About Endlessness

Greetings again from the darkness. A quarter-century once elapsed between feature films for Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson. He only directed a handful of short films between "GILLIAP" (1975) and SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR (2000). Mr. Andersson makes Terrence Malick look prolific. He's certainly not a traditional filmmaker and this latest is not a typical movie. In fact, its highest and best use may be in a graduate Psychology or Philosophy class, so that the mental capacity of students can be stretched and tested to determine whether Andersson is celebrating life or bemoaning our existence.

The narrator begins most segments with something along the lines of: "I saw a man ...", "I saw a woman ...", "I saw parents ...", and "I saw a couple floating ...". These lead us into static one shot vignettes with little or no dialogue. For example, in the first segment, a woman on a park bench concludes with, "It's September already." There is a priest who makes a recurring appearance as one who has lost his faith. In another, parents have lost a son. The emphasis is on the artistic impression and one's own interpretation.

Over the opening, and again later in the film, we see a couple floating over the ruins of Cologne. It's Andersson's take on Chagall's 1918 painting, "Over the Town". Another segment is a recreation of Hitler's bunker in Kukryniksy's 1946 painting, "The End". These are simple, stark, low-key snapshots in time. The color palette seems to be off-gray, and the sun never shines in this world - there's no tanned skin in the bunch. Andersson offers just enough moments of hope/happiness to prevent this from being 80 minutes of full-on depression. We always think he's trying to tell us something, but can't always decipher what the intended message is. Like the best art, it's up to your interpretation, and surely dependent on individual perspective.

Release delayed due to COVID-19.

After watching Roy's other films I was really looking forward to this film - as some fans had said it was his best film ever. I set myself up for a treat. But I was let down. Yes, the art direction and acting are absolutely superb. But the stories didn't work for me. I was bored.

It feels like telling a thousand cold jokes to an indifferent person.

This movie is a thrill, trust me. I really wanted to watch this one because i loved its look and how unique and gloomy it is. The storyline seemed also really promising, something about human connection and our desire to understand life and explain its power and darkness and infinite but absurd beauty always gets. It is what makes "Synedoche, New York" or "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" so great. They are sad, but lead to a greater realisation about humanity or left things and questions to digest. I personally expected something of the same feel, but what I got was... a comedy? Now, now wait a minute.

This film is one of the most funny films of the year and what is so striking is that it magages to poke fun at people and situations but at the same time it is so consistent in its sad tone and it feels so clear and to the point. Its flow is unbeatable. Yes, its basically a series of short stories, two of which are exlored more. Some moments are everyday simple moments that we give zero attention, but they are presented i nsuch a poignant way that we see how we sometime miss the overall beauty of simplicity and nothingness, bercause we have the idea that the big moments matter and are of great importance and we are often so blinded by our sadness and everyday issues that we don't allow ourselves to take a step back, look afar and see that everytihng hides a beauty, from a historical moment ,like war images, to a walk to school.

Personally, I feel like I've missed so many good moments becauseI was stuck in small problems and rubbish and I forget that a conversation or a kind gesture might be what we need to feel so that we can deal with our sad and torubled lives. Maybe looking from afar at anything and stopping to try to deal with every single thing we feel or suffer from, can lead to a small taste of salvation.

The film talks about faith, religion, bureaucracy,politics, existence, identity, the desire to feel and love and experience and find importance in true beauty and search for a way to feel complete, but its tone is sad and funny and I really loved her voice as the narrator.

The sad blues, the stylish browns, the dark reds and finally the hopeful yellows create a brand new world so distinct but so familiar to ours. The consistency in the framing and presentation, the delicate and socially and politically active script with tons of funny and satirical dialogue and coscepts and the truly entertaining storytelling, lead the viewer to a significant, enlightening and kind of cathartic and profound experience about the human struggle and joy.I don't want to analyse or dig any short story up. Just definatley watch this one and experience it.

It's like the most fullfilling and beautiful poem cmae to life to tell its story in the most interesting and hillarious of ways.

Of all the great Swedish filmmakers, none is quite as easily identifiable as legend Roy Andersson. He is known for his quirky yet miserable films where each scene -- or rather, vignette -- is done in a static, uninterrupted wide shot (barring a few highly deliberate exceptions) and showcases pale everyday Swedes with the weights of modern life constantly on their shoulders, but also ultimately basking in its beauty.

This is what made his Living trilogy iconic; About Endlessness (Om det oändliga) shakes things up a bit by having a clear leading lady, yet is still very much an Andersson movie. Like all his films, it seems so hopeless on the surface, yet we cannot escape the feeling that Andersson genuinely hopes that things will get better (suffering is simply part of the wonder). Another oxymoron is the deliberate "fakeness" of the visuals (the movie willfully looks like a stage play at points) versus how "real" the movie's being. As usual, the scenes range from simple to large and intricate - with entire lives going on in the background, usually indifferent to the main subject. The colors are as pale and sickly as the characters.

Now, I've been a huge fan of Andersson since I started the Living trilogy with A Pigeon Sat on a Branch last year (I'd say he's up there with the Bergmans and Östlunds of our sausage-shaped country). I then moved on to Songs from the Second Floor and eventually finished the journey with You the Living not too long ago. I adored all three and maybe it helped that I let each film sit with me for a while. I was ready to put About Endlessness on my 2019 list.

But since I checked on Andersson's catalog rather recently, and had seen his unmistakable style done in two more pictures before then, I'm sad to say a lot of what I saw in About Endlessness felt a little been-done. I've seen these maudlin Swedes in these hilariously sad situations before. I still enjoyed the cringe comedy, visuals, music, and the delightfully old-school Swedishness of it all, but it is no longer as extraordinary.

What sets this one apart from the Living trilogy, however, is the presence of a narrator who identifies reoccurring themes in all the vignettes, such as loneliness, love (or lack thereof), and faith. I have read that she is supposed to be an angel, and she seems to be experiencing a series of moments, similarly to how Dr. Manhattan perceives his own memories; we see past and present events in non-chronological order.

Strangely, this does not necessarily tie all the sketches together in an especially neat way. The movie may have felt more fully-realized if the different characters we meet ran into each other in sketches focusing on someone else. You the Living used this "hyperlink" method of tying together vignettes but my favorite instance of Andersson doing this must be the final shot of Songs from the Second Floor, which haunts me to this day. One might suspect that the vignettes we see here are scenes that Andersson deleted from his previous films since they didn't fit together with the rest anyways, but Andersson is hardly so thoughtless.

I will say this, though: this was an inordinately pleasant screening. The local multiplex didn't play it, of course (factory-made stuff like Charlie's Angels and The Lion King is clearly more important than art), so I had to go to the arthouse cinema/cultural center, where you can have a burger and alcohol before the film and whatnot; my first time going there since the Die Hard anniversary screening one year ago (I'll be there with someone special for their celebration of Akira next week, as well). I was the only attendee under 60.