4.5 stars out of 5
P.T. Anderson: Sure, I’m a fan. Wes Anderson, of course — huge favorite of mine. But who the hell is Roy Andersson? All I knew was that my friend Cat posted a movie trailer on Facebook and wrote “Amazin’.” She seems to like cool, quality things, so I clicked. I quickly learned that Alejandro Iñárritu and Darren Aronofsky were “presenting” the film. OK, with Iñárritu, maybe he was drawn to the lengthy title, as the man who brought us Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire. And Aronofsky, I’m also a big fan, except for The Fountain, which was shit. Anyway, decent dudes were vouching for Andersson, and the trailer looked right up my alley. And yet, going to see it, I didn’t really know what to expect.
Well, I really loved this movie. It’s highly unusual, dark, smart, very funny, and kind of beautiful. I was a little concerned at first: Translated text (the movie’s in Swedish… I think….) at the beginning tells us this is the third part of a trilogy. But there didn’t seem to be any problem whatsoever jumping in at part 3. For this isn’t really a plot-based exercise. Rather, it’s a series of connected and unconnected snapshots from life, and not from the cheeriest “photographer.”
I was actually reminded of Wes Anderson right away. Visually, two-S Andersson also sets his film in reality skewed ever so slightly, with a hint of whimsy. Though the characters and settings change from segment to segment, we’re always firmly in Roy Andersson’s world. It’s a grey, depressed world, populated by grey, depressed people (two middle-aged, down-on-their-luck novelty salesmen are a reoccurring framing device), in drab apartments, shops, and bars that seemingly haven’t changed in decades. We’re in the current day, but it continually looks like 1972. And this made me think of another likely influence on Andersson — Monty Python’s Flying Circus — almost as if this was some bizarro lost episode from that series. A character from one segment will walk into the next segment. There’s a similar deadpan celebration of absurdity, a willingness to play around with time, and even a shared obsession with the military. (A discussion in a sad bar is suddenly interrupted by 18th-century King Charles XII of Sweden who arrives inside — on horseback.) Like Python, this movie is frequently laugh-out-loud funny.
And yet, while many of the segments do seem like comedy skits, Andersson has much more to say. He’s interested in the platitudes we tell each other (“I’m glad to hear you’re doing fine”). He deals with the drudgery of life and work, the randomness of death, the sting of unreturned love. There is repetition of phrases, making this almost feel like a long-form poem. Andersson goes to some remarkably dark places, and yet still allows us just a few glimmers of hope, of joy. Even if it’s as basic a pleasure as removing a rock from one’s shoe.
I was transfixed by this movie. (That I saw it in a nearly empty theater on a Saturday night in Manhattan just added to the surreal atmosphere.) It’s funny: With so many short segments, the film felt much longer than its 101-minute running time — and yet if it had run all night I would’ve gladly kept watching. Gladly stayed in that sad little world. A Pigeon is not quite like anything I’ve ever seen before, and Roy has instantly rocketed up in my Anders(s)on rankings.
Jack Silbert, curator