Text/3rdROCK
Title: "Singing from the Second Floor"
Director: [Sweden] Roy Andersson
Producer: Norway / Dan / Rui / France
Duration: 94 minutes
Award: Cannes, 2000 Special Jury Prize of the Film Festival At the turn of the
millennium , human beings have both hopes and fears for the future world. Many artists' works recorded the mixed mental state of human beings at that time, and "Singing from the Second Floor" belongs to this kind of work.
In the little nameless town at the end of the century, the citizens were worried. Fragmented stories and bizarre images throw scenes with dark humorous messages to unsuspecting audiences. Asking for directions was teased on the street, beaten and blood splattered on the ground. When the magician was performing a skillful show, he missed his hand and dropped his knife, almost killing an innocent clerk. The absurdly unemployed crowd is expanding, self-blaming parades are swarming across the block, and protracted traffic accidents are keeping all vehicles on the road. People's spiritual crisis leads to the outbreak of social crisis, and family crisis aggravates people's spiritual crisis. Hospitals have become churches, bars have become gentle villages, many people are drinking, many people are going mad, and the poets who sing "He who sits and perches shall be loved" are the first to despair. People even resorted to the savage method of offering sacrifices to the sky with young children, begging for the peace of the world to no avail.
All this is particularly evident in the Mr. Carr family. Mr Carr burned down his furniture store to get the insurance money, but it didn't pay him out. His eldest son went crazy with his poetry, and his younger son's family began to show signs of shattering. His friends were all using or hurting him. He has witnessed all the absurd behaviors of people. He had to endure the great mental crisis that the rest of the city faced. When he bravely took up the cross, he felt the many difficulties of being a real person. He stood bewildered in the wilderness.
The film has been asking in a low voice, if human beings lose faith, is the existence of life still true, and whether love will become a slander, then what is the future direction of human development? Perhaps it is a series of issues of ultimate concern that prompted Swedish director Roy Anderson to spend five years carefully constructing this soul-searching film after a 25-year absence from the film industry. Taking advantage of nearly 30 years of experience in shooting TV commercials, Anderson used many advertising techniques in "Singing from the Second Floor" to make obscure themes interestingly expressed, and the performance in details was even more unexpected.
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