The Roy Andersson Collection. (15.)
Directed by Roy Andersson.
About Endlessness 2020/ Being a Human Person 2020/ A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence 2014/ You, The Living 2007/ Songs From The Second Floor 2000/ A Swedish Love Story. 1970. Six-disc Collector's Edition Blu-ray boxset available from Curzon Artificial Eye on April 26th.
In a quiet week for new releases, I'm going to take one last chance to bang on about how the 78-year-old Swede is the 21st Century's greatest film artist. For the best part of fifteen years I've been trying to find ways to get across to readers the wonders of his singular vision. For Song From The Second Floor it was “Monty Python's Meaning of Life as written by Ingmar Bergman and directed by Jim Jarmusch.” For You, The Living it was “a series of saucy seaside postcards scripted by Beckett and relocated to a drab Scandanavian city.” For A Pigeon it was “the slapstick of the living dead.” For About Endlessness it “a seamless meshing of high art and light entertainment that mixes Tommy Cooper with genocide.” For this boxset I'm going with describing his films as life-affirming troughs of despair.
This boxset collection covers the half century of his career but with an emphasis on the last two decades. After scoring a big hit domestically with his lovely 1970 debut about teenage love, over the next decade or so he made a complete retreat from naturalism. Starting in advertising (you probably first experienced his work in episodes of Clive James on TV) and working away on sets built at his Studio 24 townhouse in Stockholm, he has spent four decades perfecting a static, deadpan caricature vision of humanity made up of our best and the worst moments.
During these last 12 months I've only ventured out of the house four times for movie business and twice of those were for Andersson. Once was a double bill press screening of his last film About Endlessness and the making of documentary Being A Human Person, directed by Fred Scott. The other was to the Swedish embassy for a display of props from his films in early November when Curzon Artificial Eye were gearing up for one last great Roy Andersson push. They had come up with this whole Canonisation of Roy Anderson campaign to try and finally get him recognised by a wider audience – and then the week About Endlessness came out, the cinemas were closed.
A cruel blow but, if we're honest, it was probably never going to happen. If you get him then his is a world of glory; if not it's just a bunch of very pale middle-aged Scandanavians, staring out forlornly from a pale Scandanavian city. Even in a year as barren as 2020, About Endlessness failed to make many top ten lists. Initially, its 78 minutes appears to be the work of an exhausted talent, reworking scenes and themes done better in previous films but after a while, this smaller vision becomes a mosaic of small treasures.
After writing my intial rave review for AE I did have some slight misgivings that it was trying to rationalise my disappointment. Second time around though it reveals itself to be truly masterly; its simpler, more modest vision fully delivers. He is the god of small things. Look at the detail, the intense work that goes into each scene. Early on we see a middle-aged woman in a suit staring out at a city scape. The film's unseen and unidentified narrator tells us “I saw a woman, a communications manager, incapable of feeling shame.” The woman then turns to face us and does indeed look exactly like someone incapable of feeling shame. And that is it. There's no comic pay off, no gag and she doesn't appear again. And you look at the image, with all its incredible detail, with all the painstaking work and effort that went into it (each shot takes around a month to complete) for no obvious purpose and it's humbling. It's like a humanist act of faith: humanity is still redeemable because Roy Andersson can still be bothered to make films about us.
Not that he's let us off the hook. About Endlessness is marked by abrupt jumps from dark to light. In one scene we see a man in front of a firing squad pleading for mercy straight to camera. In the next three young ladies launch into an impromptu dance routine outside a country bar on a beautiful summer's day. We get Hitler in the bunker, a honour killing and prisoners being marched to a camp in Siberia. But to balance that we get a father trying to tie his daughter's shoelaces as they cross a field in torrential rain and his umbrella blows away. “I saw a man with his daughter,” the narrator tells us, “on their way to a birthday party. And it rained; it rained a lot.” It lasts for maybe thirty seconds but it's everything and nothing, throwaway and momentous, as great a scene as any that he's come up with.
The boxset is beautifully packaged with a little pop up display when you open it. I love that Curzon Artificial Eye are trying to make him as approachable as possible, emphasise the fun side of it. There is though a disappointing lack of killer extras. Apart from some new filmed introductions by the likes of Ruben Ostlund and Mike Leigh, most of them are repeated from previous releases. Still no sign of a collection of his adverts. Or his 90s shorts Something Happened and World of Glory. Or his difficult second film Gilliap. So you'll just have to make do with four masterpieces.
Directed by Roy Andersson.
About Endlessness 2020/ Being a Human Person 2020/ A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence 2014/ You, The Living 2007/ Songs From The Second Floor 2000/ A Swedish Love Story. 1970. Six-disc Collector's Edition Blu-ray boxset available from Curzon Artificial Eye on April 26th.
In a quiet week for new releases, I'm going to take one last chance to bang on about how the 78-year-old Swede is the 21st Century's greatest film artist. For the best part of fifteen years I've been trying to find ways to get across to readers the wonders of his singular vision. For Song From The Second Floor it was “Monty Python's Meaning of Life as written by Ingmar Bergman and directed by Jim Jarmusch.” For You, The Living it was “a series of saucy seaside postcards scripted by Beckett and relocated to a drab Scandanavian city.” For A Pigeon it was “the slapstick of the living dead.” For About Endlessness it “a seamless meshing of high art and light entertainment that mixes Tommy Cooper with genocide.” For this boxset I'm going with describing his films as life-affirming troughs of despair.
This boxset collection covers the half century of his career but with an emphasis on the last two decades. After scoring a big hit domestically with his lovely 1970 debut about teenage love, over the next decade or so he made a complete retreat from naturalism. Starting in advertising (you probably first experienced his work in episodes of Clive James on TV) and working away on sets built at his Studio 24 townhouse in Stockholm, he has spent four decades perfecting a static, deadpan caricature vision of humanity made up of our best and the worst moments.
During these last 12 months I've only ventured out of the house four times for movie business and twice of those were for Andersson. Once was a double bill press screening of his last film About Endlessness and the making of documentary Being A Human Person, directed by Fred Scott. The other was to the Swedish embassy for a display of props from his films in early November when Curzon Artificial Eye were gearing up for one last great Roy Andersson push. They had come up with this whole Canonisation of Roy Anderson campaign to try and finally get him recognised by a wider audience – and then the week About Endlessness came out, the cinemas were closed.
A cruel blow but, if we're honest, it was probably never going to happen. If you get him then his is a world of glory; if not it's just a bunch of very pale middle-aged Scandanavians, staring out forlornly from a pale Scandanavian city. Even in a year as barren as 2020, About Endlessness failed to make many top ten lists. Initially, its 78 minutes appears to be the work of an exhausted talent, reworking scenes and themes done better in previous films but after a while, this smaller vision becomes a mosaic of small treasures.
After writing my intial rave review for AE I did have some slight misgivings that it was trying to rationalise my disappointment. Second time around though it reveals itself to be truly masterly; its simpler, more modest vision fully delivers. He is the god of small things. Look at the detail, the intense work that goes into each scene. Early on we see a middle-aged woman in a suit staring out at a city scape. The film's unseen and unidentified narrator tells us “I saw a woman, a communications manager, incapable of feeling shame.” The woman then turns to face us and does indeed look exactly like someone incapable of feeling shame. And that is it. There's no comic pay off, no gag and she doesn't appear again. And you look at the image, with all its incredible detail, with all the painstaking work and effort that went into it (each shot takes around a month to complete) for no obvious purpose and it's humbling. It's like a humanist act of faith: humanity is still redeemable because Roy Andersson can still be bothered to make films about us.
Not that he's let us off the hook. About Endlessness is marked by abrupt jumps from dark to light. In one scene we see a man in front of a firing squad pleading for mercy straight to camera. In the next three young ladies launch into an impromptu dance routine outside a country bar on a beautiful summer's day. We get Hitler in the bunker, a honour killing and prisoners being marched to a camp in Siberia. But to balance that we get a father trying to tie his daughter's shoelaces as they cross a field in torrential rain and his umbrella blows away. “I saw a man with his daughter,” the narrator tells us, “on their way to a birthday party. And it rained; it rained a lot.” It lasts for maybe thirty seconds but it's everything and nothing, throwaway and momentous, as great a scene as any that he's come up with.
The boxset is beautifully packaged with a little pop up display when you open it. I love that Curzon Artificial Eye are trying to make him as approachable as possible, emphasise the fun side of it. There is though a disappointing lack of killer extras. Apart from some new filmed introductions by the likes of Ruben Ostlund and Mike Leigh, most of them are repeated from previous releases. Still no sign of a collection of his adverts. Or his 90s shorts Something Happened and World of Glory. Or his difficult second film Gilliap. So you'll just have to make do with four masterpieces.