Roy Andersson's mastery of the absurd

Roy Andersson's films are more distinctive than those of any other writer-director working today. If you've seen his bleakly absurdist comedies “Songs From the Second Floor” (2000) and “You, the Living” (2007), then you'll know what I mean – and you'll know within the opening five seconds of his new one that it couldn't possibly have been made by anyone else. The title confirms it: not many filmmakers would pick “A Pigeon Sat On a Branch Reflecting On Existence”, that won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival recently.

Andersson, a 71-year-old Swede, specialises in surreal vignettes set in drab, undecorated rooms. His characters are dishevelled, unsmiling and unnaturally pallid, like zombies who have had a particularly depressing day. The lighting is sickly, the camera doesn't move and the people in front of the camera don't move much, either. But these gloomy tableaux always feature an element of deadpan silliness which is surprising, thought-provoking and often hilarious. Each scene is somewhere between a Far Side cartoon and a contemporary art installation.

“A Pigeon” is subtitled “the final part of a trilogy [after 'Songs From the Second Floor' and 'You, the Living'] about being a human being”, and it begins with a caption promising “three meetings with death”. In one of these, a man quietly expires under the strain of pulling a cork from a wine bottle. In the second, two brothers try to wrestle their dying mother's handbag out of her grasp, because they're afraid she'll take her valuables to heaven. And in the third, the captain of a passenger ferry ponders what to do when someone drops dead, having just paid for his meal in the canteen.

From then on, a series of mournfully funny scenes unfold across a city that is either Gothenberg (Sweden) or purgatory. And while they don't make up a single over-arching story, they're linked by their eerie mood, as well as by various recurring phrases and characters. At several points, a pair of travelling salesmen are seen who carry a pathetic range of novelty items in their valise: a set of vampire teeth 'with extra-long fangs', a bag that emits a manic cackle and the grotesque mask of 'Uncle One-Tooth'. “We want to help people have fun,” they murmur together, while looking as if they've never had fun in their lives. “A Pigeon” concludes that being a human being is bound up with being confused, frustrated, lonely and cruel, although Andersson does include some glimmers of happiness. A few brief episodes show people who are actually content with each other – friends playing, lovers caressing – and, unusually, none of these episodes is undermined by a sour punch-line.

Given that these few faintly joyful snippets are about as cheery as “A Pigeon” ever gets, it's fair to say that the film isn't a must-see if you're looking for adrenalised entertainment. And even as an Andersson fan, I felt it wasn't quite as profound or as startling as the previous two of the trilogy. It runs short of ideas before the end, and some of the more underwhelming sequences are a little too effective at passing the characters' ennui onto the viewer.

All the same, “A Pigeon” confirms that Andersson is an artist to treasure. It's possible to compare him with Beckett, Bergman, Jacques Tati and Monty Python, but no one else is doing what he does, and a couple of segments in his new film are truly astounding in their originality and technical achievement. The most audacious sequence is set in a bar, where the travelling salesmen's latest desultory pitch is interrupted by the army of King Charles XII of Sweden, as it marches past to invade Russia. Typically, neither the 18th Century cavalry nor the 21st Century bar patrons seem too interested in each other, but open-minded audiences will be elated.

Source: BBC