Songs From the Second Floor & We The Living
Roy Andersson (2000 & 2007)
For his widely celebrated The Living trilogy- a trio of gloomy Pythonesque selection boxes of comedy vignettes made over the last 14 years, which culminated just last month with the Golden Lion winning A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence- director Roy Andersson has claimed that any one scene could be plucked out and viewed at random and would still have the same effect. He also states that the scenes could be played in any order. It's a pleasant thought but, despite a strict stylistic rigor, it doesn't quite ring true. The director is a perfectionist, and he has spent the last decade and a half fine tuning these odd, tragic comedies into cinema of the highest degree.
A snot green colour palette; architecturally perfect set design; dazzling, rich imagery; perfectly controlled surrealist flourishes; and deadpan, tragic humour. He spent four years on his latest and the fruits of those labors are there to see.
Anderson is never short on things to say about religion, globalization and colonialist guilt and his films, at first glance, appear to have little love at all for our sad old race. But dig a little deeper and we find an almost defiant warmth for humanity bubbling just underneath.
The director claims his films are about "what it feels like to be a human being". If you happen to come from somewhere with a similarly gloomy climate, you might just feel that too.
The Innocents
Jack Clayton (1961)
This chilling piece of macabre film making from Jack Clayton surfaced at a particularly interesting time for British cinema. It was released during, amongst other things, Hammer Horror's strongest years and yet, almost in opposition to that studio's wide shock appeal, Clayton's film is of a stranger, more psychological ilk.
The Innocents stars Deborah Kerr as the lovely Miss Giddens; a governess who takes a job watching two wealthy children only to find- or so she believes- that the manor in which they live is haunted. She learns that the children may have been exposed to some sinful goings on under the previous governess' care. She also discovers that her predecessor died. The lingering sin seems to be seeping into the kid's innocent minds. Giddens, in turn, begins to lose the plot; little is explained.
The Innocents is a fine piece of work, worthy of its esteem. Clayton perfectly counterpoints Kerr's inherent British properness with all the lurid behavior which surrounds her. Kerr's great in the roll, most of the cast are, but from 12 year old Martin Stephens, as the supposed corrupted child, Clayton draws a performance of quite shocking taboo.
Otherworldly, strange and more chilling by its years.Spooky season is upon us. Be sure to check it out.
