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Rating: Being born as a human is exhausting: you come into the world reluctantly, and from the earliest years of life, you are expected to follow in the footsteps of your fathers or mothers, to get married because you can't be alone, to struggle to find a stable job (no matter if it is dull, monotonous, and depressing) fighting against injustices, to produce, eat, sleep, have children, and die without being remembered by anyone.
Life is, therefore, emptied of meaning: it is a simple cog in a big machine that must continue to exist. Every old piece will be replaced with a newer, fresher, and more efficient one. But if this machine called "existence" - of which every human being is a small cog - must continue to march without purpose, what use are the emotions of individuals? Are they trinkets, embellishments, ribbons, meringues? Or do they also have specific functions?
These principles, if we will, are the basis of Roy Andersson's trilogy on "being a human being," which recently (and rightfully) won the prestigious Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival with the latest chapter "A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence," preceded by the masterpiece "Songs From the Second Floor" (2000) and this "Du Levande" (2007).
These are principles and points of reflection that have already been addressed in all sorts of ways: the sense and (non)sense of life as theoretical concepts have been the foundation of human culture since ancient times, passing through all the arts, religions, schools of thought...
They are points of reflection that could even be formulated by a particularly bright child, yet the lack of answers forces us to re-question why we breathe on this Earth.
Even Roy Andersson does not provide answers or, rather, does not want to provide answers. His intent is to show this senseless limbo that human beings reach when they begin to question why they exist. He does so with a grace that belongs only to him: he is pessimistic, but he is also tender in his approach. He never sinks into a dark infernal tunnel. Instead, he mocks his grotesque characters, but at the same time, he loves them.
Andersson's approach is typical of comedy, a cold comedy about human senselessness, where brief sad, tragic, or melancholic sketches (often with a fixed camera, but watch out for those occasional, imperceptible lateral tracking shots!) fit into one another in a surreal tour de force that inevitably leads the viewer to empathize with this desperate human fauna on the brink of oblivion. There's much laughter thanks to the infallible and icy black humor, reminiscent of Monty Python-style surreal nonsense and adapted according to the author's tastes. You laugh, but at the end of the viewing, you can't help but cry.
Those grotesque human beings are us: the fragile elementary school teacher who was insulted by her boyfriend and bursts into hysterical tears, the incurable romantic who finds himself with the bouquet intended for his beloved stuck in the door frame, the woman who feels alone despite everyone wanting to love her, the young girl who dreams of a fairytale life with her Prince Charming, with their love nest departing as if it were a train...
You laugh and regret having laughed. You anguish, you are moved, you dream. And when it's time to go to bed, you lie with your eyes wide open staring at the ceiling. Revisiting that finale of impending tragedy, of overwhelming beauty.
When all hope is lost, you must not despair, you must laugh.
Because often we despair over what, seen from the outside, appears absolutely ridiculous.
A great film, dedicated to those who want to warm their hearts and cheer up, as well as to those who just want to vent by hurling plates against the walls. These stories of ordinary sadness are for you.
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