the images in this movie blew me away-- even though i tend to get kind of bored with really slow, "movie poems" like this one, i was truly enthralled almost from start to finish. everything about this movie has a haunting, chilling beauty, including the title, although i have no idea what it means or where it came from. anyone can shed some light on that? thanks!!
sharesome minor spoilers
I read in another thread something quite reasonable: that this movie is meant to be open to various interpretations. On the other hand, one seemed to scream at me, and left me shocked that others seemed confused.
It is the story of the victims of the merciless system that we live in. I take one step away from saying "anti-capitalist" because the evils of capitalism here are seen as the evils of bureaucratization, even the banal evils. It could easily have taken place in a communist society. (I recall Arthur Miller going to China to help in the production of "Death of a Salesman" there. The story was universal.)
It is about the depersonalization of the system, and how it subtracts meaning from our lives, turns us into zombis. It gives us the identity of our jobs, and then takes it away. When your life is in the control of another, you have no life.
I interpreted the opening scene to be the manager in the tanning booth talking about how many job cuts he was making (700, 1000). He talks about job cuts as though they were product. The tanning booth (beyond being a stunning visual) was reflective of a symbol. The zombified people have the color removed from their lives, from their bodies. The boss has his skin tone added. He also talks about heading to Spain. Again, sun, tanning, away from the harsh world he helps create.
The Songs of the Second Floor refers to the stories of the characters after they are fired (I just assumed that the scene where some people were being fired took place on the second floor). Other songs are people with similar fates of depersonalization.
The sacrifice of the child related to how the system has turned us into primitives. For some reason we believe that the volcano can be appeased.
blainepuppi
[deleted]
The "from the second floor" part of the title refers to that Roy Andersson wrote the movie in his studio/office/somesuch, located on the second floor. As for the "songs", it seems appropiate, c'est ne pas?
shareIf I am not mistaken the whole movie was shot in Andersson's studio, located on the second floor (at Sibyllegatan in Stockholm).
shareBut, fj-phone-home, that is information viewers do not receive from the film itself. I choose to see it either as a free-floating signifier (if you will) or else a near-synonym for "a view of the world from left field." I don't deny the biographical info--I have no doubt that the director did write this while occupying a second floor office--but if that were the sole answer, then it would be pretty uninteresting and meaningless. (I mean, The Band recorded their great album Music from Big Pink at a house called Big Pink, but Andersson doesn't sing or act on this film. Know what I mean?)
shareI certainly am bewildered by the movie, but I assumed that Songs from the Second Floor would be Hymns from Heaven, which are heard in Purgatory but don't seem to help much. This is more a suggestion than a pronouncement.
shareI think you're onto something. Like the title is an understatement or parody -- rather than "Songs from Heaven" the highest place we get is only the second floor. I'm surprised this issue wasn't addressed in the DVD commentary. My guess is the director wanted it to be, like the rest of the movie, ambiguous. (Though he does reveal quite a bit in the interview)
shareAlso, could it perhaps be a reference to the Great Depression of the late 20's and 30's and the ruined businessmen who commited suicide by jumping from their office windows?
shareI feel the "second floor" metaphor has something to do with madness and despair. Suicide by jumping could be it, or you could say: when you arrive in a mental hospital, entrance and offices are on the bottom floor ("second floor" in Swedish equals first floor - above base floor - in English) and the inmates will be on the second floor or higher up.
shareActually, it is simple re. the title: It was written on the second floor of the building where his production company is located. As an earlier post noted too. I was an extra in the film, and it was quite amazing how thorough Roy is, shooting films. Which can be a bit too much sometimes... I remember a scene that needed 25 takes, and this is little compared to other scenes by Roy. I read somewhere that in his latest production, one of the scenes took like 98 takes...
shareOK so he made the film on the second floor of the studio, but he could have named the film after any number of random descriptions, maybe he used a "blue clipboard" or a "mechanical pencil" but he didn't name the film that. the title works because it has meaning on both the mundane and higher levels. many have spoken of it as a metaphor for purgatory, being the floor above reality, hell would be the basement i guess. i don't know enough about Andersson yet, but i suspect he is secular, and not prone to religious metaphors, so i think the idea of a "higher level" refers to the poetic/symbolic nature of the film, i.e. poetry functions on a higher level than normal speech, the surrealistic symbolic images work on a higher level than everyday perception (or the usual hollywood crap "product").
*
Downloads of Ambient & Neo-classical Music : http://music.download.com/dj_dreamstream
I hate be a partypooper, I read some really interesting rumminations on why this cryptic title. But I think the first guess in this cases (always!) is to blame the translator. The word "andra" can sometimes mean "second", but more generally means "other", so it is my uneducated guess that a better translation of the original title might have been "Songs from another floor", or even "Songs from another apartment". In this case, to me it would symbolize something beautiful of which we can dream, to which we can aspire, but not experience by ourselves. I really don't know the first thing about swedish, but it is very likely that the title of the movie was altered in translation. If there is someone in the planet who you shouldn't trust, it's people who translate the names of movies (and sometimes books). I lived in Argentina most of my life, and what they do to the titles of movies there is cruel! An example, "The flag of our fathers" was released as "The conquest of honor". "Lost in translation" was lost in translation to be found again as "Lost in Tokyo". And recently, "Superbad" was geniously rendered as "Supercool" (in actual english!). Death to movie title translators and dubbers! Long live original language and subtitles!! Cheers!
PS.: Of course, I might be wrong and the title properly translated. We should ask a swedish guy...
I think the title is great. My uninformed guess would be that the it is purposefully ambiguous. The songs might be variously the sorry lives of the people we glimpse, or the stale traditions and rituals which inform them. The second floor might refer to the other people we share the world with, like those who live above you, or the purgatory between heaven and hell which Andersson seems equate to the living world.
share