You, the living
You, the living is about the human being, about her greatness and her miserableness, her joy and sorrow, her self-confidence and anxiety. A being at whom we want to laugh and also cry for. It is simply a tragic comedy or a comic tragedy about us.
There is a proverb in a collection of old Icelandic poetry called The Poetic Edda that says: “Man is man’s delight”. I like this idea that man is not alone on earth, but is dependent on others. Nevertheless, if man is the joy of others, he is also the source of his problems and pain – this is as true for important moments in history as it is for the little moments of everyday life. Man fascinates man: that is how I interpreted this concise piece of thousand-year-old wisdom and adopted it as a device for the film. My film is composed of a series of tableaux that illustrate the human condition. The characters represent different facets of human existence. They face problems, large and small that range from issues of day-to-day survival to the big philosophical questions. I hope that You, the Living will give audiences the impression of watching moments of their own existence. My study of man’s fascination with man sheds light on the underlying philosophy of the film. Contemporary cinema often ignores these values and favours storytelling that is in line with conventional dramaturgy. The intention is not to condemn this type of cinema, but instead to develop a cinematic language that is less predictable. My film breaks with classic narrative structure to tell its story via a mosaic of human destinies.
- Roy Andersson, director
冷門的黑色幽默，但超風趣抵死。一直覺得北歐的電影都好有張力，沒有a+b=c的陳舊公式，但實在換來會心微笑。我們，就是這樣活。
香港還沒有上演，臺灣好像上了,叫“啊，人生” 。
