About Endlessness. (12A.)
Directed by Roy Andersson.
Starring Bengt Bergius, Anja Broms, Marie Burman, Amanda Davies, Tatiana Delaunay, Karin Engman. Swedish with subtitles. Available to stream from Curzon Home Cinema Nov 7th. 76 mins.
The opposing worlds of High Art and Light Entertainment mesh seamlessly in the films of Roy Andersson. Over his previous three films - Songs From The Second Floor/ You, The Living/ A Pigeon Sat On a Branch Reflecting On Existence - he has created a world of glory that mixes Tommy Cooper-style failed magic tricks and genocidal atrocities. He reduces people down to caricatures but finds in them great depths of humanity. Though his films deal with loneliness and despair, genocide and historical guilt, they are funny and they are kind.
When David Tenant's incarnation of Doctor Who would gush on about Aren't Human Beings Amazing you were always grateful for the validation, but felt like we'd gotten one over on the old fool. When Andersson, having trawled though the very worst of us, is still able to find something worthwhile and noble in humanity that really is touching.
An Andersson film is made up of a series of static vignettes set in an unidentified Scandinavian city. These scenes are mostly unconnected, though a few characters, themes and lines of dialogue recur through it. Everything is filmed on sets, in a pale muted colour scheme. The characters are usually down-on-their-luck middle-aged men.
About Endlessness is more of the same, only less so. Immediately we are back in his familiar whiter-shade-of-pale world, but with less comedy and almost no connection between the scenes. Also, and disappointingly, this doesn't have any of the striking set pieces his previous films were famous for: there's no equivalent of the army of a 19th King stopping off in a modern-day café for a drink on their way to the battlefield, or the rock stars honeymoon in which his new house moves on railway tracks into a station where adoring fans offer their best wishes. About Endlessness is made up entirely of the smaller scenes, the quieter scenes, the filler of his previous films.
When the Making Of documentary Being A Human Person was released before this, I thought we were having our expectations managed, that it was getting its excuses in early. The short running time raised fears of a talent that had exhausted its vision. And that may be the case; initially this was a crushing disappointment. It took maybe half an hour for me to stop obsessing over what the film wasn't and appreciate what it was. In many ways those smaller scenes with no obvious pay off, were the most intriguing parts of his previous films. They take as much time and effort to shoot (around a month each) as the big set pieces but with little obvious reward. Endlessness is all filler, no killer but maybe this refined vision was what he was working towards all along: a pure distillation of humanity.
Directed by Roy Andersson.
Starring Bengt Bergius, Anja Broms, Marie Burman, Amanda Davies, Tatiana Delaunay, Karin Engman. Swedish with subtitles. Available to stream from Curzon Home Cinema Nov 7th. 76 mins.
The opposing worlds of High Art and Light Entertainment mesh seamlessly in the films of Roy Andersson. Over his previous three films - Songs From The Second Floor/ You, The Living/ A Pigeon Sat On a Branch Reflecting On Existence - he has created a world of glory that mixes Tommy Cooper-style failed magic tricks and genocidal atrocities. He reduces people down to caricatures but finds in them great depths of humanity. Though his films deal with loneliness and despair, genocide and historical guilt, they are funny and they are kind.
When David Tenant's incarnation of Doctor Who would gush on about Aren't Human Beings Amazing you were always grateful for the validation, but felt like we'd gotten one over on the old fool. When Andersson, having trawled though the very worst of us, is still able to find something worthwhile and noble in humanity that really is touching.
An Andersson film is made up of a series of static vignettes set in an unidentified Scandinavian city. These scenes are mostly unconnected, though a few characters, themes and lines of dialogue recur through it. Everything is filmed on sets, in a pale muted colour scheme. The characters are usually down-on-their-luck middle-aged men.
About Endlessness is more of the same, only less so. Immediately we are back in his familiar whiter-shade-of-pale world, but with less comedy and almost no connection between the scenes. Also, and disappointingly, this doesn't have any of the striking set pieces his previous films were famous for: there's no equivalent of the army of a 19th King stopping off in a modern-day café for a drink on their way to the battlefield, or the rock stars honeymoon in which his new house moves on railway tracks into a station where adoring fans offer their best wishes. About Endlessness is made up entirely of the smaller scenes, the quieter scenes, the filler of his previous films.
When the Making Of documentary Being A Human Person was released before this, I thought we were having our expectations managed, that it was getting its excuses in early. The short running time raised fears of a talent that had exhausted its vision. And that may be the case; initially this was a crushing disappointment. It took maybe half an hour for me to stop obsessing over what the film wasn't and appreciate what it was. In many ways those smaller scenes with no obvious pay off, were the most intriguing parts of his previous films. They take as much time and effort to shoot (around a month each) as the big set pieces but with little obvious reward. Endlessness is all filler, no killer but maybe this refined vision was what he was working towards all along: a pure distillation of humanity.
