Reviews of Dom kallar oss mods (1968) and related work
- Sequel: A Respectable Life (1979)
Dom kallar oss mods (1968
)
The “counter-establishment” hedonism of mostly unemployed, mostly homeless young people in Stockholm. “Kenta” and “Stoffe” are clearly headed down the same abysmal track as their alcoholic mothers. Crime, drugs, music, girls and heckling normal people—“Svensson”—are greatly preferable to holding down the boring entry-level day jobs they can get. The guys talk constantly, making sure there is always something drowning out the future like incidental music in a film score, and thinking themselves rebels for getting nothing done.
Very indie. Some scenes are staged or provoked as in reality TV. The result is a grand bravura of self-destruction, much darker than Barnvagnen (1963). I want to see a more socially critical angle, but it’s not really there.
References here: “Vi som överlevde Rågsved” (2008).
‣ A Respectable Life (1979)
What happens when you try but fail to die young and leave a good-looking corpse. The same people are revisited; one of them does die, the other starts off trying to find out more about why his mother has been arrested.
Now in colour. More Russian formalism, less French new wave.