Du levande (You, the Living)

This is a Swedish film pieced together from little scenes featuring recurring characters without an actual plot to tie them together. It is a collection of very sad people that visually blend into their surroundings, which are very Scandinavian, as well - this is to say sparse with toned down colors.

Some of the characters we meet include: a middle aged woman, wearing animal prints, sending her boyfriend away constantly and lamenting the sadness of her life; a psychiatrist who after 27 years of listening to people complain, is tired and now merely prescribes pills; musicians practicing alone on their respective instruments; a groupie who is given the wrong address for a rehearsal space; and a husband and wife that are both devastated after a fight they had earlier, during which they called each other rude names.

The music here comes from a marching band, the Louisiana Brass Band, a middle aged woman singing out her sorrows in the beginning, a song at a funeral and people in a banquet hall singing some sort of traditional song, which also requires them to collectively stand on their chairs to have a drink.

The film got Roger Ebert's stamp of approval and a coveted 4 star review. He concludes his piece about it like this:

"You, the Living," is a title that perhaps refers to his characters: Them, the Dead. Yet this isn't a depressing film. His characters are angry and bitter, but stoic and resigned, and the musicians (there are also a banjo player and a cornetist) seem happy enough as they play Dixieland. In their world, it never seems to get very dark out, but in the bar, it's always closing time.

This is well worth your time.

8/10

Vargtimmen (Hour of the Wolf)

I have only recently started watching the brilliant works of Ingmar Bergman. Hour of the Wolf is only his third film I have watched, the others being The Seventh Seal and Through a Glass Darkly.

All three feature the wonderful Max von Sydow, who has worked with Bergman many times. In Hour of the Wolf he portrays the painter Johan Borg. Together with his pregnant wife Alma (played by Liv Ullmann) he spends the summer on a remote island. Over the course of the story he encounters several strange people that either contribute to his descent into madness or are a side effect of it. I assume it is the first, as Alma meets several of them at a dinner party.

This is defined as being drama and horror, the horror stemming from the feeling of claustrophobia the film conveys and Johan's nightmarish vision. The (English) title refers to the time just before dawn, during which many births and deaths occur (according to Johan).

The film is excellent, although for me it does not quite reach the brilliance of The Seventh Seal. My discovery of Ingmar Bergman will definitely not stop here.

7/10