A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence

This is my very first review here. I was so impressed that I was forced to register here and tell you all why nobody should miss the masterpiece.

This film pretty much summarizes how it feels to live in the world where 99% of people you deal with are imbeciles. In other words, it gives an accurate description of the state of the world right now. When you think carefully, you understand there is not that much difference between Apple Google whatchamacallit CEOs and those two guys of the film who work in the "entertainment business" and help people to have some good time. You look around and you see the bleakness of the film isn't an overstatement. It actually mirrors our reality in some most perfect manner. No one cares anymore. Nobody's listening anymore. We're tired, exhausted and uninspired. Some guys still make money and have some good laughs - but what's the point making any big fuss about it while the party's pretty much over and the world is doomed to be blown up sooner or later?! The last scenes are brilliant metaphorical statements of the western welfare societies and wrap up this instant classic fantastically.

Check this out and you'll see what I'm talking about, thanks.

A person dying while opening a bottle of wine. And now for something completely different.

But Roy Andersson's movies are like that. You better brace yourself for a sequence of images, scenes and characters that may or may not fit together but are guaranteed to surprise, amuse and sometimes shock you.

It's better not to get specific with the plot. Mostly because there hardly IS one. But also because it unfolds chaotically, surreally, and the pleasure lies in its unfolding before your eyes. Snippets, shots, vignettes, events - uncensored, unorganized, like life itself.

The themes are down-to-earth. The scenes are fantastical. What would you call this: realist surrealism? supernatural naturalism? We are led from Swedish housing complexes to depressing industrial areas, faced with the doom and misery of urban Scandinavia.

Humanity is explored through its senseless capacity for inflicting boredom and suffering on itself and on others. No one is spared. This is pure existentialism on cinema - but with the hope of transcendence.

The audience reactions vary from bemused silence to Benny Hill laughter. You take out of this film what you are ready to give in.

Some may find the plodding pace tiring, the characters soulless and the gray urban settings drab and lifeless. But that is sort of the point.

As a sort of midpoint between Buñuel and Loach, Andersson's style is not to everyone's taste, and not without its faults. Just be ready to embrace, and enjoy, the misery of existence. Perhaps you'll be delighted, like I was, to find humour and absurdity in suffering.

Some film makers try to make their films as realistic as possible (the Dardenne brothers, Mike Leigh), and some try to get as far away from reality as they can by creating their own cinematographic universe (Wes Anderson, Jean-Pierre Jeunet). Roy Andersson definitely belongs to the latter category.

The world Andersson shows in his film, is grey, slow, unexciting, and old-fashioned. It reminded me of how eastern Europe must have looked during the communist era. No bright colours, no joy, no laughter, no hope, no ambitions. The interiors are drab, the people dreary. This self-created world is where the cinematographic equivalent of a series of short stories take place. Some are bizarre, most are melancholic, a few are incomprehensible, others meaningless or absurd. But they all share this common characteristic: they are taking place in Andersson's universe.

Actually, that universe is his studio, where he has built all of the sets with incredibly great attention to details, colours, clothing, lighting and lay-out. You can see fascinating images and footage of the production process on Andersson's web site. The sets are the real stars of the film. Even so much so, that maybe the stills of the film (also on the web site), with their Edward Hopper-like melancholy, are better than the film itself.

As fascinating as they are, I don't think the fragments work well as a feature film. They could have been very effective, say, as an element of a daily satirical television programme. But I think watching them all after each other, made into one 100 minute film, is not the best way to appreciate them.

This, a film about death; its stalking the unready, catching its survivors off guard, delivering problems of succession, needs to be viewed metaphorically. It plays out at a snail's pace and snares you just as death snares its victims. At first, we see the peaceful dove, AKA pigeon, protected by a glass bubble from the attacking eagle (örn) and get a sense of the portents to come. This comes to pass in a most inventive yet phlegmatic study of collective sorrow and fear of loss. Even if you know very little Swedish history, you cannot fail to recognise that the seemingly modern tale of two unsuccessful and troubled travelling salesmen is a metaphor for something else. Poor Jonathan wants never to meet his parents in heaven and is traumatised by visions of unspeakable horror. It is not just lost innocence. We get to see the dreams, the re-enactments of the glory days and the devastating defeat that lives on in the collective memory. Maybe he is a cry-baby. Maybe he has a true 'memory' of the extent of his, and his nation's loss. Quite magical but not your average cinema goer's fare.

well, you see this is a conflict, conflict about being an ordinary man. and after all being an ordinary man takes you there in which all other people are dealing with just "being". Roy Andersson took care of that approach and made a pretty remarkable movie about "being". Ordinary men try to figure things out, ordinary men try to make friends, earn money, make some jokes, and live on. Joyful moments, sad moments, some bad news and some good news, some misunderstandings and so forth. Actually, the characters show the great determination to continue, a-must-see movie when you are having some existential trouble and something to hold on. Ordinary men have a great solution. Because they don't need to be happy all the time, they don't need to be sad all the time. A smooth way to mix the emotions and keep the balance.