Making sense of Swedish film-maker Roy Andersson’s works through words is perhaps impossible. Fifteen years ago he came up with his fragmented, dry absurdist approach (in “Songs from the Second Floor” (2000)) to showcase the ineffable bizarreness of human existence. After “You, the Living” in 2007, Andersson has finished his ‘living trilogy’ with “A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence” (2014), by offering up a similar series of wonderfully executed, hyper-real vignettes. Andersson has stated in an interview that his ‘primary aim is to lift the visual qualities in film-making so that we can reach the same level as paintings’. So, gazing at an instantly recognizable Andersson shot is somehow similar to watching a great painting, where the static figures are contemplating on existential malaise.
Each of Andersson’s static shots is impeccably built from
scratch with both background and foreground in sharp focus. The opening shot of
‘Pigeon’ shows an overweight man, in a museum, closely studying stuffed birds
inside glass cases. The shot probably establishes Andersson’s body of work,
where he gazes upon his human subjects with a revelatory and anthropological
curiosity. Each of the director’s pale-faced characters gradually oscillates
between tragedy and comedy as they contemplate on their desiccated modern
existence. The beige and grey palette, loosely connected nightmarish scenarios,
and blithesome music serves to heighten his serene, fixed shots’ ironic effect.
Roy Andersson’s style could easily bore and frustrate an audience who expects a
perceivable narrative in a film. They might find it as an incoherent &
pretentious piece, masquerading as art form. Well everyone has their own
opinion on ‘what makes something art’, but I feel there is a lot to take in
Andersson’s frames & characters (myriad of interpretations) – in both
metaphorical and concrete sense.
In “A Pigeon…” weirdness unfolds in the foreground: A young
tyrannical Swedish king (1692-1718) with his military officers storms inside a
local pub and posts bizarre demands on the stunned public; a old deaf man in a
basement pub flash backs to 1943, where young men sing in harmony and pay for
their drinks by kissing the barmaid; A lonely lieutenant finds everything in his
life cancelled or postponed; in a chapter tagged ‘Homo sapiens’, we watch a
ensnared primate receiving periodic electric shocks as a woman casually speaks
on her mobile; A platoon of white soldiers push African slaves into a giant
rotating boiler device for creating a pastime for wealthy aristocrats. But,
apart from these marvelously constructed episodes, there really is some sort of
a narrative, which involves a pair of fat, pale-faced, aspiring salesmen.
The pair named Jonathan (Holger Andersson) and Sam (Nils Westblom) wander through the film’s vignettes, miserably failing to sell their
stock of novelty items. The salesmen with their stone-faces try to sell corny
gag items (‘Vampire Teeth’, ‘Laughing Bag’, and ‘Uncle One-Tooth’) to people
who have no need for them. Even if they make a sale, they aren’t paid any
money. In a deadpan manner, the duo often states their business motto: “We want
to help people have fun”. The pair of psychologically depressed men itself
become a sad joke, but at some level, we could also empathize with them. We
laugh & reflect on the banality of their existence, whose sole aim is just
to use comedy to drive off life's despair.
Although, Andersson’s films states that it is about
exploring human condition, he isn’t trying to explore myriad of experiences
that makes up a human life. His imaginative vignettes, heavily inspired by the
theater of the absurd, specifically zeroes in on the isolation &
broken-down communication of the modern society. Failing or failed business is
a recurrent theme in this trilogy. In “Songs from the Second Floor”, a
businessman futilely burns down his shop in the hope of getting insurance.
Here, we have salesmen aimlessly stumbling through a sullen city. Despite the
fact that Andersson makes his living by making commercials to sell materials,
he inherently hates materialism. He subtly links the futility of life to our
blatant pursuit of materials. In an interview to UK’s ‘Independent’, Andersson
stated this: “In my opinion, in our time, we as humans are moving more and more
to being creatures without empathy, because you need to make money through business.
So you don’t look at your neighbor as your friend or someone to take care of,
you look at him as a potential client.”
Within his mysterious, enigmatic world, the director always
brings out something profound or a shocking rumination of human conduct. Themes
of bureaucracy and tyranny reflect through Charles XII episode, a man deeply
haunted by history. The break down in communication is another significant
theme, which is expressed even through the droll activities of the ensemble. “A
Pigeon….” is filled with characters that express a set of words without ever believing
in them. Apart from the central character’s punchline of “We just want to help
people have fun”, couple of other sentence is kept on repeated: “I’m happy to
hear you’re doing fine”; “Some people get up early for work tomorrow.” All the
different characters on phone keep on repeating the first sentence, which sort
of depicts our shriveled range of words, even when conversing with our loved
ones.In one of the film’s great moment, a very old man in a restaurant tries to
contact with the waiter during closing time, stating what he missed out as a
human: “I understand one thing. I have been greedy and ungenerous all my life.
That’s why I’m unhappy”. Even the ending “But it felt like a Thursday” scene is
yet another tragicomic portrayal of failed communication.
Even if the viewer doesn’t care about thematic overtones, Andersson’s
visual sense alone gives an exemplary experience. The visuals veer from being
outright hilarious to darkly comic to simply shocking. Since Andersson has shot
everything on sets (nothing, including the cafes, is shot on location), he
brings a degree of intrigue in all those polarizing visuals. The film-maker
equally focuses on sheer jaw-dropping images (like the giant, exterminating
device) and less significant visuals, which depicts a more mundane side of human
behavior (like the girls blowing bubbles from the balcony). For all the
stiffness, rigidity, and grim predicaments, Andersson does imbue gentleness
& a feeling of compassion to his proceedings.
“A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence” (101
minutes) is a thoroughly unpredictable tableau of vignettes that evokes deadpan
laughs through its exploration of existentialism. Those who aren’t bored by
this unique mode of film-making might discover ample moments of beauty that resides
within the banality & nefariousness of our mundane modern life.
Trailer
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