Building on the director's two preceding short films - Something Has Happened (1987) and World of Glory (1991) - the presentation of Songs from the Second Floor (2000) draws heavily on a satirical juxtaposition between content and form that is disarming to say the least. Again, it ties in with director Roy Andersson's background in commercial advertising, with any familiarity with even a handful of his celebrated short-form marketing videos establishing his trademark style of deliberately flat, static compositions filled with an impeccably rich attention to mise-en-scene, bracketed by an engaging reliance on surrealist farce and gruelling deadpan. Throughout his career - stretching as far back as even his second feature film, the critically mauled Galip (1975) - Andersson has mined a path of social satire that draws on human fragility and an almost absurd comedy of errors motif that seems to grow from routine, everyday-like misadventures, into full-blown tragedies. At its most simplistic, his work could be interpreted as a series of sketches that attempt to parody the seeming futility of everyday life in such a way as to find humour and hope in even the most despairing of situations.
Andersson's aesthetic then is to document the harsh-realities of the world in the most stylised of forms; capturing despair, loneliness and alienation with the designer gloss of an IKEA commercial. The sense that companies want us to aspire to middle-aged suicide, alcoholism and desperation is incredibly daring in design, especially when captured by Andersson's elaborate mise-en-scene. This interpretation is the most obvious strand of Songs of the Second Floor, and yet it is also the most problematic. With this particular artistic approach in mind, one could always accuse Andersson of hypocrisy, or even of "biting the hand that feeds him"; as the money he makes from his day-job directing TV commercials is pumped into these stark satires on consumerist despair and modern alienation. However, is this really what Andersson was intending? The design of the film all looks real enough, with the director and his crew going to great lengths to design these locations (including the exteriors) on the soundstages at Andersson's Studio 24; and yet, there's an odd, off-kilter exaggeration that is apparent almost immediately. The largely monochromatic colour palette, the drab production design and the actors made up in a lifeless, grey skin tone that recalls the ugliness of Something Has Happened, all suggest a more unreal presentation of reality deliberately overstated; but for what purpose? Is the film merely a Godardian satire on the nature of consumerism and a comment on how the wheels of everyday existence conspire to grind us into place? Or is there something deeper perhaps?
We know the world is a facade - or a work of high-concept design - but it feels real enough; with those endless lines of congested traffic, drunken businessmen, foreign dignitaries and surreal manifestations recalling the kind of absurd (yet mundane) sights that we see every day of our lives! Andersson's use of composition is always magnificent, and the parallels drawn between European political history and modern day consumerism are as intelligent as they are humorous; with many different interpretations covering everything from a microcosm of 20th century existence in the face of the new millennium, to a more imaginative reading, in which the characters exist in a purgatory-like netherworld. Regardless of such interpretations, which are ultimately there for the individual to discover, the film works as a result of the keen humour - which is dark and reminiscent of the work of Aki Kaurismäki, in particular films like Hamlet Goes Business (1987) and The Man Without a Past (2002) - and of course, Andersson's uniquely defiant and immediately iconic style.
With most films, the idea of a static camera represents a fear on the part of the filmmaker; especially in Hollywood, where an immobile camera has come to signify a lack of movement within the story. Not so here. Andersson's genius is to build a self-contained visual tableau in which the world of the story can spill out from within the frame, in a way that creates stories within stories. The action central to the film is kept in the foreground, while the more interesting elements are featured in the background. The director suggests this by the use of the locked-off camera and through his use of windows and mirror imagery; eventually making these entry points our focus of attention, while still allowing the various characters (that are never formally introduced) to jostle for our attention. The episodic nature can be a strain at first, but keep with it, as the film does reward. Admittedly, you can still approach the film as nothing more than a series of inter-connected vignettes that the director uses to hang his message on - with the characters drifting in and out of this constantly disintegrating facade of a city, as the absurd, nightmarish imagery begins to add up - but either way, this is a film that needs to be experienced.
