A series of micro-stories revealing the absurdity of human existence, which simultaneously invokes laughter, horror, and melancholy. The new film by the Swedish surrealist and haute tragedian Roy Andersson is a hot-blooded Nordic picture where every frame and scene can be watched endlessly.
A loving couple float above a city ruined during the war. A priest dreams that he drags a wooden cross through the streets. A boy explains to a girl the first law of thermodynamics. Nazis drink in a bunker as bombs are falling over Berlin. A man decides to cook dinner for his wife…
Resuming Roy Andersson’s trilogy about the living (Songs from the Second Floor; You, the Living; A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence), About Endlessness also consists of micro plots about Andersson’s signature philistines, helpless in front of the absurd. Each story is different from the rest and is enacted as a scene-installation, so warm-blooded and rich in detail that it can be viewed infinitely. Whereas previously Andersson’s idiosyncratic and boundless world was reminiscent of Pieter Breugel’s paintings, one can now see its parallels with Marc Chagall (the look of the flying couple being a reference to his painting Over the Town) and even Ilya Kabakov’s albums about Soviet philistines who were also able to soar above the suffocating mundanity.
The film will be screened in Swedish with Russian subtitles.
Dir. Roy Andersson
Sweden, Germany, Norway, France, 2019. 76 min. 16+