A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014)
(En duva satt på en gren och funderade på tillvaron)
Country: SV/GER/NOR/FR/DK
Technical: col 101m
Director: Roy Andersson
Cast: Holger Andersson, Nils Westblom, Viktor Gyllenberg
Synopsis:
Two elderly friends occupy rooms at a YMCA while scratching a living selling novelty items out of a suitcase. They either witness or imagine absurdist vignettes epitomising the misery, or at least drudgery, of human existence, including Charles XII's defeat at Poltava in the early 1700s and a mass murder of African slaves by British colonialists.
Review:
Visitors stand and stare, indistinguishable from the stuffed exhibits in a museum, a man on a ferry dies before he can consume his meal, another waits outside a restaurant for a date who will never show... We are by now familiar with Andersson's pastel coloured tableaux, shot through with deadpan or gallows humour, in which humanity is so reduced to torpor and pallor as to appear on the brink of death already. One or two Pythonesque moments raise a titter, and a scene involving monkey vivisection unleashes a chill, while the attention to detail in the production at the very least inspires admiration besides mounting depression.
(En duva satt på en gren och funderade på tillvaron)
Country: SV/GER/NOR/FR/DK
Technical: col 101m
Director: Roy Andersson
Cast: Holger Andersson, Nils Westblom, Viktor Gyllenberg
Synopsis:
Two elderly friends occupy rooms at a YMCA while scratching a living selling novelty items out of a suitcase. They either witness or imagine absurdist vignettes epitomising the misery, or at least drudgery, of human existence, including Charles XII's defeat at Poltava in the early 1700s and a mass murder of African slaves by British colonialists.
Review:
Visitors stand and stare, indistinguishable from the stuffed exhibits in a museum, a man on a ferry dies before he can consume his meal, another waits outside a restaurant for a date who will never show... We are by now familiar with Andersson's pastel coloured tableaux, shot through with deadpan or gallows humour, in which humanity is so reduced to torpor and pallor as to appear on the brink of death already. One or two Pythonesque moments raise a titter, and a scene involving monkey vivisection unleashes a chill, while the attention to detail in the production at the very least inspires admiration besides mounting depression.
(En duva satt på en gren och funderade på tillvaron)
Country: SV/GER/NOR/FR/DK
Technical: col 101m
Director: Roy Andersson
Cast: Holger Andersson, Nils Westblom, Viktor Gyllenberg
Synopsis:
Two elderly friends occupy rooms at a YMCA while scratching a living selling novelty items out of a suitcase. They either witness or imagine absurdist vignettes epitomising the misery, or at least drudgery, of human existence, including Charles XII's defeat at Poltava in the early 1700s and a mass murder of African slaves by British colonialists.
Review:
Visitors stand and stare, indistinguishable from the stuffed exhibits in a museum, a man on a ferry dies before he can consume his meal, another waits outside a restaurant for a date who will never show... We are by now familiar with Andersson's pastel coloured tableaux, shot through with deadpan or gallows humour, in which humanity is so reduced to torpor and pallor as to appear on the brink of death already. One or two Pythonesque moments raise a titter, and a scene involving monkey vivisection unleashes a chill, while the attention to detail in the production at the very least inspires admiration besides mounting depression.