FACETS CINÉMATHÈQUE

August - September 2009

The Facets Cinémathèque is located at 1517 W. Fullerton Ave. in Chicago. For more information on films playing in the Cinémathèque, please call 773-281-4114. To order advance tickets online, visit the TicketWeb website by clicking here.

Chicago Theatrical
Premiere

YOU, THE LIVING
(Du Levande)

WINNER
Best Direction
Chicago Intl
Film Fest

"One of the supreme absurdists of our time... constantly surprising and often outrageously funny"
-Film Comment

"Somewhere between Kaurismäki, Buñuel and the Far Side cartoons... You won’t know whether to laugh or cry"
-TimeOut London

Critics' Pick! "A deadpan but nonetheless heartfelt affirmation of human existence"
-New York Times

"You, the Living is a very funny film - though in the darkest possible way... this is the work of a real original - I might almost say a genius. [Andersson] is radically different from anyone else, with a technical, compositional rigour that puts other movie-makers and visual artists to shame"
-The Guardian

½ "A remarkable comic achievement"
-Chicago Tribune

"A film like nobody else has ever made"
-Roger Ebert

Recommended! "A grand masterpiece of droll suffering"
-NewCity Chicago

"'Keaton-esque' hardly begins to describe this brutally deadpan comedy by Swedish director Roy Andersson...who seems to have translated the entire range of human misery into a loosely connected series of slapstick gags"
-Chicago Reader

Few working filmmakers can claim a style as distinctive as Sweden's Roy Andersson. In three features and numerous TV commercials, Andersson has developed an abstract aesthetic to present a deadpan view of existence as something that you have to grit your teeth and bear, kind of like washing windows or doing the laundry by hand. Less of an apocalyptic burlesque than Songs from the Second Floor, the wryly surreal You, the Living (titled after a quote from Goethe) presents fifty elegantly composed shots of peculiar black comedy and quiet desperation as only Andersson, a tableaux artist working in the medium of celluloid, can stage. Filmed in wide shots from a single angle and in one take, these moments of existence include: a Monty Pythonesque dinner party; a house that moves like a train; the retelling of, pace Buñuel, a dream that transpired the night before (and includes a side-splitting magic trick gone wrong); and much, much more. Punctuated by deadpan musical interludes — from New Orleans jazz to rock — and the bleakest environments ever captured on film, recurrent characters emerge to create a moving portrait of humanity built around a theme described by the director as, "how to behave around others." The film's comic tone also includes a punk-rock guitarist, a Louisiana brass band, and a woman who periodically bursts out, "Nobody understands me!"

Directed by Roy Andersson, Sweden/Germany/Denmark/Norway, 2007, 35mm, 2007,
95 mins. In Swedish with English subtitles.

Official site YouTube trailer NY Times: director interview New York Times

Variety TimeOut London The Guardian Chicago Tribune Roger Ebert

NewCity Chicago Chicago Reader (1) Chicago Reader (2)

Showtimes:
August 21-September 3
Mondays-Fridays, 7 & 9 pm
Saturdays-Sundays, 3, 5, 7 & 9 pm

Tickets:
$9 general admission
FREE for Facets Members!

Order tickets online

For all Cinémathèque inquiries, contact Charles Coleman at 773.281.9075 or charles@facets.org

August - September 2009

YOU, THE LIVING(Du Levande)

YOU, THE LIVING
(Du Levande)