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While our tour guide has an explosive sense of humor, I found the experience to be wearying and often quite unpleasant, mostly due to the moral vacuity of the film's many deranged characters. You could call it "the feel-bad movie of the year." But its imagery still haunts me, weeks after viewing it, and its illustrations of Scripture — intentional or otherwise—speak to the painful truths underlying Andersson's vision. Great art doesn't have to be "feel-great" art, after all. My full review is at Looking Closer.

J. Robert Parks (Phantom Tollbooth) is similarly impressed: "The film is gorgeously shot with spectacular widescreen compositions and moody lighting. And I loved the exploration of religious themes, tinged as they are with deep melancholy. Admittedly, this kind of thing isn't for everyone, but Songs … is an exhilarating look into the abyss."

Mainstream reviews range from expressions of admiring bewilderment to profound insight. Roger Ebert says, "I love this film because it is completely new, starting from a place no other film has started from, proceeding implacably to demonstrate the logic of its despair, arriving at a place of no hope. Songs … is a parade of fools marching blindly to their ruin, and for the moment we are still spectators and have not been required to join the march. The laughter inspired by the movie is sometimes at the absurd, sometimes simply from relief."

In two weeks: More critics respond to this week's releases, plus reviews of About Schmidt, Catch Me If You Can, The Quiet American, and The Pianist. All four are appearing on critics' best of the year lists.

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December (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46