Content notices for the film: Casual nudity, one scene featuring a racist assault, another scene recreating a nazi hanging, an off screen child sacrifice, one character shows up with slit wrists.
Just recently rewatched this film and it's definitely still my favourite satire of capitalist decay and malaise.
The whole thing is a series of vignettes leaning pretty heavily on the tragic side of tragicomedy, but there's still a decent amount of chuckling to be had.
The only successful business decision anyone makes in the film is insurance fraud, people turn to flagellating themselves on the street for the economy, all our chief economists and the aging literal nazi elite turn to crystal balls and human sacrifice to fix the economy, while the actual magicians can't even perform simple tricks to cheer people up anymore.
If there is a main character of the film it would be the small business tyrant who commits the aforementioned insurance fraud by burning down his shitty little furniture store and lying about how great his losses were, who spends the rest of the film wandering around whining about how poor and helpless he is to anyone who will listen, to the point where his unprecedented self pitying seems to invite actual biblical punishment onto him as a consequence.
I don't know if Roy Andersson the director is an actual Marxist or not, but the specific satire of our elite as senile old nazis who turn to petty occultism and superstition, rather than actual economic principles, alongside how he seems to take particular joy in mocking the small business owner as a parasite on all his personal and financial relationships, does seem to lean more that way than just generic leftism.
Overall I highly recommend this film, even if it is 70% bummer and 30% chuckle, though I do lament that a lot of the comedy for me is in the specific tones and language used in Swedish, so it might not translate that well.
I'd say (based on his interviews) that he's an old school social democrat who is disappointed in the direction that social democracy has been heading since the 70s. I don't think he's a marxist.
It's interesting that you call the main character a tyrant, I see him more as a tragic character trying to play by the rules of society, trying to find "something to sell with an extra 0 at the end". I think his story is about realizing the emptiness of this life, and in the end it all catches up with him, forced to confront his failures. To some extent we are all forced to participate in this society, and I feel a lot of compassion for him. Älskad vare den som sätter sig. Älskad vare den som svettas av skuld eller skam.
There is definitely some tragedy to him, but for me I really read him as kind of fundamentally parasitic and unpleasant, obviously theres him borrowing money and dodging the debts until his associate kills himself, but also him belittling his son reciting poetry but then also stealing one of the lines for himself to try and use for more pity and sympathy, he never really seems to offer much empathy towards anyone else, but his tragedy is that he doesn't have the stomach like the true elite of just not feeling guilt about it, he still feels guilt both for his own actions and humanity in general, but seems to lack any capacity to actually be considerate towards others in order to alleviate that guilt.
It's an interesting different read on it though, I felt just completely sure that the film was mocking his despair and self pitying.