A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, the last in Roy Andersson’s ‘living’ trilogy (a thematic one, together with Songs from the Second Floor and You, the Living) explores the humdrum lives of a couple of novelty joke shop item salesmen and the various people they encounter in Gothenburg, Sweden.
The film opens with three vignettes entitled ‘Encounters with Death’. In the first we see a fat man struggle to open a bottle of champagne — he collapses and dies. The second sequence shows two balding and frail men fighting with their dying mother over a handbag full of jewellery. The third sequence shows another fat man face down on the floor of a ski resort cafe. Paramedics and the cafe’s cashier attempt to give away his meal to unmoved onlookers. Then another, fatter man emerges from the background to claim the dead man’s untouched beer. The cashier and paramedics are left at a loss because nobody wants the dead man’s shrimp and chips. The film continues in this deadpan style.
Andersson’s aesthetic is one of quiet but undignified misery. His actors look and behave like characters from some long-lost, silent era comedy, wearing downtrodden expressions and nearly always looking at the camera. The direction feels ancient as well: shots are static and always from a distance. The characters, owing to their unfortunate circumstances, are not the most dynamic bunch either, moping from one side of the frame to the other. Andersson presents us with something that looks like a filmed play with snails for actors. The slow pace allows jokes to loop around a scene from funny to awkward to funny again.
Andersson understands comedy in a grotesque sort of way; but he also understands sadness, and injects equal amounts of both into the film. More than anything one is left with the feeling that these comedic characters would have a better time of things if they just talked and interacted with one another instead of worrying about themselves. In Pigeon, characters live merry lives, they have it good, they just don’t realise it. That’s funny stuff.
Words: Luke Maxwell
