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Piddz,

Kong forgot to mention that the same night he saw Songs From the Second Floor he also got to see the screenr for The Triplets of Belleville and it was incredibly fun.

The two films really couldn't be more different in Kong's eyes. The Triplets of Belleville is just filled to capacity with rythm, energy, humor, imagination. The only thing it doesn't have is dialogue (okay, so there are a few lines). Anyways, it was interesting to watch right after SFtSF, and Kong strongly reccomends it to anyone who gets the oppurtunity to view it.

Here's to hoping that it defeats Finding Nemo (a lovely picture) at the Oscars!

Did you see the short before Triplets? The animation in that was amazing and overshadowed Triplets in that area. Still, I can't explain the meaning of the short for my life..

Even if I like the film there is nothing in your post I can argue with. But what you feel is a lack of interest to me is a way of portraiting the decline or the failure of the system that the swedish society is based on. That is, among other things, how the "folkhem" (the swedish people as a big family, a model the modern swedish society is built on, to put it very simple) has turned the single individual to an anonymous and unimportant piece in a big machinery. A machinery that has lead to, as opposed to what it was meant to lead to, something cold and a machinery that doesn't run very smoothly anymore. It was a while since I saw it myself, but if I remember it right, there was only one really "important" character who kind of worked like someone who guided us through the movie, the movie being kind of a journey through swedish society.

And the way Andersson makes films, he spends an endless amount of time building sets and backgrounds and experimenting with a huge number of (amateur) actors/actresses for every scene, rehearsing and so on, makes it difficult for him to do this with another medium than the film medium. So when you feel that the camera is disinterested I think you have maybe got it wrong. The camera is not an actor in the play. It's the audience, an eye witness. The scene is allready there. It was finished long before the camera came into the picture and Andersson is only using it to document the scene.

But it is very pretentious, yes.