On the millenium, as portrayed in Songs from the Second Floor (Sanger fran andra vaningen, 2000), Swedish society is disintegrating. The city has become an all-day traffic jam going one way, although nobody knows where anyone's going.

Blocks-long lines of flagellants slowly whip one another along sidewalks. Ghosts rise from their graves & even some of the living appear to be zombies or somnombulants.

Influential officials have decided child-sacrifice might restore order for the common good, & patriotic hordes turn out for the joyful slaying.

Amidst this madness a few misery-ridden people try to make sense of their own forlorn lives. Lars Nordh is a revelation, the best natural actor since Werner Herzog discovered Bruno S. to play Kaspar Hauser.

This film could've been set in the future, but the fact that it is set in the year 2000 is a grim reminder that no matter how symbolic, absurdist, or fantastic the expressive mode, the world really is, right now, most unfortunately rather too much like this.

Songs from the Second Floor can be viewed as an unsettling grimy social satire, or as a dystopian science fiction tale. Either way it's an exceptional film.

copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl