En duva satt på en gren och funderade på tillvaron (2014) Reviews

• Things happen whether you laugh or cry!

  K2nsl3r2014-09-29

  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.

• The sweetness from bitters

  roxana_haloiu2015-05-11

  The Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence. It would be inappropriate to talk about this film's genre.  This is not a comedy,  not a drama and not even a dramedy. It's just a pigeon's reflection on existence. As I came out of the cinema I didn't even know if I liked it or not. But let me tell you something: it's not about that! I woke up the next day with an array of images and tunes in my head.  The meaning of the film seeps through the layers of perception and leaves you with an undefined aftertaste. The camera captures little nothings that upset the characters. The humour emerges from the contrast between the pettiness of their situation and the tragic effect it has on them. A flamenco teacher as her student's unrequited lover, two sales men that never sell anything etc. are just a few examples. On the other side, when real tragedy such as death occurs, people behave like it's just another banal event. The only thread that connects the film is the story of the two salesmen. This duo represents what nowadays we call losers. Their dullness counterpoint the incredible scenarios they end up in. Their universe is anachronistic and at times delightfully surreal. In this mad world it seems like people have strong feelings only at war time. Be it romantic passion, patriotic pathos or grief. But what about the pigeon? What is she/ he thinking? I believe that the pigeon is a poet. The pigeon sees the things that are outside history. He sees beauty in kids making bubbles and lovers sharing a cigarette. These scenes pop up on the screen like epiphanies and are infused with visual poetry. There must be a meaning in all this apparent nonsense. There seem to be an answer to Jonathan's malaise(one of the two salesmen). His vision of human sacrifice for the pleasure of others makes him question his existence. He is a tragic hero being shut down by the guy who keeps on telling him that he needs to work in the morning. I didn't like the film at first. But it gets to you like a good Negroni. It's bitterness flourishes notes of unexpected sweetness.

• vegetarians of love

  Iwould2015-03-09

  Please, listen: if you are looking for a "classic" story you should choose something else. A story is here, indeed, but it's buried under a series of episodes and different POVs – it feels like we are having the chance to observe the behavior of the inhabitants of a parallel dimension from the fixed cameras of an internal surveillance video system (a very special one, equally able to look in the present, in the past and in the dreams of the strange characters displayed). What we get, in the movie, it's a composite drawing of the social, private, and inner lives of those characters. And it's strange, of course: sometimes you can hardly tell the difference between the dream and the reality and the reverie – as those surveillance cameras never flinch and inch, even in front of the most strange happenings. But, even if the cameras never moves, the images we are shown constantly jump the tone of the story from drama, to comedy, to horror, to nonsense, with a quickness that is uncommon for the genre-related, petrified narrative codes we are used to. The main thing I could understand, in the end, is that the problem of the people living in this world is their inability to care about each other's feelings. Some of them eventually even understand this, and with regret, because they realize that if you are not able to love your close ones then you will hardly be able to love yourself. Still, all of them look completely unable to go over this self-imposed limit: so it happens that the stuffed pigeon at the begin of the movie seems by far to be the most alive of the characters featured – not to mention the happiest one.

• A little hope......

  kboote2015-06-05

  Reading some of the reviews of "A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting Upon Existence" on this site made me despair for the state of humanity almost as much as watching the film. Several reviewers accuse Andersson of "racism" in response to the scene where the slaves have to enter into the infernal machine. In fact what this scene is presenting is a metaphor for the fact that the wealth of western nations is based upon the colonial and imperial exploitation and cruelty towards ethnic peoples across the globe, which continues to this day in sweat shops in Asia and in American owned fruit plantations in Central and South America. Andersson is encapsulating in a graphic and chilling way how black slaves were used to fuel the engine of capitalism. A couple of the "reviewers" operate so far down the IQ scale that they clearly do not even understand that films are "fictional" and so they accuse Andersson of showing actual animal cruelty. One of the intentions of the film is to show how far removed from nature we have become. Nature is shown imprisoned in glass cases as stuffed museum exhibits or when being subjected to the indifferent, cruel and pointless animal testing on what was quite clearly a model monkey. Then we also see the small glimpses of light amongst the gloom when people respond to the beauty of nature such as when the characters look skyward to the off screen cooing of the pigeon. We also see a couple on a beach with the oppressive city scape in the background quietly being intimate with each other and in this scene the dog is shown to be able to behave in a relaxed and natural way. Roy Andersson is a humanist and he is showing with sympathy, but also with much disappointment and sadness, the state of humanity. The two central characters are the salesmen Jonathan and Sam selling junk supposedly designed to bring fun into people's lives. As people have remarked a Vladimir and Estragon for our times, wandering within a desolate world with only the vaguest of purpose and the faintest glimmer of hope. Their "trade" and the products they sell a commentary of our times. So we have the vampire teeth, representing the superstition that is forcing the major religions to retreat to medieval attitudes and behaviours, the laughter bag representing the forced mechanical fun of our age, the dumb formulaic comedies with their never ending sequels and the "fun" of Springbreak and 18-30 holidays where the "highlights" are being drunk, producing lots of vomit and the opportunity to sexually abuse a semi comatose drunken girl. This is a reflection of a world where the success of Governments is measured by GDP, which is really a measure of how much pointless crap people buy, as opposed to a society where we measure happiness. When Jonathan attempts to discuss his true feelings or to discuss anything in philosophical terms he is told to shut up because "people need to get up for work", people reduced to mindless automatons. The mask of "one tooth uncle" is I think representing our disdain and mocking of the old and the different. Our duo are engaged in low paid work often amongst people who are in an even worse financial state than they are, trapped in the debt culture that fuels consumerism. The historical reference Sweden's chequered past and links with Nazism and demonstrate the lessons that history can still provide to us. Thus we have a scene set in 1943, just at the point when Sweden was turning from tacit support for Germany and starting to allow Jews from Norway to cross over into it's borders. I think that the scenes featuring Charles X11 are designed to show that the arrogance of empire is temporary. Charles was a brilliant military leader with at one stage the most powerful army in Northern Europe but like Napoleon and Hitler he was destroyed by a military campaign against Russia. Thus I think Andersson reflects that the great European empires gave way to the USA and now North America is in hock to China. Charles X11 the heroic, masculine leader of legend but what he really craves as a human is the quiet warmth and intimacy of holding the hand of a boy in a bar. Several commentators have remarked upon the bizarre almost Python-esque humour in the film but in a World where a government can bail out the banks, the institutions that created the financial crisis in the first place with their greed and incompetence, to the tune of 23 trillion dollars, or a sum that would have enabled us to develop cheap sustainable energy sources across the Globe, the only reaction can be to reflect on the surreal and nonsensical values of the world in which we now live. Homo sapiens have become a race of empty zombies reduced to mouthing platitudes about everything being" fine", a recurring motif throughout the film, where for ordinary people trying to make a living the daily reality is one of struggle and despair compared with the luxury and indolence of the wealthy. But are the pale vacant expressionless faces to be studied or are they really mirrors that our own faces will inhabit as we look into them? There are tears in Andersson's eyes from the sadness he feels and from the bitter laughter of recognition at the ridiculousness of the state of homo sapiens and what we have allowed ourselves to become. A species reduced to behaviour that enables it to steal from a dying mother or to a society that can ignore the dignity of a dead man and instead concentrate on consumer exchange. Yet as a humanist Andersson still needs to show that we are capable of retaining some vestige of humanity encapsulated in the innocent play of the children with the bubbles, another small glimpse of sunshine amongst the gloom. Some hope where very little remains.

• In a world so sad, is it allowed to have a laugh?

  mr_spaceman2015-01-24

  This Scandinavian movie which takes place in an unnamed Swedish town is about bringing joy and laughter to people when there isn't really anything to laugh about. Jonathan (Holger Andersson) and Sam (Nils Westblom) are two joke article salesman, who have only three products: vampire teeth, a canned laughter sack and a frightening rubber mask which they try to sell to resellers. However, the duo is not successful in what they do and so are their – not so funny – products and their uncreative and repetitive sales talk. As they stumble into financial trouble their friendship and business project is about to collapse. This loose and rather sad story is patched with more absurd incidences. A longer scene takes place in a bar when the young Swedish King Charles XII (1682 - 1718) rides in, as he guides the army to the battle against Russia. Charles asks the handsome barman to come with him to the war. Later, when the army comes home and the war is lost, Charles again visits the bar because he has to go to the toilet. These scenes are not meant to be taken literally but rather embraced as pure images decorated with strange and morbid humor. The world which director Roy Andersson paints for the viewer is drab. There are no colorful things: walls are ocher, bars are gray, the furniture is simple wooden dark brown, and even the faces of the protagonists are white. Nevertheless, the dry jokes, the black humor and the absurdity make the movie fascinating and funny, though a guilty pleasure. Is it really OK to have a laugh or – even worse! – to sell jokes in a world that is so odd, so gray, so dark and sad? There are two scenes that may have caused uproar but I think not many people made it that far since these scene appear rather late in the film. I won't give it away; you have to find out for yourself. The things that drive common movie goers away are the incredible slow pace of the movie (think of REPULSION (1965)) and the lack of a cohesive storyline. Art seekers on the other side will find an interesting and subtle movie with strange humor that is rarely found.