A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2015)

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Pigeon is made in the same style as You, the Living. Again we have plenty of short scenes, shot from one angle, with no cuts. Filled with absurdity, no actual plot, various way of interpretation. Too deep or too obvious, Andersson bounces between two extremes. The characters and the scenes are overdrawn. Everything happens in one, slow pace. Silence is boring and dulling the vigilance. In comparison, You, the Living seemed more... lively.If Andersson shows Swedish society, I felt the criticism towards it in one scene, mocking it in the second and a direct reference to it in the third. The critique is present in a scene with elderly elegant Swedes observing the cruelty, done by non-Sweden. For me this is a reflection on Swedish neutrality in the 20th century. Mocking the Swedish society appears in the last scene. Bunch of people is waiting at the bus stop and one of the men starts to ask if today it's really Wednesday, cause for him it felt like Thursday. The group assures him that yes indeed, it's Wednesday. Additionally, the other man explains, that we all have to agree that it's Wednesday, otherwise there's gonna be chaos. Of course the first man did not imply that we wished it's another day of the week or that he is still gonna pretend it's not Wednesday. It did not hinder the other man to make sure that everything is clear - even if you feel like something else, you have to agree with everyone else in order to keep peace and organization. It might be exaggerated reference to Jantelagen (no one is special, no one should act like they are superior to one another). It is established that it's Wednesday, everyone has to adjust.And then it's my favourite scene with Charles XII. He, as a Swedish king, should be a clear indicator that Andersson tells something about Sweden. Okay, we have a king with absolute power, everyone serves him even if he has the most ridiculous demands. But... this could be any monarch, right? So for me by using him, the director was more about praising the modernization, understood both as moving from kingdoms to democracy and as equalization of the societies. Choosing Charles XII could simply just give Andersson space to mock king's homosexual needs, which was directly shown. Despite different possible interpretations, I admire Andersson for the technical management of this scene. It's the longest one in the movie and the most complicated. So many elements could go wrong and in the end there is this final version with no cut. Standing ovation.What if we look at Pigeon not as a portrait of Swedish life, but a life itself? All the feelings are phlegmatic. Even love, even anger, even laughter. Is the life so unfair or do we make it this way ourselves? I think that Swedish societ" is just a frame. Andersson is using some obvious cliches and stereotypes (which still can be true!) about his motherland in order to explain something more, something common to all human beings. Or I'm just trying to find deeper meaning which really isn't there. If so, this is just another proof of this director's strength - his movies can be seen through so many shades of interpretation.

People have been duped into thinking that a film is realistic if each thing in it, taken by itself, is realistic. But the selection and assemblage into a whole is what makes a film, and Roy Andersson's selection is not a realistic look at life. It is a relentless montage of death and despair. Life is better than this.In context, it is just another dreary product of the post-modernist highbrow elite trying to convince the masses that their lives aren't worth living, in the hopes that they will destroy their culture so that they, the elite, can build a new utopia on its ashes.(Also, it's extremely boring. If Andersson had eliminated all of the disconnected scenes, including most of the ones at the start of the film, it would just be boring, which would be a great improvement.)

watching this flick wouldn't be possible if i hadn't come across ROY ANDERSSON's name and his body of works 3 months ago. but now i have so it becomes my duty to tell what this film is all about and why you should be watching it nevertheless if you don't watch films like these or don't want to gamble onto some unheard director-writer.this film as pre-told in a synopsis by IMDb tells about Sam and Jonathan, a pair of hapless novelty salesman who goes through various real and non-real situations. but according to me, it is more of different people told as situation and occurrence wise. it just happens that these two salesmen becomes the eyes of what goes around. Even there are many things which cannot be said in few words to explain what the film is about. To sum up, i can say that it is about events and conditions of human related and to where and how they live. Some go through normalcy while others through weird and out of this world.if you want to hook up with this film you need to also go through his previous works and 2 prequels of this third part. i am not saying that it is continuous but revolves around same atmosphere to know what the filmmaker and the film is telling about.at last, if you are one of those who have a keen and sharp eye for small and unnoticeable things that play a vital role in life and living then this will work wonders for you plus don't fail to guess that fun and absurd comedy is also a part of the troop that will make you love and take note of things in life that films like this come up to reveal to us when we are lost in something we don't know about.

If Ingmar Bergman had directed the Monty Python crew through a script by August Strindberg and story boards by Edvard Munch, this is the film that might have resulted. Billed as a comedy, it produces the occasional chuckle, but humorous it isn't. A surreal Nordic allegory, as suggested by other reviewers, it might possibly be, but one would have to sit through it several times to extract that degree of narrative intent. I think I wouldn't have the patience. One can imagine that Swedes would find it much more meaningful, and funnier, than Americans for possessing the cultural context upon which the film clearly depends. There are a lot of subtleties of history, social mores, and such that get lost in translation.One has to hope that the eponymous pigeon's existence is less dreary than the lives of the film's characters, or the writer's vision of the world. The DP and Art Director seem to have been a gleefully willing accomplices in the whole thing, however. The staging and photography are at times positively brilliant.