Four Shades of Brown is the first theatrical release from Swedish comedy troupe Killinggänget, well-known in their home country for tv-series and tv-movies, compared in the marketing of this film to Monty Python — a comparison which is probably misleading. Like Python, they are identified with a particular country, they write and perform as a group and sometimes play multiple characters in the same piece. And both troupes are certainly known for very silly and often outrageous black humor. Yet judging by this film, Killinggänget has many more shades in their collective comedic pallette than Python: though the British team has sometimes claimed to be moralizing beneath their silly satire, I'm not convinced they ever created as much space for sincerity and meaning within their absurd cosmos as Killinggänget does in this by turns hilarious, bleak and yet redemptive film. Indeed, Four Shades offers at least that many variations of tone, which may throw some people. Just when you think you're getting a feel for the distinctively odd Swedish humor, the film takes you places you won't expect — if you stay with all three and a half hours of it. Those who make it to the finish line may discover the long weird journey has been a transformative experience: viewers' expectations are continually subverted as they are cleverly pulled through what seemed just a loopy lark into confrontation with real-life pain, fears, hopes and regrets, and profound questions about life and relationships.

The film features four separate regional settings and stories (with plenty of cultural in-jokes, no doubt) intercut with echoing themes, bits of dialogue, action and images to produce a common effect. The means and effect are similar to that of the American film, Thirteen Conversations About One Thing, so perhaps you can call this Four Shades About One Color. And like Kryztof Kieslowski's color-trilogy, the color featured in the title of this film does in fact also figure into the art direction, though not intrusively (unless you count the vat of brown sewage); brown seems to represent ordinariness, commoness — a two-edged concept, suggesting both dull conformity and earthy authenticity. In contrast with most carpe diem films, Four Shades understands that gusto-grabbing can be done at the expense of others and that "common" includes both universal moral values and the experience of community.

Since the movie plays with viewers' expectations, it may be that the less said about details of plot or character the better; on the other hand, since the movie is three hours long, extremely uneven in tone, and takes forever to pull things together, I suspect some viewers will need some convincing before making that kind of commitment. Anyone who thinks they'd prefer to experience Four Shades cold should skip the next paragraph; the rest, however, may appreciate a quick sketch of the social landscape.

"Four shades" translates, first of all, into four stories. In the first, we meet Sören H. Lindberg, a wealthy jockey who overcame an unusual upbringing to live a life of adventure and great fun, full of travel, art and women. When his family gathers after his death, we and they get an opportunity to hear Sören's wild story and upbeat philosophy. The second story features Jan-Erik and Smulan, a husband-and-wife magic act with little magic left in their marriage. Smulan becomes enchanted by a peppy stranger during a visit to a seaside hotel owned and run by their children — who have their own personal and philosophical conflicts. Meanwhile, there's the dysfunctional family of Christer and his wife: they've adopted a Sponsor Child in Argentina, but their own son, Morgan, is a sullen, video-game/metal-head slacker. Told Morgan needs "stimulation," Christer takes the boy to work, showing him a typical day-in-the-life — of an animal cremator. Christer makes a goofy game of demonstrating Daddy's Job that is a classic of Pythonesque, or National Lampoon-style, sick humor. The film's fourth shade kicks in late: a self-help group discusses their weirdo problems, touching on secrets, lies, longings, love and power.

This film's length, tonal-shifts, and long list of oddball characters in their complicated relationships will be too much for many viewers. And those who settle down for a good laugh at losers will be certainly confused by a film that has much bigger fish to fry. But for anyone who jumps in and participates, i.e. works the puzzle laid before them, Killinggänget's Four Shades of Brown offers a powerful investigation into the human condition. Don't look for pat answers or neat resolutions: rather, be prepared to be pulled into an exhausting engagement with life itself, an engagement that, ideally, is something that can become habit-forming.

Formally at least, Day and Night owes obvious debts to fellow Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman and Abbas Kiarostami of Iran. After the opening wide shot of two people getting into an SUV, the camera goes into the vehicle and never leaves — ala Kiarostami, the unquestioned master of films that are — for good or ill, depending on who you ask — largely "driving around in cars." Day and Night features two fixed camera positions for virtually the entire film: one facing the driver and one facing the passenger. The action does indeed involve driving around, though there are a few limited forays outside the vehicle (filmed from either of those two set-ups) which help vary and control the pacing of an otherwise claustrophobic setting. Further drafting off Kiarostami, the conversation inside and outside the vehicle involves matters of life and death, with the possibility of suicide hanging over the film from the first line. Yet such conversation feels closer in spirit to Bergman: the discussion of meaning and meaninglessness, along with the relational twistedness, seem more akin to a familiar Scandaniavian twilight.

Thomas is a successful architect and family man, on what he intends to be the last day of his life — a life that is falling apart. He spends this day and night picking up and conversing with people closest to him: from his immediate family and mistress to various friends and strangers (ten, actually, if you count Thomas himself, which is one more reason to invoke Kiarostami, whose "car film" named by that number followed a similar strategy.) If you listen carefully, you'll hear that snatches of dialogue and situations repeat and intertwine through the conversations; not just passengers, but the point of view, revolves from morning til night as we dig deeper into the history that brought Thomas to this terrible day. Some of the bleaker conclusions about life in one conversation are rebutted subtlely elsewhere, but you'll have to listen closely indeed to draw from this film the sort of hopefullness Kiarostami's drivers have picked up on their roads. Like some of Bergman's bleaker films, just talking about the darkness can be way of dispelling it. But I suspect that won't be enough for most viewers who go along for this particular ride.

For some reason, this film jumped out at me from the festival catalog as a possible sleeper favorite, and I was pleased to find my instinct was correct. When I read the capsule description, I felt a stab of that twisted but common-enough nostalgia for an unexpectedly vanished world — for the tractors and parades and earnestness of the USSR: I wanted a taste of life on a collective farm in the 1950s. Of course, I do understood this is one of those places definately better to visit via film than to have to have personally experienced.

Nevertheless, The Harvest Time captures some breathtakingly beautiful vistas, photographed through a sepia-tone haze that connects to and contrasts with stark black and white photos of actual collective farm life. Among the moving images are gorgeous shots of tractors working golden fields at dawn, rolling meadows of wildflowers and wheat to the horizon, wind rustling trees and chasing butterflies over the hills. Even the bugs on a thick leafy stalk seem less Lynchian-ominous than simply images of Nature bursting with beauty and vitality. These images, in fact, conjure well the powerful mythology of the Soviet promise, as splashed on many an earnest propaganda poster — like the ones on the walls of the farmhouse here. Pictures of Comrade Stalin and slogans like "We'll produce abundance yet" connote — for anyone who knows history of collective farms — both beguiling vision and horrific fact. For those less familiar with that history, the fact that these posters represent the brightest man-made contributions in an otherwise bleak existence suggests the terrible emptiness of that vision.

Against the communal notion of "collective farm," the film focuses on the lonely existence of one family whose life together contracts as we watch. Mom is a dreamer and worker: she dreams of calico for tablecloths and curtains as well as the Communist future. The best combine driver in the region, she pours her energies into making that future come to pass, winning the coveted red banner — which she doggedly defends from the farmhouse mice. Dad is a different kind of dreamer: a war-veteran (and victim), he faces hardship with a song, and a gently-stoic appreciation for living. The two young boys — including tow-headed Vanya, who narrates the film — begin as ordinary farm kids, but a growing apprehension engulfs them along with their family as the mythical dreams of abundance dissolve through their fingers. The Harvest Time is less plot-driven than a mood piece, full of leisurely sequences that set us in the action and allow us to drink deep of both the dream and the nightmare. A mournful piano soundtrack accompanies this journey into a vanished world that would seem hard to believe ever existed, but for those black and white photos of "the People," stone-faced and ground down by a tragically-broken promise.