A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence

Philosophical bullshitting with an irresistible style and some funny moments. (10/04/2015)

I mainly watched this movie because the Scandinavian festival in Mladá Boleslav started. It’s just a shame that the event organizers picked this as the first movie, because I believe that it could have discouraged a lot of people from other movies that weren’t quite this absurd and abstract, on the contrary. Overall, I’d say that this author is way off the well-known set of rules of the Scandinavian filmmaking. He has a quite distinguishing style of storytelling and especially, a distinguishing angle on certain human traits he’d like to depict in his movies, but that I couldn’t for the life of me find anywhere in this movie. I thought it was absolutely awful; not only the never-ending shots where nothing was happening, but also the fact that almost all of the lines in the movie were said twice, most of the time because the other person in the dialogue (any dialogue, for that matter) was deaf as a post. However, the pub scene at least took the movie to a single star – I’m mostly giving it for the absurdity of the entire movie, which sometimes made me laugh, but most of the time, I was just thinking “what am I even watching”. I’d probably rather shoot myself in the head than watch this a second time. I watched this for the Challenge Tour 2015. (09/04/2015)

The master certainly softens slightly, is sentimental, and descends from the ruthless heights of the second floor to the ground floor, where his aging desperate men begin to realize that their knowledge is banal, that no one listens to him, and that he will probably go out for good in a moment. A bitter existential anecdote about a world where everyone says they are doing well, but are in fact fucked, a world in which humor exists only behind glass, and a world in which are reflected disappointed hopes and historical tragedies that change into a farce. Sometimes it can be felt that once extraordinarily unrestrained visions tend toward archaic absurd theater, but, for example, the mundane (and not pointed at all) scenes of everyday life are - I have no better word - beautiful. They show that the boundaries between compassion and hardness are beginning to crumble for Andersson, and some scenes (1943) are simply and captivating without being softly weeping. A certain fatigue of the master and the spectator can be seen in the fact that the points can be guessed in advance and some "sketches" are variations of well-known scenes (the drum with slaves resembles a provocative sequence with gassing children from the short film Something Happened, etc.). But even so, this jammed record, an eternally playing hit about how we meet our loved ones in heaven (which is scary), sounds like nothing from this world. Before or after. Roy Andersson himself is the stuffed pigeon sitting on a branch thinking about life. A museum exhibit that intentionally whitens the face. I will continue to stare at it. I understand its cooing more than anything else. Otherwise, I'm glad you're doing fine. (16/01/2015)

The visuals of the film are definitely intriguing, as well as the handling of individual scenes and the music, but this just isn't the type of film that would engage me and keep me entertained throughout - not necessarily laughing the whole time, but just to captivate me. This film with its beautifully long title simply failed to do that. (09/11/2016)

The absurdist black-humor drama A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence is the last film in a loose trilogy about human existence that seems to be coming to an inglorious end. At least that's my understanding of it. The previous two films were a bit funnier, but I laughed out loud a few times here, especially at the events in the pub in Gothenburg. With this mosaic of short stories, however, Roy Andersson probably wanted to express his disillusionment with the actions of us mere mortals. Otherwise, I cannot explain the pessimism and hopelessness that emanates from most of the protagonists and scenes. In this context, the often repeated phrase "That's good that you're doing well" doesn't sound very positive; rather, it carries a very bitter taste. I admire Roy Andersson as the writer and director for this peculiar three-part work. I don't understand how he came up with so many amazing ideas and managed to implement them in such a wonderful style. (75%) (02/06/2020)