"Beautiful and haunting."
- Rolling Stone
""
- The Telegraph
"Heaven"
- The Telegraph
"One of the best films you"ll see this year."
- The Telegraph
"Every stroke of Roy Anderson"s cinema is a wonderful sonic canvas that reveals our fragile humanity. It has a unique pace, vision & imagination without losing the beauty of the realism that surrounds it."
- Alejandro González Iñárritu
"This film offers visions unlike any in contemporary cinema."
- The Dissolve
"Grade: A. The Funniest Movie of the Year."
- Indiewire
"IMPECCABLY CRAFTED & VISUALLY ARRESTING."
- Art
Forum.com
"The startling juxtapositions and enticing painterly compositions in this remarkably skewed movie are a source of joy from start lớn finish."
- Filmmaker Magazine
"Critic"s Pick"
- NY Times
"Critic"s Pick"
- David EHRLICH, Time Out New York
"IF YOU ONLY SEE ONE MOVIE THIS SUMMER, SEE A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE. It builds to an ineffable beauty so sublime that you might have a hard time remembering what it is that other films are even trying lớn accomplish."
- David Erlich, Time Out NY
"IT’S BEAUTIFUL and HAUNTING. Once you"ve seen his work you"ll almost assuredly be converted to his warped-as-f*** sensibility."
- David Fear, Rolling Stone
"THE WITTIEST, MOST ENGAGING đen COMEDY I’VE SEEN IN AGES. Impeccably crafted và visually arresting."
- Tony Pipolo, Artforum
"THE FUNNIEST FILM OF THE YEAR. Surprisingly profound. GRADE A."
- Eric Kohn, Indiewire
"IT’S CINEPHILE CHRISTMAS. It brings Roy Andersson into the company of Beckett and TS Eliot, & captures the awful, glorious absurdity of being a human."
- Jessica Kiang, The Playlist
"CRITIC’S CHOICE. Director Andersson is a brilliant joker. There is ample pleasure khổng lồ be gleaned from his formal discipline and his downbeat wit."
- A.O. Scott, NY Times
"A master class in comic timing."
- Peter Debruge, Variety
"A SOURCE OF JOY FROM START to lớn FINISH"
- Howard Feinstein, Filmmaker
"A+. A sort of Saturday Night Live of the soul."
- Catherine Bray, Hit
Fix
" GLORIOUS. What a bold, beguiling and utterly unclassifiable director Andersson is. He thinks life is a comedy và feels it’s a tragedy, và is able to lớn wrestle these conflicting impulses into a gorgeous, deadpan deadlock."
- Xan Brooks, The Guardian
" IT’S HEAVEN. You just have lớn watch it, then grab a net and try lớn coax your soul back down from the ceiling."
- Robbie Collin, The Telegraph
" A comedy as weird và wonderful as its title. It exists in some surreal place where Ingmar Bergman meets The Office."
- Kate Muir, The Times
"Andersson is in a class of his own."
- Tim Grierson, Paste
"TRULY ASTOUNDING. Open-minded audiences will be elated. Andersson is an artist lớn treasure."
- Nicholas Barber, BBC.com
"It"s impossible to not to get some joy out of just gawking at his films."
- A.A. Dowd, AV Club
"It’s all as entertaining as it is outlandish. There’s a deep, deep humor lớn Andersson’s vision, a deeper kindness, và — way down at the bottom — an infinite regret at our brief lot."
Swedishcomedy "A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting On Existence" has a veryparticular style of deadpan humor và an equally specific morbid sense ofempathy. As in his previous two films, writer/director Roy Andersson("Songs from the Second Floor," "You, The Living") presentsseveral thematically-united sketches of life as it"s experienced by the meek,and the suffering, two groups of people who are (according to Andersson’s films) doomed toinherit nothing. "A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence"is, in that sense, a kind of alarmist comedy. It’s a series of comedic sketches aboutpeople who are too self-involved to empathize with each other. It’s also aplaintively blunt wake-up call, và an effective demand for viewers" vigilantsensitivity.
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I"mwriting this review as a series of direct free-associations because that"sessentially how "A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting On Existence"presents itself. Lượt thích Andersson"s other recent films, "Pigeon" is amovie that"s so viscerally effective that it doesn"t really matter how hardindividual scenes clobber you over the head with Andersson’s humanist message:by choosing to isolate ourselves from each other, we die a thousand littleabsurd deaths every day without ever really moving on.
“A Pigeon Sat On a
Branch Reflecting on Existence” doesn’t really have aplot, but it does feature two recurring characters: Jonathan (Holger Andersson)and Sam (Nils Westblom) sell novelty items, but aren"t very good at it. They"reshy và tactless, as we see in any scene where they try khổng lồ pitch people whocould clearly care less about plastic vampire fangs, & rubber Halloweenmasks. But Jonathan, who is repeatedly teased for being over-sensitive, alsosuffers from a vague sinking feeling that something is wrong with his life, andthat leads to lớn problems with Sam later on.
Tobe fair, Jonathan"s not completely blameless. In one scene, we see him bullyinga store-owner who is too anxious and depressed khổng lồ address Jonathan and Sam whenthey demand payment for novelty items that were bought on credit. It"s anawkwardly heated argument since Jonathan and Sam have to argue with theirclient through a third party: the store-owner’s wife. Jonathan and Sam"s seeminglack of empathy is what unites them with the various other people in "APigeon Sat On a Branch Reflecting on Existence." Several charactersreceive phone calls that lead them to miss whatever situation is happeningright in front of their eyes, lượt thích the callous scientist who ignores a monkeyshe"s performing electroshock therapy on or the desperate barber who doesn’t see his reluctant(and only) client leaving his barber shop. Each time this happens, the personon the phone ironically says "I"m glad that you"re doing fine,"reminding viewers that the opposite is actually true, & that a state ofun-fine-ness is actually what passes for normalcy in Andersson’s film.
Anderssonis not however a pessimist nor is "A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting on
Existence" a cynical film. On the contrary, "Pigeon" leads viewersthrough a series of comically bleak vignettes towards a hopefully open-endedconclusion. In a 2009 interview published in Mu
BI by former "At the Movies" co-host Ignatiy
Vishnevetsky, Andersson describes his simultaneously unsparing but ennoblingsensibility as "a light without mercy." Vishenvetsky correctly addsthat "There"s a difference between being ‘without mercy’ & beingcruel." You can see exactly what Vishnevetsky means in the mostconfrontational scene in "Pigeon:" a dream sequence wherein white xanh bloods phối agiant container full of black slaves on fire, & watch as the containerrevolves slowly and makes music. The painfully deliberate pacing of this scenemakes it surprisingly shocking. You realize what"s happening well before thescene is over, but by the time the scene ends, you"ll also realize that you"vejust seen the most serious scene in "Pigeon." It"s a howl ofinflexible indignation that informs the rest of the film"s slipperypre-apocalyptic comedy.
Anderssonis able khổng lồ essentially lecturehis audience intolaughing at his funhouse reflections of human insensitivity because he has avery exact style, one that he"s honed after directing hundreds of equallysurreal commercials. Andersson takes his time behind the camera. He typicallyreshoots scenes that feature only a handful of dialogue over và over again,sometimes several dozen times. He doesn"t agonize over shots, according lớn lineproducer John Carlsson, but rather just chooses them at his own pace. Thatsensitivity shows in "Pigeon""s sets: life-like models andfixtures that make you feel like you"re looking at street scenes when in fact you"relooking at vividly detailed interior sets that also retain a magical kind ofartificiality. The film"s interiors are similarly shot lượt thích tableaux vivantsthat just barely come alive whenever a zombie-like protagonist trudges through.The world of "A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence" is,in that sense, fragile, but not really moribund. Andersson"s hystericallyimpotent characters may, in other words, be perpetually on the verge of aspiritual breakdown, but they never completely fall apart. That kind of mulishlystubborn resilience is very human, và also very funny.
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Simon Abrams
Simon Abrams is a native New Yorker và freelance film critic whose work has been featured inThe thành phố new york Times,Vanity Fair,The
Village Voice,and elsewhere.