DVD
Upcoming Release Calendar
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Recent DVD/Video Releases
65
Adoration
42
Aliens in the Attic
56
American Violet
44
Answer Man, The
82
Anvil! The Story of Anvil![]()
54
Bruno
55
Casi Divas
63
Cheri
83
Drag Me to Hell![]()
24
Eating Out 3: All You Can Eat
76
Every Little Step
70
Fados
49
Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80
Food, Inc.
74
Humpday
32
I Love You, Beth Cooper
50
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
81
Il Divo![]()
54
Is Anybody There?
32
Land of the Lost
74
Lemon Tree
40
Limits of Control, The
43
Love 'N Dancing
63
Medicine for Melancholy
34
My Life in Ruins
51
My Sister's Keeper
48
Not Forgotten
76
Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!
50
Nothing Like the Holidays
26
Objective, The
42
Orphan
78
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
48
Proposal, The
39
Spread
83
Star Trek![]()
55
Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, The
72
Thirst
35
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
28
Ugly Truth, The
66
Unmistaken Child
88
Up![]()
45
Whatever Works
34
Year One
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Songs from the Second Floor

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 14 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 12 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by: Roy Andersson
Directed by: Roy Andersson
Release Date:
Theatrical: July 3, 2002
DVD: March 23, 2004
Running Time: 98 minutes, Color
Origin: Denmark / Norway / Sweden
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Lars Nordh, Stefan Larsson, Bengt C.W. Carlsson, Torbjörn Fahlström, Sten Andersson, Rolando Núñez, Lucio Vucina, and Per Jörnelius
Composed of a series of immaculately staged tableaux, Songs From the Second Floor is a stylized black comedy-turned-nightmare. (Film Forum)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Film Forum Profile
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
A collision at the intersection of farce and tragedy--the apocalypse as a joke on us.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
In place of a conventional plot, this utterly unique Swedish movie offers a series of related episodes -- Some are funny, some are tragic, all are dreamlike and unpredictable, suggesting that the 21st century will be a lot weirder and wackier than we expect.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
Want to see something strange, funny, twisted, brilliant and macabre? Sure you do.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Mark Caro
A brilliant, absurd collection of vignettes that, in their own idiosyncratic way, sum up the strange horror of life in the new millennium.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
"Songs" is a delight. It's a visual feast and often hilarious.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
Andersson creates a world that's at once surreal and disturbingly familiar; absurd, yet tremendously sad. The haunting score is by ABBA's Benny Andersson.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
A heartbreakingly thoughtful minor classic, the work of a genuine and singular artist.
Read Full Review >New York Post V.A. Musetto
A devastating indictment of unbridled greed and materalism, made all the more relevant by the Enron and WorldCom scandals.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
The film is depressive, slow, darkly funny, unyielding in its formal rigor, and unsettlingly beautiful. It's obviously not for everyone, but only because not everyone can meet its stare.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
The film is like an Ingmar Bergman movie as realized by Monty Python: It's seriously gloomy about the loss of spirituality in the world, but at the same time rudely, sometimes hilariously, absurd.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
Though the laughs in Songs From The Second Floor tend to stick in the throat, they're also cathartic and oddly comforting, because the world outside the movie theater is bound to look cheerier than the one on the screen.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
Despite some deadpan, Jacques Tati-like orchestration and occasional sight gags, there's no real pleasure in the game -- Songs From the Second Floor is more absurd than funny.
Read Full Review >Variety Derek Elley
Rapidly wears out its welcome after the first few reels to finish up as a perplexing objet d'art.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 12 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Kevin C. gave it a9:
Pays off if you put some effort into it. Explore, think, dream - every scene becomes more alive the more energy you invest into it. If you're having trouble getting started, skim through the director's commentary to start getting a grasp on some of the metaphors and symbolic imagery. The film is amusing, interesting and baffling on the surface - very rewarding if you did deeper.
John C. gave it a 1:
Occasionally absurdly humorous. There was probablyan underlying message, but there was very little effort to show how the many disconnected scenes related to the message. Too uninvolving to make a deeper exploration worthwhile. A gem for fans of aesthetic weirdness ala Eraserhead.
Little Crow gave it a 6:
Interesting movie, delicious subtle humor, fabulously satirical, and I would say that I liked it, but even so I felt like I had to force myself to finish watching it. It felt much longer than it really was.
Jack gave it a 9:
If you have patience, it's a very odd and fantastic experience.
Carl gave it a 0:
This is probably the most pretentious and overrated movie of all time. It's so boring it's almost unwatchable, and there's not one good actor in the movie and all the dialogue is stupid. Avoid this movie at all costs.
Chris G. gave it a 10:
Fantastic, but don't go and see it wasted ha.
