Life is fundamentally “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short,” wrote Thomas Hobbes in “Leviathan,” a notion humankind has grappled with for as long as there has been abstract philosophical thought.
The Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson completes a trilogy ruminating on the meaning of it all with “A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence,” and the result is a stirring tableau that simultaneously evokes the loneliness of our natural state and the joys of finding a distraction from the despair.
The picture unfolds in the grand absurdist tradition, a widescreen panorama consisting of scenes that play out over still, single takes from a distance. There are protagonists — two down-on-their-luck salesmen of novelty items — but the movie is unified by the small moments that occur on the edges of the frame, around these two men, that illustrate the complexities of existence.
Modern-day cafegoers are astonished to find 18th century King Charles XII ride in on horseback; a man slowly drops dead as his wife happily cleans dishes in the next room; a flashback is set to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” in which a bar proprietor kisses a line of servicemen for a shot; soldiers lead African slaves into a churning metallic device and watch as it burns.
The movie’s ethos is summed up in part by a poem read by a young girl in one segment, which describes a pigeon, sitting on a branch, wondering why he doesn’t have more money before flying home.
It is equally, though, to be found in a tender shot of a couple cuddling on a beach or, in one of the fewer closer-in images, a friend reaching out to another in a moment of sadness.
This, Andersson optimistically says, is life: strange and mundane, tragic and humorous, trying and joyful, filled with meaning and utterly senseless. There’s no understanding any of it, ultimately, so why not embrace it all?
