Wonderful character development!

Very best movie i ever watch

A Disappointing Continuation

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Jens Lien's dystopian dream is as Kafkaesque a film as I can recall. The solitary hero Andreas moves through an inexplicable world, sterile, corporate, irrational, and his physical suffering — a lopped off finger, several run-overs by the subway — disappear magically. The urban landscape is grey, concrete, a world stripped of taste, colour, smell, any sensual engagement. The sex is easy but empty. He assumes ardor where there is only bemusement. He has an easy success at work as well as with women, nice office, sports car, nice flat, easy affairs. But his dissatisfaction reawakens when he remembers sensations, when he misses children. The corporate and Ikea-furnishing city is a kind of penal colony. Escape is impossible. When he digs a tunnel into a colourful kitchen in the outside world, he's dragged back with but a mouthful of Danish."Everyone here is happy," he is admonished, before he is brutally carried out and dumped into the more problematic but enlivening reality.The opening shot is of a couple in a subway station kissing ravenously. Andreas watches them, unsettled not so much by their passion — we will later deduce — but by their disengagement. Their mouths work as if sucking out lobster but their eyes keep springing open as if even that pretence at passion can't make them feel alive. The film excoriates the welfare state which provides the basics in a deadeningly easy way but stifles individual assertion.

I thought the movie was very well done and made some very interesting interpretations meant to be thought about the real world, cities, etc... all things people have said, but what I didn't see was that this place is a form of purgatory for people who committed suicide. I believe that this is why there were so many middle aged middle class white people. Also the lack of children and not too many elderly. I agree with most posters that the first scene was not real because of the kissing being the same lifeless, emotionless stuff. But I do think that Andreas killed himself anyway before he got there. He seems rather depressed at all times and never so much as asks questions until he finds the violin music. I also realize that the others took some time possibly to get used to this place and started to understand what it took to at least get the "good" things that were there so they fell in line to at least be able to receive these things. Andreas took it too far and tried to reach the Heaven where people who didn't kill themselves went and then he did not fall back in line when given the opportunity before they took him back to the bus stop. I think that others may have experienced this and when they were told "aren't you happy here" by the older woman at the end they may have decided that this was probably a good idea as opposed to going with the men in the jump suits. Just my interpretation. Curious to hear what others think.

The Bothersome Man (2006)Of course this is weird. It's a surreal version of dying and heaven (or hell) is a little shack in the middle of nowhere that is a way to get a second chance. At something. Life, maybe.This is a little like the crop of comic serious surreal movies in the last twenty years where you part laugh and part are gasping in appreciation for the reality invented. I'm thinking "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" or "Being John Malkovich" or even "Inception." And at first it's just a terrific experience, going with the flow, which is understated in broad expanses of deadpan landscape and people alike. Eventually you adjust to the newness and want a thread of meaning or something to carry it along.And this mostly succeeds most of the time. Which is not quite like a brilliant knock you over film. Jump in and wallow with the main character, who seems to have some kind of free will but within an invisible restraint. I mean, taking a ride back to life for some kind of reappraisal, even if you know it's all a mirage, means maybe being radical and not a bit submissive.Not for this Norwegian. The humor comes and goes, the logic certainly goes more than comes, but the mood, the charm and ease of all the characters is enjoyable, almost heavenly, in a weird not quite coincidental way. I would check this out. I know a lot of people will get bored in the first few minutes because the wry dry humor, the lack of dialog, and even the lack of anything quite happening will drive them batty. But you know if you're not like that, and can get into a "Paris Texas" or "Dead Man" or lightweight Ingmar Bergman sensibility. Try it. I liked it a lot, even if I got a bit restless by the last third.

... we all would live - even down to our most private moments - in a corporate behavior style? No kids, no taste, no deep emotions, no fancy colors... just friendly business-like ambiance? This is exactly the world of Anderland, an IKEAesk world, where everything seems to be clean and perfect, except there is no soul of anything and there is no way of breaking out. What really puts tension in this movie is that at some point you just want to know more about that world and what's happening next, because you can see parallels to our business-world. At the end, you ask yourself where you already are in this Anderland.This movie gives you a feeling of what our society could become, if we would be all about business. It puts you in an interesting mood: You see this movie, you want to escape from Anderland. Brilliant drama that every one of us corporate zombies should watch intently. I can really recommend that movie.