Pretty much every film ever made is at the core very formulaic. A plot, some characters, some conflict, all laid out in a familiar three act structure. The visual styles are very similar two - mid-shots, wide-shots, close-ups, quickly edited to the actor's performance. Of course, there's nothing wrong with this formula - indeed, it's very successful. Most great films have been created from these fundaments.
However, some filmmakers totally reject this, instead opting for a more unique approach. Some reject the idea of a narrative completely, going a more experimental route. Some even do away with all plot and characters, which some call "pure cinema". Roy Andersson doesn't go that far - there are still actors and a story - but his cinema is very distinctive.
After two feature films in the early 1970s, Andersson made a career in commercials and short films. He created his own formula for his commercials - intricate, wide shots, with each advertisement being a single shot. I.e. no editing. They all had some slapstick or physical comedy element to them, though as you might expect of a Swedish satirist - very deadpan and pitch black. For decades, he stringently stuck to this style.
In 2000, he returned back to feature films with Songs from the Second Floor. This kicked off a trilogy of films which essentially feel like many of Andersson's commercials cobbled together. It would take Andersson 7 years to make each of these films, with You, the Living in 2007 and A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence in 2014. Great as those first two films are, this is about A Pigeon.....Existence.
Like the other films in the trilogy, Pigeon features several loosely connected vignettes. However, these are no mere scenes - each single scene is a monument in its own right. Many of these scenes play out in single wide shots, each shot constructed with impossible intricacy and meticulousness.
The film loosely (and I do mean, very loosely) revolves around two traveling salesmen, who go around peddling merchandise. What merchandise? Joke articles like vampire teeth, masks etc. Very apt, indeed, as this entire film is one big joke that is laughing at the greatest joke of them all - human life.
Andersson and team have no interest in replicating life, instead choosing to create their own world. The sets are sterile olive, the characters' costumes are shabby, and their makeup laughably pale. The characters barely resemble people we know, instead being bumbling caricatures. It's a whole different planet. Yet, it's not really fantasy or abstract. It just strips down the very essentials. Andersson likes to call it "super-realism" and that is indeed a very apt description.
Each scene is set around some gag or the other, some short, minute, while other true setpieces. Each gag is more absurd and more completely ridiculous than the last. The centerpiece is a truly mesmerising scene, all captured in a single shot over 10 minutes, without any character movement. There's enough content for an entire film in this single frame.
There are no close-ups in this film. Instead, every shot is a wide shot, framed with intricate detail. There are layers of activity in each frame, kind of like Play Time, though less vast and more focused. This means, there's a central action to every shot, but there's also other things going on in the foreground and background.
Of course, no words could ever describe this style - it has to be seen and heard to be believed! You also have to watch it multiple times to really grasp everything that was designed to be conveyed.
No film makes me laugh uproariously one minute, then cower in guilt the next. That is its greatest brilliance - this film sets up laugh-out-loud hilarious gags, some of which have a very, very dark undertone. Of course, not every joke in the film is so obviously funny. Towards the end, a climactic scene might just be the most horrific scene I've seen in years. It's quite simply devastating - or it should be. Yet, it's combined with a sound gag that is... obviously not funny, but completely antithetical to the horror shown visually. At this point, I didn't know whether to laugh or be horrified.
Of course, this is not for everyone. All I can promise you is this is like nothing you have ever seen. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence one of the finest pieces of cinema ever made.
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence is available on Netflix, Amazon and Blu-ray worldwide.
