When, at night, I had a low fever and throat sore, I realized that a cold had caught me hard. But, earlier on the afternoon, while watching A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, by Swedish director Roy Andersson, I wasn't able to figure out why I was so asleep and kind of dizzy.
During the film, I dozed off five or six times. In each of them, I started to dream about the movie in front of me, changing the story in the sketches (the movie is composed of many of them). Everytime I opened my eyes, though, the same scene was rolling in front of me, and the time hasn't moved much. For that, you can realize that the movie hasn't the fastest of paces.
That is not a problem for me, in life or the diegetic world. Silence and quiet in movies as a way to tell a story can create some masterpieces in cinema. And at the beginning of this film, I thought it was leading to one of those incredibly woven movies. the silly bureaucracy that stops before nothing, even death; how life fades in a second; unrequired love and pain; ongoing bankruptcy; violence against fellow humans; aristocracy and its unfair ways; guilty, pain, loss... The whole story of humanity is there, in fragments united by some characters. However, because of my dizziness or because of the film itself, the downhill became too steep soon.
I don't know, but I think that maybe the Pigeon had written the script. While looking at humans in aloofness, trying to find the next bread crumb, he could tell what he was seeing with occupancy, but wasn't actually able to relate to it. It is understandable, after all. I cannot judge the Pigeon for that.
If it was a Pigeon at least.
The sketches in the movie are very symbolic of human race. Some of its aspects are represented in what could have been a revolutionary and fierce way. Some people think the movie has achieved it, but not me, unfortunately. It was not a surprise to hear many footsteps leaving the theatre (the cinema where I was is small and an embellished dump, and we can hear every little movement made by the other patrons). Everything in it is made to take us out of a comfort zone - I can admire that. Yet, the way it was presented wasn't for me.
A curiosity: Roy Andersson also directed A Swedish Love Story, movie that I've seen four days ago.
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| Damm... this I've missed while dosing off. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (En Duva Satt pá en Gren Och Funderade pá Tillvaron). Directed and written by Roy Andersson. With: Holger Andersson, Nils Westblom, Viktor Gillenberg. Sweden/Germany/Norway/ France, 2014, 101 min., Color (Cinema). |
PS: I don't know if I'm masking the facts, but I remember napping only three times in a cinema during my 35 career as a moviegoer. The first one was at Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, 1999, during the most boring chasing scene in the story of cinema. I was really surprised, though. That never had happened to me before. The next was only last year, in The Hobbit marathon at the movies. After lunch, in a comfy big chair, I nodded off for half an hour in the Rivendell part in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, 2012. It is my favorite movie in the trilogy, but I had a good nap, actually. And the third was just yesterday. I don't like it, I don't even nap in front of TV, but sometimes is really inevitable.
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