1) By immersing ourselves into the debate about cinema's ontology from the filmic point of view as a " gesture" that displays and tells a story, proposed by the philosopher Girogio Agamben when making reference to Deleuze's "movement image" and its implications of conceiving cinema from its political power. We bring forward possible paths of poetics analysis of this movie in two ways. This research is a study and consideration about the most outstanding critics mechanisms of Songs from the Second Floor's poetics, from swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson. Four specific issues are discussed: (1) the intertwining of reality and artificiality as a " hyperreality " (2) the visual compositions which are simultaneously self-contained and entirely open, highlighting a tension between volume and surface (3) the opposition between stasis and movement, conveying a meaningful social contrast and the characters' angst (4) the pictoriality of the image. The author establishes a connection between artistic and social space and scrutinizes the challenges that this " complexity " poses for the film viewer from an intermedial perspective in which cinema enters into a dialogue with two other art forms: painting and theatre. The Swedish director depicts the human condition afflicted by the loss of its humanity through a personal style that he calls " the complex image, " a tableau aesthetic that instigates social criticism, and is dependent upon long shots, immobility, unchanging shot scale, and layered compositions. The article examines three films by Roy Andersson, "Songs from the Second Floor" (Sånger från andra våningen, 2000), "You, the Living" (Du levande, 2007), and "A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence" (En duva satt på en gren och funderade på tillvaron, 2014). Through his style Andersson challenges his viewers to become attentive observers: unlike his characters we are supposed to watch the world – including his films – with particularly perceptive eyes. At the same time, the cinematic staging in his complex images serves a pedagogic purpose that harbours optimistic hopes. I propose that Andersson’s staging in depth may be connected to a pessimistic outlook on the loneliness of our modern life-world in which others confront us merely as apathetic bystanders. In a third and final step I will look at how Andersson’s style is tied to his content and how it creates meaning. Looking at the films of Roy Andersson can help to expand the research on staging in depth: Andersson does not simply repeat the ways his precursors have used the device, but introduces innovations and adds new thematic ends to it. Second, I aim to add to the scholarship on staging in depth as a potent, but largely overlooked stylistic device. Andersson – born in 1943 and best known for his films Songs from the Second Floor (2000), You, the Living (2007) and A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014) – champions a distinctive aesthetics that involves the use of static long-takes in deep focus without close-ups, elaborate compositions and various strategies of staging in depth. First, I engage with the style of Swedish director Roy Andersson. In this essay I follow André Bazin and David Bordwell and their discussion of the deep-focus long-take as well as staging in depth. ![]() What his fragmentary films communicate to us can be illuminated by Nancy's idea that some cinema makes evident a sense of the world. I contend that Andersson's style is a praxis and a regard for this world. Finally, I consider the ways this co-existential trilogy suggests a realization of a Nancian ontology of being-with and exposure to the sense of a world. ![]() How should we understand his cinematic way of looking, intermedial images, and production of sense? First, I trace Andersson's concept of the "complex image" and aesthetic of "trivialism." Second, I outline Nancy's approach to "presentation" and the "evidence of film." Third, I describe Andersson's "axiomatics" of looking and collection of characters. My aim is to push the philosophical bearing of Andersson's films towards Jean-Luc Nancy's philosophy of art and cinema. In this article, I explore three films that comprise Swedish director Roy Andersson's "Living Trilogy"-Songs from the Second Floor (2000) You, the Living (2007) and A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014).
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