Songs From The Second Floor

Its not often you see something that is truly original and different, at least not as different as this.  Swedish surrealist Roy Andersson's Songs From The Second Floor is unlike anything I have seen. In form it is a series of long-shot scenes, taken from a single, unmoving camera.  It appears to be about a city in which, for some largely unexplained reason, society is falling apart.  It is hinted at that the problem may be economic in nature, a depression or stock market crash?  Or perhaps its a crises of faith?  All the citizens appear to be going somewhere (perhaps leaving) on the same road at the same time.  Traffic on the road has ground to almost a complete halt.  Cars progress at the rate of a few meters in hours.  People come and go from their cars, getting out to go into bars to ask whether anyone there knows how to get out. Meanwhile, a crowd of protesting flagellants pass by, whipping themselves in tempo with their march.  The film is a genuinely brilliant, if some what bleak, comment on society.  My favourite scene is where the city's residents try to leave by taking a flight from the airport. They are unable to make the short distance across a hall to the check-in desks because they are weighed down by so much baggage.  No one living in our materialistic society should need this scene explained.   A long line of perfectly turned-out ground staff patiently wait to check the passengers in, but they are just not able to get there.  Still not impressed? -  try this for size:  to appease whatever gods may be a corporation decides to make a human sacrifice by making a young girl walk the plank off a cliff to fall to her death on some rocks that they have placed on the beach below.  The solemn ceremony is attended by black clad company executives and a large number of clergy in brightly coloured clerical finery, including the ever popular golden shepherd's crook.  Enough to make a rationalists toes curl with delight!