Roy Andersson’s film is slow, rigorously morose and often painful in its blunt reckoning of disappointment and failure. It is also extremely funny.
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07/29/09
You, the Living (2009)
100
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Reviews Counted:34
Fresh:34
Rotten:0
Average Rating:7.7/10
Consensus: Composed of humorous sketches of human behavior, Roy Andersson's You, the Living is an eccentric but highly entertaining and unforgettable work.
Theatrical Release:Jul 29, 2009 Limited
Synopsis: Film Forum is proud to present the U.S. theatrical premiere of Roy Andersson’s You, The Living, an absurdist take on the everyday foibles of human nature. Andersson couples his iconic visual style... [More]
Director: Roy Andersson
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Reviews for You, the Living
Top CriticMade of 50 short, stiff scenes of human behavior, shot as dispassionately as wildlife, Andersson is either stretching the definition of cinema or returning it to its roots
06/27/08
a surreal still life that provokes the audience to find the absurdity rather than the tragedy
10/04/09
Some of the sketches don't really work or don't blend with their cousins, but the snapshot approach means they are short.
08/03/08
this litany of human disconnection, misery, frustration and despair... would be an almost unbearably bleak mosaic of our living deaths, were it not for Andersson's profound appreciation of Chaplin's observation that comedy is tragedy seen in long-shot.
03/21/08
More laughs -- belly-deep, thought-provoking ones -- are to be had in the first 10 minutes of Roy Andersson’s You, the Living than in all of Judd Apatow’s Funny People.
07/29/09
Surreal and absurd, yet oddly captivating and filled with a dry, sardonic sense of humor, stunning visuals along with provocative critiques of modern society.
07/30/09
Again a very successful look at the desperate mess of modern life.
05/24/07
Andersson is, at heart, an expert absurdist; to him, there is meaning in the meaningless and salvation in the ridiculous
07/28/09
Jacques Tati’s puckish humor meets Ingmar Bergman’s angst in this erratic, eccentric gem.
04/17/08
You won’t know whether to laugh or cry.
03/27/08
Recalling the work of Jacques Tati, this is a grim but amusing and ultimately successful effort.
03/27/08
“Keaton-esque” hardly begins to describe this brutally deadpan comedy by Swedish director Roy Andersson (Songs From the Second Floor), who seems to have translated the entire range of human misery into a loosely connected series of slapstick gags.
08/20/09
Isn't quite the masterpiece it sets itself up as, but has lots going for it.
03/27/08
A cold soup mix of Buster Keaton, David Lynch, Jerry Lewis and Terry Gilliam, hawking deadpan jokes as well as chilly, disheartening mean streaks in his blocky, deep-space single takes.
06/07/08
To complain that Andersson's skits are difficult or boring to sit through because they seem too close to the pain of daily life is to pay them some kind of a compliment.
01/10/08
Essentially indescribable, You, the Living offers little help to anyone trying to get a handle on it in terms of a traditional narrative. But it can be quite funny if you're susceptible to Andersson's curious way of capturing the human comedy.
09/10/09
One of European cinema's most distinctive stylists, and darkest humourists, returns with another tragi-comic panorama of the human condition.
05/31/07
A morosely comic symphony on the meaning (or is that meaninglessness?) of life, Roy Andersson's You, the Living can be seen as a gentler companion piece to his 2000 Cannes prize-winner, Songs From the Second Floor.
05/24/07
No one views the world like Roy Andersson does. That fact alone is enough to recommend the Swedish director’s latest collection of interconnected, often single-take vignettes.
07/30/09
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