He doesn't pile up jokes to make the audience laugh. This well-mannered and funny old man likes to sneer at the Swedes and satirize the social culture in movies, and it does not hurt.
Roy Anderson's first feature film dates back to 1970, and 2007's "You Are Alive" is his fourth feature film. There are nearly 40 years between before and after, which is equivalent to shooting a movie every ten years. Of course, this can be understood as slow work and meticulous work. Throughout his career, he did not stay away from the crowds, retreating to small islands or staying away from Sweden. In a decade or two away from the film industry, Roy Anderson founded companies and studios and shot numerous short films and commercials.
"You Are Alive" is a feature film composed of many small characters, including doctors, hairdressers, middle-aged and elderly couples, young girls and boys, a bar where people have nowhere to go, and a team of amateurs who don't mind funerals. Military Band. They live in the same small town, but their activities are not necessarily related to each other, and they can even be divided into separate and different plot short films.
Like Finland and other countries, Swedes are considered material rich and life is paramount, but "You Are Alive" does not reveal the Swedish social style of "yellow hair and beard, and happy". On the contrary, people are stern and slow, and the most common thing to do is to be in a daze and complain, to deal with the gray life full of trivial troubles and loneliness and boredom. Whether rich or poor, glamorous or not,
they don't look very different in appearance, and have similar troubles. Typical characters are as follows: a fat aunt who sobbed and yelled "no one understands me, not even a ghost", who periodically ran out to repeat the above words; a middle-aged uncle with nightmares, who ruined a game. At the banquet, he was sentenced to death without knowing whether to laugh or cry, and he had to sit in an electric chair; a quarreling couple hurt each other with unscrupulous words, and each was dejected; after listening to the doctor who had been talking to a mental patient for 27 years, he was exhausted and could not continue; he was ridden by his wife The big hand pressing on his body, while talking about the loss of the fund, the unfortunate loss of money... The strange life of all living beings is shown one by one in the film, as if life is more like a pool of stagnant water without these small troubles. There may also be the most magical part of the film: the girl Anna, looking for Miko, Anna, who is looking forward to reunion. She had a warm and magical dream, put on a white wedding dress, went on a honeymoon trip, and waited for the welcome people to offer their blessings. Even a surreal daydream, it was so beautiful that the audience wanted to applaud in unison. This doesn't even include the extras who play tricks, they use stiff or slow-moving facial expressions or physical movements, and the clues above form a small-town life news record.
Like "Singing from the Second Floor," "You're Alive" consists of long takes, one after the other, minutes. Roy Anderson again uses a nearly motionless wide-angle lens, with characters occupying a small proportion of the picture, thus emphasizing the cool interior scenes and minimalist furnishings. Many parts of the film depend on the actors' lines, changes in movement, and changes in music, which also test the audience's ability to understand and grasp details (such as the Nazi swastika on the tablecloth, the drummer who accelerates the rhythm). Wait). Just like the moving house in the film, "You Are Alive" is like a stage play with an active background, it can be switched at will, telling the boring and bad life of different characters in the play.
"You're Alive" strips away any sleazy humour that exists, with no grimacing or antics to tease you. Some dark humor even needs aftertaste to feel the meaning, just like listening to a cold joke for the first time and not reacting to it all at once. The director presents the tidbits of life on a gray and cold tone, and exaggerates and expands them to visualize. Eliminate the dull and slow image illusion, and be more patient with the ant-like little people, and you will find that the film has many unique features. "You're Alive" is the kind of movie that makes you look at the dazzling variety of different movie images and think it's Roy Anderson's unique style.
A sudden thunderstorm and rainstorm arrived, as if only then did the people living in the small town realize that the world around them was changing, thus reflecting the looseness and steadiness of daily life. If you are still alive, you will be troubled. It's normal that life keeps you from laughing. In the middle, through the mouth of a certain character, he said the familiar proverb "tomorrow will be a new day". No matter how terrible life is in front of you, Roy Anderson said you who are still alive, be content.
Groups of bombers flew over the small town, and people looked up and were shocked. This is the open ending of "You're Alive", echoing the man's "bomb falling" nightmare at the beginning. One day, you look up and see the roar of the aircraft, will that be the end of life, or is it a joke of God? The film begins with Goethe's verse: Be content, living man, in that warm and comfortable bed, before the icy winds of the Lethe lash your fleeing feet (the Lethe of the underworld, when one crosses it, Forget past lives).
http://bjyouth.ynet.com/attachment.db?38644535 [Source: Beiqing Daily]
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