Critics reviews

Strangely enough, even though none of the three films is very cheerful, Andersson's trilogy triggered optimism in my heart and in my mind. What exactly causes that, I don't know. But I do know that the Swedish director has created a very effective trilogy about us, the living, hearing songs from the second floor all the while we sit on a bench reflecting on existence.

The final film in Roy Andersson's human condition trilogy is droll, sad, deep, each shot meticulously composed, as in the director's signature style, like a multi-layered painting.

Anderson's modus operandi takes advantage of the dialectic between the stillness of the tableau and movement within the frame, and this dialectic is highlighted by means of the actors' deadpan performative style. The film's staging is reminiscent of what Jean Mitry calls "painterly theatricality," which according to David Bordwell was a European tradition that privileged shot composition at the expense of narrative continuity.

Andersson's latest can hardly surprise with its tone or technique. Acolytes will by now expect the dolefully droll skits, the serenely seasick-colour palette and the blase expansiveness of form... Yet this comfortably glum wallow still finds ways to make the heart stop.

Some directors make tableaux vivants. Andersson does the opposite: tableaux morts. They simply feel, in their clammy, funereal way, just as alive.

Each film in the series is made up of absurd, deadpan sketches about the quiet desperation of everyday lives, something of a minimalist, formalist Laurel & Hardy. Each section is shot in long takes on a single set, his actors wearing white face paint as if in Kabuki, speaking in an earnest monotone. A Pigeon, for example, opens with a man having a heart attack after struggling to open a bottle of wine . His films are so sad you have to laugh, or so funny you have to cry.

On the page, Andersson's approach may seem deadly and pretentious, but his expert timing, his eye for detail, his flair for the ridiculous, and his use of the chasmic possibilities of deep focus mark him as a genuinely cinematic talent — the secret love-child of Jacques Tati, Monty Python, and Ingmar Bergman.

Andersson has been perfecting this droll, widescreen aesthetic over the decades — not least in his long series of one-take, one-gag commercials, always culminating with one perfectly timed, regularly macabre twist — and Pigeon may well be his most confrontational work long-form yet.

Grimly enjoyable as ever, though somewhat less flamboyantly spectacular than its predecessors, Pigeon offers the usual collection of vignettes, some stand-alone, others narratively connected, and a few prefaced by announcements of their theme.

Each of these set pieces is superbly executed within Andersson's trademark long-take style, and the dichotomies they set up—between past and present, reality and fantasy, and comedy and melancholy—are potent and suggestive. They are all also basically copies of scenes that the director has done before.

Director Roy Andersson, who has only made five feature films in his 45-year career, viewed his fellow Swede Ingmar Bergman as a rival when the latter was still alive. A Pigeon Sat On a Branch Reflecting On Existence can be seen as a way of trying to top Bergman's metaphysical aspirations, while retaining a sense of humor.

Pigeon," in its deadpan, hyper-composed way, is often paralyzingly funny, and there is compassion for the gray-faced souls wandering through it. That's why a late turn into animal torture and genocide has more weight than the material and mood can sustain. The film hits its absurd height earlier.