SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR (2000), dir. Roy Anderrson

It’s the End of the World—Do They Know It? (Return to Main Page)

Traffic grinds to a halt in an unnamed Swedish city. A man survives being cut in half with a bandsaw. A building moves under its own power. Participants in elaborate costumes perform a ritual of human sacrifice.

What does it all add up to? Are these strange events the signs of a coming apocalypse? Such questions go unanswered in Roy Andersson’s beautiful, but genuinely unsettling film, “Songs from the Second Floor.” The director presents a cross-section of characters, all of whom appear tired, pale, and sick. They are connected in various ways; for example, familial bonds, as in the case of the cartoonishly-large salesman Kalle (Lars Nordh) and his two sons. But the connections go deeper than that. If the different storylines in “Songs…” have anything in common, it is the miserable existence everyone seems to be sharing. Perhaps the world hasn’t ended yet. But clearly, things are so bad that such a drastic event could only improve things.

Kalle has been driven to distraction by his own bad luck. His relationship to his wife is cold and unresponsive. Meanwhile, his two grown-up sons haven’t prospered much in the world. The oldest, Stefan (Stefan Larsson), drives a taxi and drinks too much. When we first encounter him, he is part of a gang that beats up on a hapless foreigner. Tomas (Peter Roth), the younger son, resides in a mental institution. Whenever his family visits, Kalle inevitably berates his sensitivity. Apparently, he “wrote poetry until he went nuts.”

Does insanity run in the family? Kalle, who sells furniture, decides to burn his own store down. Why does he do it? To try and dupe the insurance company. Kalle claims that his showroom, now full of ash piles, had once been occupied by priceless, high-end sofas. He rationalizes the swindle by claiming that it is human nature to buy something, then try to “sell it with an extra zero at the end.”

When the case gets stalled by the insurance company, Kalle makes ends meet by taking a job selling crucifixes. His oily boss (Tommy Johansson) hopes to capitalize on the hysteria surrounding the approaching millenium. Kalle journeys to the train station, giant cross in tow. There, a grim-looking figure begins following. It is Sven (Sture Olsson), Kalle’s former business partner, who commited suicide after having a large sum of money stolen from him.

Is the former furniture vendor seeing dead people? The movie never makes clear whether Sven is a figment of Kalle’s imagination. And what do either of them have to do with the spectre of the boy, the one who walks around with a noose tied around his neck? According to Sven, the youth is looking for his dead sister, whom he played a cruel trick on without ever having the chance to apologize. Perhaps Kalle, like the boy, is supposed to atone for his own sins. He was the one who stole from Sven. Unfortunately, the ghost has no surviving relatives. Even the dead man tacitly agrees that paying back the debt would be very difficult.

While Kalle tries to deal with his very unique dilemna, Andersson cuts to other characters. They include a corporate manager named Lennart (Bengt C.W. Carlsson, who looks like a European Drew Carey with his height, receding hairline, and thick eyeglass frames). Lennert struggles to drag his luggage cart, piled high with suitcases and golf bags, across an airport floor to check-in. He is one of countless travellers performing Herculian acts for the sake of their business trips (Speaking of Herculian acts, the director frames these labors in a single foreground shot that features amazing depth-of-field).

Another scene features a former military general celebrating his one-hundredth birthday. Unimaginably wealthy, though irrevocably broken, he has travelled full-circle, returning to the crib. As the brass assemble before him, the general looks around in a daze. He goes potty in front of the Chiefs of Staff, then performs a Nazi salute. The officers try to fortify the dignity of this much-respected man. But the former general himself, in his current state, has no dignity to fortify.

Also involved in the mix: A mindless mob of men and women clad in business attire. They shuffle out and about the clogged city streets, moaning like zombies, pausing to flog one another. Most haunting, however, is the tale of Anna (Helene Mathiasson), a little girl chosen for a very special purpose. She first appears in a stately living room, surrounded by learned men who have heard of her fine qualities. An aid recites these points, such as her precociousness and her good grades in school, in detail. These virtues, however, turn out to be offenses. In the next scene, Anna receives the proper punishment for her crimes.

Although the events that take place throughout “Songs from the Second Floor” seem absurd, they reflect very modern concerns. Themes such as overwork (the business suit zombies, the airport scene), corporate corruption (Kalle tries to defraud the insurance company; Lennart is told to lay people off in order to raise the stock price, which puts the entire firm at risk), and overpopulation (the learned men, Anna is told, know that “if you throw a birthday party, not everyone can come. If they did, each person would only get a bit of cake this small”) find their way into the larger tapestry.

Meanwhile, is the decrepit old general meant to remind us that we live longer, though not necessarily better? Perhaps he represents something larger, like death overturning. That would explain the hospital corridors with too many patients. Also, the visits to the physician’s office by characters who have received mortal wounds, but still manage to go home afterward. Couple the death of Death with the recurring references to Christ (mostly by occupants of the institution, who, ironically, are much better composed than Kalle), and talk of how everything inevitably comes to an end. One can’t help interpreting these events as the collective calm before that super-sized tsunami of a storm: Armaegeddon.

If the human race is indeed about to receive its cosmic comeuppance, “Songs from the Second Floor” argues that the end has perfect timing. The worn-out appearance of the characters, the non-stop gridlock—all these things imply that civilization has been stretched to the breaking point. Things cannot continue on this path any longer; we suffer from too much stress, too much anger, too much selfishness. Furthermore, we have become morally bankrupt, especially in business. Ruining the lives of thousands is okay if it means a little more for ourselves. Our chief concern has become, as Kalle puts it, acquiring the means to “enjoy ourselves.”

Several scenes involving Lennert, including one where he has just dismissed an employee who had worked for the firm thirty years, imply that the golden carrot many of us expect to find at the finish line invariably turns out to be a pink slip. The solution? Frankly, Andersson doesn’t offer one. There is no resolution, just an ongoing descent towards civilization’s end. This turns out to be the only real weakness of “Songs…,” which relentlessly depicts the world as a miserable place.

Luckily, Andersson’s apocalyptic composition is so visually fascinating. The director understands how to manipulate the depth in each shot, conveying information both in foreground, and in the background. He also uses static camera shots, the exception being a single tracking motion that slowly backs up across a train platform. Modern cinema features so much camera movement, that one doesn’t expect the degree of mileage Andersson wrings from his particular style. There is a single shot, the last one in the film, in fact, that lasts several minutes, and manages to be both funny and disturbing. The humor lies in the timing of the various objects in foreground, middleground, and background. What genuinely disturbs us is their implication.

To accept the last shot is to believe that Grace has already been bestowed, that those who are deserving of heaven have left for the pearly gates above (The “Second Floor” of the title?). Those who remain are in purgatory. Ironically, purgatory doesn’t seem all that different from the world we occupy right now.

Overall rating: **** (out of ****)

CITY OF WOMEN (CITTA DELLE DONNE, LA) (1980), dir. Federico Fellini

From the Prick to the Brain, and Back Again (Return to Main Page)

A misogynist meets his match in this ambitious, surreal, but ultimately disappointing film by the legendary Italian director.

Snaparoz (Marcello Mastroianni), a handsome, middle-aged lothario, awakens across from a beautiful woman clad in leather boots (Bernice Stegers). He tries to coax her into a bathroom quickie, but their train stops, and she abruptly leaves him hanging. Snaparoz follows her off the train, hoping she will satisfy his burning lust. Instead, she disappears into the ether, having resisted such flattering compliments as, “God, you’re one hot bitch!”

After wandering in the nearby forest, Snaparoz arrives at a secluded hotel. Apparently, a conference among feminists has been scheduled, and the hotel is stacked to the rafters. The feminists come in all shapes, sizes, and intellectual leanings. Some appear friendly toward Snaparoz’s intrusion, while others react with suspicion. Since this is a Fellini film, one must expect theatricality, and some of the angrier feminists are portrayed in a semi-comic way that brings to mind the “femi-nazi” stereotype. Is Fellini ridiculing feminism? I don’t think so. More likely, he portrays them this way on purpose, so they represent what men like Snaparoz fear most: feminist extremism.

The woman with the leather boots reappears in the auditorium. She gives a brief lecture, in which she humiliates Snaparoz with photos of him, his fly undone. Snaparoz protests, then storms out of the lecture hall, only to find everyone in the hotel turned against him. A pair of young feminists seemingly arrive to his rescue. Instead, they convince him to put on roller skates, then send him hurtling down a flight of steps.

Now events conspire to take Snaparoz out of the hotel, into even stranger territory. A husky handywoman with a motorbike (Jole Silvani) agrees to give him a lift back to the train station. But she takes an unfamiliar route—a “shortcut,” she claims—which brings them to a farmhouse. There, she tries to rape him. The handywoman’s mother intervenes, apologizes to poor Snaparoz, and offers to have her other daughter take him to the station. On the way, however, they end up with the daughter’s friends: cigarette-smoking, bottle-swigging, foul-mouthed female versions of Marlon Brando's character from “The Wild One.”

At this point, I thought I picked up on what Fellini was doing. The predator who gives the hitchhiker a lift, then feels entitled to sex; the rowdies who play chicken with their cars, and drive down to the airfield to howl at passing planes—he’s using women to parody the disgusting sexual behavior of men, their aggressiveness on the road, and the way they worship phallic-shaped objects that make thunderous, angry, male noises, I reasoned. As if that weren’t enough, then Fellini introduces Dr. Zubercock (Ettore Manni), a former lord of the land who takes machismo to ridiculous heights. Dr. Zubercock is man whose universe revolves around his penis. He collects functional male erotic art, and his basement is a vast gallery of women whose orgasms he has documented. Snaparoz spends several minutes dancing merrily about the catacombs, pushing buttons, which trigger the recordings of Zubercock’s one-time loves in the throes of ecstacy (Is this supposed to represent the male fantasy of being able to satisfy a woman with a mere button-press?).

But Dr. Zubercock’s universe is rapidly disentegrating. The new feminist rulers have decreed that his castle—the structure “erected” by the male members of his family—must be torn down. To commemorate the end of the old order, Dr. Zubercock throws a lavish party. The man of the castle will enjoy his ten-thousandth sexual conquest afterward. In the meantime, the chief delights include watching said conquest perform a trick where she vacuums up pennies and pearls beneath her dress.

Ultimately, however, none of this penis-worship can distract from the change in the air. The feminist police crash the party. They kill the host’s dog, and nearly place Snaparoz under arrest. His longtime girlfriend Elena (Anna Prucnal), who makes an unexpected appearance, manages to convince the police not to detain him. But their intrusion proves that women are taking over, and men are helpless to stop them—a nightmare for alpha males like Zubercock.

There is something genuinely compelling about this "Twilight Zone"-ish inversion of gender roles. Fellini, however, isn't content simply giving misogynists what they deserve. He wants to show the kinder, gentler side of a man who objectifies women. And so, during the second half of "The City of Women," Snaparoz falls down a rabbithole, into a wonderland that could very well represent his own subconscious.

He finds himself sliding down a roller-coaster track in an amusement park lit up by hundreds of incandescent bulbs. The trip is crosscut with scenes from Snaparoz' childhood. Later, he searches for his ideal mate in an underground labyrinth, wherein a giant praying mantis lives (Although we only see its shadow cast against a nearby wall, it's otherworldly enough to be quite memorable). Does the monstrous insect represent that aforementioned idea of extreme feminism, since female mantises consume their male counterparts after sex? Is it a projection of Snaparoz' mind?

Finally, the hapless skirt chaser finds himself in a hot-air balloon. It is shaped, not surprisingly, like a woman, and poses the possibility of salvation. Or does it? Snaparoz has been led to believe that he will find his perfect woman once he reaches the balloon. But perhaps the notion of the one ideal mate is merely a trap set up by the male mind, which leaves him vulnerable to the advances of more aggressive (and possibly machine-gun toting) females.

A better question: Does the viewer really care about this? We should. Unfortunately, the transition from reality to fantasy is clunky, and some of the latter elements are just too bizarre. Also, the ending greatly disappoints. A film with this much audacity on the screenplay and production levels should go out with a bang, not a whimper. Its momentum should build into an explosive climax, not piss itself away, leaving us thoroughly unsatisfied.

Overall rating: ** (out of ****)

AMARCORD (1973), dir. Federico Fellini

And Fellini said, “Gradisca (Gratify Yourself).”

The title, literally translated, means, “I remember.” And in fact, “Amarcord” is presented like a series of memories. Plotwise, there is very little that connects each episode. The only similarities are the location—a picaresque Italian town that has stood since 268 BC—and the town’s numerous inhabitants, who behave in that trademark Fellini-esque way: theatrically.

“Amarcord” starts off as a history, told directly to the camera by a gray-haired gentleman, referred to as Mr. Lawyer (Luigi Rossi). Then it becomes a story about the trials and tribulations of an unremarkable family, the Biondis. The head of the household is Aurelio (Armando Brancia), a portly, balding, middle-aged man who frequently erupts into utter bedlam. A master builder by trade, his domestic life runs far less smoothly than his professional one. His wife Miranda (Pupella Maggio) nags him, and in one scene, gives him the silent treatment. Occasionally, she’ll offer him a sharp verbal jab, which leads him to throw his hands up as if to say, “Look what I gotta put up with.”

Frequently, it is Aurelio’s two sons, especially Titta (Bruno Zanin), the eldest, who give him fits. A pair of out-of-control juvenile delinquents, they and their pals make for a cruder, Italian-speaking version of the Dead End gang. They torment their schoolteachers, smear their faces against storefront windows. During the first of the movie’s many large-scale set pieces—the burning of a witch in effigy to commemorate the end of winter—the gang explode firecrackers behind unsuspecting adults. When the adults attempt to chastise them, they quickly give lip in reply. “That’s nothing compared to the sound my father’s ass makes,” Titta’s little brother says, after a particularly loud firecracker.

Since Titta and most of his pals are teenagers, their brains are consumed by sex. The town’s strong religious climate, and regular visits to confession, cannot keep the gang from piling into an empty car, and masturbating in unison (An act which causes the entire car to shake). To the priest, Titta plays down how often he attends to himself, repents, then moves on. The priest has to coax the confession out of him by mentioning how his impure acts make the saints weep. For Titta, however, the weeping of the saints is no match for the allure of women. Oh, the women in his town!

Through a montage of flashbacks, Titta reveals the many fateful encounters that have stimulated his mind and set his blood a-boil: His brief interactions with the tobacconist (Maria Antonietta Beluzzi), who has enormous bosoms, each one larger than the lad’s head; a french kiss at the lips and tongue of Volpina (Josiane Tanzilli), the local blonde beauty who is literally feverish with her lust for men. And of course, Gradisca (Magali Noel), whom he encountered in a movie theater and tried to put the moves on. She left an indelible impression upon his memory, though Titta was so awestruck he could nary speak.

The townspeople treat Gradisca like a local celebrity. During a visit to a shuttered hotel, a lounging Mr. Lawyer reveals what events made her a legend. It involves the same hotel, glorious during its heyday, and a visiting prince. Though specifics are never mentioned, we infer that Gradisca, by offering her substantial charms to the prince, performed a great service for the town. The scene where she “offers” is a truly magical piece of cinema. Done almost entirely without words, Gradisca removes one article of clothing at a time, then gently bends at the knees and waist, the absolute incarnate of a sexpot. She repeats this motion with the drop of each successive piece of dress, resulting in a montage that doesn’t imply sex so much as screams it from the top of a mountain.

Everybody in the town has a fantastic story to tell, if they aren’t living it already. Like Gradisca’s, their tales overflow with bawdiness, and revel in earthly joys. There is Biscein, a relatively minor character, who makes his living selling fruits and spices out of his cart. But even Biscein was once tossed a bone in life. According to legend, he made love to twenty-eight concubines of a visiting emir. It happened in a single night; he was driving past their hotel, when the love-starved women, initially dressed in sheets concealing their bodies, motioned to him from their windows. They lowered a rope made from bedsheets, and beckoned him to climb up. After ascending the makeshift rope several stories, Biscein entered the harem’s chamber, where the women performed an elaborate dance routine that resembled something from the stories of Scheherezade.

For the most part, Fellini infuses “Amarcord” with a kind of giddy energy. This can be a blessing at various times. Early on, there is a dinner table scene where Aurelio erupts at Titta, whom the night before defiled an important politician’s hat. In Fellini’s hands, a potentially-disturbing scene becomes somewhat charming. Aurelio chases Titta from the house, then argues with Miranda. She argues back, and he stands there and takes it, holding in his rage until his eyes bulge and his face starts to change color. The father-mother screaming match disturbs with its intensity. Luckily, the director uses two other characters at the table, Miranda’s brother Lallo (Nando Orfei), and Aurelio’s father (Giuseppe Ianigro), to offset the seriousness of the argument.

The latter wanders into an adjacent room, where he paces back and forth, and breaks wind at every count of three. The former, meanwhile, soldiers on with his dinner like a meathead. Aurelio’s father’s bizarre behavior distracts us from the arguing. At the same time, Lallo’s relatively blasé reaction goes a long way towards convincing us that this intra-family bickering is normal. By the time Aurelio returns to—shall we say—clear the table, we can chuckle a little. Fellini has defused the tension by giving us other things to focus on.

There is one other scene that crosses into the realm of the disturbing. After Lallo, a devout Italian fascist, reports that Aurelio has expressed doubts over the direction of the country, police raid the house. They drag Aurelio away in the dead of night. The fascists torture him, forcing castor oil down his throat until he vomits. It is not a pretty scene. However, Fellini balances out the unpleasantness by depicting the fascists as goons or fools. In the interrogation room, an elderly officer in a wheelchair prattles on to no person in particular; meanwhile, Aurelio’s chief tormentor hops up and down, shouting like an angry five year-old. The hunt for dissentors, which Aurelio found himself ensnared in, was precipitated by a gramophone that appeared in the center of town. The police managed to shoot it off its perch at the top of a clock tower. But they wasted an inordinate number of bullets on the stationary, defenseless object. Not exactly the kind of show of strength that reflects well on Italian fascism.

So what if “Amarcord” didn’t win the director any friends among surviving fascists? Clearly, Italy’s old political climate doesn’t sway his affection for the people themselves. “Amarcord” features an overflowing cast, but Fellini manages a semblance of order by bringing all the characters together at different points, just like Robert Altman would in “Nashville” (1975) and “Short Cuts” (1993). There is the aforementioned effigy-burning at the beginning, which the entire town attends. During the middle of the film, everyone spends an evening out at sea, in order to catch a glimpse of the Rex, Italy’s largest oceanliner. Finally, there is the wedding that closes the picture, mostly notable for the absence of certain characters.

Since Fellini has such a large cast to juggle, we never get to know any single person very well. Aurelio might be the possible exception. With him, we catch a glimpse of a soul not entirely devoid of poetry, despite his routine day job. During the glorious night on the water spent looking for the Rex, he stares up at the night sky, and wonders how the stars manage to stay suspended in the heavens. “With a house, it’s a certain amount of mortar, a certain amount of lime,” he says. But those stars… “Where do you put the foundations?”

“Amarcord” celebrates a town, a people, and a way of life. It depicts an Old World that still exists mostly in the memory. Here is a place to grow up, have adventures, and ultimately, depart. It is a place I will remember, quite fondly.

Overall rating: **** (out of ****)