Roy Andersson's A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014) aims to demythologize the commercial image of reality, shutting the door on the stock-photo swaths of smiling happy faces on television and in advertisements and instead focus on the world's dropouts, misfits and ignored. Observing humanity's endless capacity for error, cruelty and self-humiliation Pigeon presents the audience with thirty-nine tragic sketches that pontificate on varying themes of solitude, regret, boredom, and death in a fittingly mordant finale to to the Swedish auteur's trilogy about 'being human' which began in 2000 with Songs from the Second Floor and continued with You, the Living (2007).
A comedic dioramist with a penchant for tragedy and astringent humor, the backbone of Andersson's latest revolves around the exploits of two travelling salesmen as they try to peddle novelty items in a town devoid of cheer. However, Andersson shuns linear storytelling, taking time-out to observe the various characters that populate the background of his frame. His characters have a disconcerting habit of holding your gaze unblinkingly and are frequently observed on the phone morosely declaring "I'm happy to hear that you're doing fine" with each scenario unified by a collective sense of vulnerability and hopelessness. In their eyes there's something unreadable, that doesn't want to be read; a determined blankness that conceals an overwhelming effort to disappear.
The weight of history can also be felt permeating the narrative; from one magical scene in a bar where we're suddenly transported back to 1943 to partake in a riotous sing-a-long, to a torturous scene of a chain-gang of slaves being steered into a cylindrical vault for the amusement of a dinner party. There's no great drama in Andersson's work, yet each of his scenes are precariously balanced on the fulcrum between the marvellous and the vulgar; swaddled in surrealism and constantly on the verge of telling a truly great story. Pigeon
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