"Songs from the Second Floor" - the film's American title - is an incredible accomplishment. Its control in juxtaposing vast cityscapes and crowds with dimly-lit "quiet desperation" scenes is impressive. The film brings to mind the work of Kieslowski, Fellini, and (I'd even venture) Beat Takeshi - a world of flat surfaces, cold doorways, stone-faced mobs, and vast churches, train stations, and mental institutions that occasionally, and with great artistry, become the backdrop to scenes of hilarious deadpan humor or incredible humanity.
The biblical element is strong here, but, as with many great modern works (think Ulysses), biblical stories serve more of a narrative purpose than a moral one (mild spoilers ahead). The story centers loosely around a Job-like figure (he's covered with literal ashes in several scenes); a crucifix salesman goes for the millennial hard-sell (claiming champagne is already oversold); white-clad mental patients debate the character of Jesus. Despite the transgressive nature of some of these takes on Christianity, though, the movie is never sacrilegious simply for the sake of being so. Its take on the Crucifixion, which features a literal cast of thousands and is centered around a young girl, would have been incredibly disturbing in a lesser director's hands, but in this film it comes across with such an eerie reality that it's hard to recall the scene as anything but dream-like.
Finally, note the film's insistence, on all levels, upon the tyranny of repetition: travel outward (i.e. out of the city) is impossible, but a cab driver exhausts himself driving back and forth through the city; the dead refuse to stay buried; a poem by Cortazar reappears throughout the film; and humans, seemingly, are doomed to play out the same ancient rituals time and time again. Andersson seems to suggest, in scene after scene, that claustrophobia and agoraphobia, generally considered opposites, are essentially based on the same emotion: a visceral fear, shared by all humanity, of being utterly alone.
The biblical element is strong here, but, as with many great modern works (think Ulysses), biblical stories serve more of a narrative purpose than a moral one (mild spoilers ahead). The story centers loosely around a Job-like figure (he's covered with literal ashes in several scenes); a crucifix salesman goes for the millennial hard-sell (claiming champagne is already oversold); white-clad mental patients debate the character of Jesus. Despite the transgressive nature of some of these takes on Christianity, though, the movie is never sacrilegious simply for the sake of being so. Its take on the Crucifixion, which features a literal cast of thousands and is centered around a young girl, would have been incredibly disturbing in a lesser director's hands, but in this film it comes across with such an eerie reality that it's hard to recall the scene as anything but dream-like.
Finally, note the film's insistence, on all levels, upon the tyranny of repetition: travel outward (i.e. out of the city) is impossible, but a cab driver exhausts himself driving back and forth through the city; the dead refuse to stay buried; a poem by Cortazar reappears throughout the film; and humans, seemingly, are doomed to play out the same ancient rituals time and time again. Andersson seems to suggest, in scene after scene, that claustrophobia and agoraphobia, generally considered opposites, are essentially based on the same emotion: a visceral fear, shared by all humanity, of being utterly alone.