Being A Human Person. (15.)
Directed by Fred Scott.
Featuring Roy Andersson. In cinemas. 90 mins.
The Human Person is Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson, and this is a behind the scenes portrait of the 77-year-old working on his final film, About Endlessness. It has the perfect title: humanity's humble glory and awkwardness are the subjects of his unique films. Each one is made entirely inside Studio 24, the Stockholm townhouse where he has been living and working for nearly 40 years. He shoots where he sleeps and the film shows the tensions and joys of this film collective.
Andersson is a genuine one-off. Each film consists of a series of static vignettes, usually less than 50, filmed on sets constructed within Studio 24. There is no narrative, though some characters and theme recur throughout. The scenes are humourous and nightmarish, the figures in them are perplexed caricatures. The closest parallel might be late-era Fellini but while the maestro's sets called attention to their artificiality, Anderson's are in denial about it. It's as if they are trying to hoodwink themselves that they are reality. Every scene takes a month to shoot, as each set has to be built and then taken down. This explains why there is usually a seven-year gap between films.
For me, Andersson's absurdist deadpan vision represents the 21st century's greatest cinematic achievement so it was exciting to see the man in action and look inside the place where the magic is made. That said, this is basically a Making Of. Nobody makes films like Andersson but making films is fundamentally a bit of a bore, even his. There's a bit of drama when the avuncular Andersson is revealed to be alcoholic but there's nothing much of interest to a non-fan.
Personally, I wanted to know more about the practicalities, particularly the money. How does he support the staff and the running of this piece of real estate? Initially, the studio worked making adverts, and most of the characters and themes he would eventually use in his films were first explored in them. Ni=ow that Studio24 is devoted to turning out one film every seven years, a film that will do the Festival and arthouse circuit, how does it survive? We hear about a studio credit card being stopped and the range of funding bodies they get money from, but I'd have liked to have learnt more.
My biggest issue with it though is that this is the Making Of film, about the making of a film that hasn't been released yet: About Endlessness doesn't come out until November 6th. This is effectively a spoiler for that and should be avoided until after you've seen About Endlessness.
Directed by Fred Scott.
Featuring Roy Andersson. In cinemas. 90 mins.
The Human Person is Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson, and this is a behind the scenes portrait of the 77-year-old working on his final film, About Endlessness. It has the perfect title: humanity's humble glory and awkwardness are the subjects of his unique films. Each one is made entirely inside Studio 24, the Stockholm townhouse where he has been living and working for nearly 40 years. He shoots where he sleeps and the film shows the tensions and joys of this film collective.
Andersson is a genuine one-off. Each film consists of a series of static vignettes, usually less than 50, filmed on sets constructed within Studio 24. There is no narrative, though some characters and theme recur throughout. The scenes are humourous and nightmarish, the figures in them are perplexed caricatures. The closest parallel might be late-era Fellini but while the maestro's sets called attention to their artificiality, Anderson's are in denial about it. It's as if they are trying to hoodwink themselves that they are reality. Every scene takes a month to shoot, as each set has to be built and then taken down. This explains why there is usually a seven-year gap between films.
For me, Andersson's absurdist deadpan vision represents the 21st century's greatest cinematic achievement so it was exciting to see the man in action and look inside the place where the magic is made. That said, this is basically a Making Of. Nobody makes films like Andersson but making films is fundamentally a bit of a bore, even his. There's a bit of drama when the avuncular Andersson is revealed to be alcoholic but there's nothing much of interest to a non-fan.
Personally, I wanted to know more about the practicalities, particularly the money. How does he support the staff and the running of this piece of real estate? Initially, the studio worked making adverts, and most of the characters and themes he would eventually use in his films were first explored in them. Ni=ow that Studio24 is devoted to turning out one film every seven years, a film that will do the Festival and arthouse circuit, how does it survive? We hear about a studio credit card being stopped and the range of funding bodies they get money from, but I'd have liked to have learnt more.
My biggest issue with it though is that this is the Making Of film, about the making of a film that hasn't been released yet: About Endlessness doesn't come out until November 6th. This is effectively a spoiler for that and should be avoided until after you've seen About Endlessness.
