Roy Andersson: The Pigeon of Tragic Cinema
“The audience should not find control over what they’ve seen. They should not feel comfortable. Well, they should be comfortable in the sense that it should be nice for them to sit and watch the movie, but they should not be very sure of what it’s about. Is it humorous or tragic?”
Roy Andersson
Roy Andersson is a Swedish filmmaker born in 1943, best known for his “Living” trilogy, which includes, “Songs from the second floor” 2000, “You, the Living” 2007, and the topic of our article “A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence” 2014. I will try my best to keep this article simple, and friendly. I will also include a little cinematic dictionary in the references, so anyone can understand this research on this heavy film. We are going to discuss the film in two main sections, “Andersson’s view on Causality”, and “The Directing Style”.
The Absence of causal timelines.
Most films have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and we know from the French pioneer “Jean Luc Godard”, that those elements don’t usually come in that specific order, and that is because of the “French Neo-Realism” that changed our perspective of Time, Space, and Causality* in Cinema. However, cinema depends deeply on causality. See the biggest reason for the success of Christopher Nolan’s films is that although he pushes “Cinematic Time” to the limits, either by “Multiplication of Timelines” like what we saw in his film “The Prestige”, or by “Timeline Conjunction” like what we saw in his recent film “Tenet”.
The only reason Nolan’s films make sense is that underneath the vivid time structure, there is Causality, striking hard, linking reasons with results. The future and the past for Nolan do not exist independently from each other, they don’t also synchronize with each other, what makes them happen, is that they are causes and effects for each other, a shot in the future is linked to a shot in the past by causality, and that is what Filmmakers call “The Cinematic Reality” it is different from ours, but relatable, because it only makes sense in this particular film, not in any other context. Now one would ask, Can we go further? Can we erase causality completely? Is poetry an absence of causal structures? Roy Andersson appears to think that we indeed can, so he tried that, by examining a strict “Time motion” where scenes are synchronized “Visually” and not “causally” while maintaining a “Strict Cinematic Time”, he even tries to turn his “Cinematic Time” into a real “Sensible Time” as a way of respecting the word Time in “Spacetime”, but that’s too complicated for this particular article, and will be briefly mentioned in the Directing section. Andersson’s work is frightening and comic at the same time, in this film, he is trying to convince his audience in the absence of reasoning, by letting them experience tragedy as “A Social Contrast”, meaning that you are watching a film that is being filmed like a type of historical story, specifically in the sense that you are not able to change it. The film is made to be observed by the audience, but not For the audience, just like historical facts, you cannot change the existence of “World War 2” that is just a fact, this film is also a fact, it does not matter how much you try, you cannot cry, you cannot be miserable, you will only feel numb, and here comes the amazing reason for the title of this film “A pigeon sat on a branch reflecting on existence” you are the pigeon, you can feel what is happening, you know it is real, but you cannot change it, the tragedy, the misery, the loneliness exist independently from you, going further, those emotions are here, whether humans exist or not. The film is not “Surreal” because it does not provoke a subconscious explanation, it is not coded, it is simply there, to put it in a more relatable sense, “The Sun” is very freaking weird, A Nuclear Fusion monster emitting millions of tons of energy towards a vivid, empty void, for what? for us? We don’t really know, we don’t know why, we don’t care for the meaning of the existence of the Sun, we are just pretty sure it is there. This Film is about being alive, whether you are a pessimist, an optimist, a nihilist, a comic, you are here, now, at the moment, you are observing, you are breathing, it is about the Poetry of Reality, the film extends even by trying to explain that “Causality” is a tool of “pattern linking” it is just a Gestault effect that we humans use to make sense of our surroundings because we are a part of this world. If you are to watch the world from the perspective of an objective creature, A pigeon in this context, you are to see that things only make sense when you are a part of them, there is no objectivity, we see that truly obvious in the first scene of the film, where the pigeon is trapped in a glass box in some kind of a museum, We can also sense a Heagilian approach towards philosophy in Andersson’s work, for example in his expressions about Death. For him, death is funny, Love is more frightening than death, poetry is more real than reality, art attracts the audience, but exists independently from them, and Truth happens every second, it is just in a different dimension. Jonas Mekas the Lithuanian-American filmmaker in his film “As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty” 2000, tries to talk about beauty as a brief effect of accumulated memories, that you only experience beauty as a memory, not as a momentary effect. Andersson’s vision is that, No, beauty is only momentary, and you can only experience it like that if you focus on Time as a hero. The Hero of a pigeon sat on a branch reflecting on existence is “Time” itself, it is a glimpse into the structure of time.
How can you Frame Time?
I warned you about the complexity of this article, but if you made it so far, Well, congratulations! You are entering the most beautiful process of making an “Anderssonian” Film.
For the sake of simplicity, and as mentioned above, for the sake of our truly sacred time, plus, because I want to encourage you to watch the film, We are going to discuss only one scene, and two fixed frames from it, and build on them, how the film evolves and constructs its character. I will need you now to use your headphones if they are near you somewhere, turn off your lights, inhale deeply, and exhale slowly, try to continue doing so while watching this theatrical magnificence.
What a trip huh!? Before you go put on your headphones and watch the full film, let’s get technical for just a second. You can almost instantly feel like a part of the crowd here, but the only difference is that no one is sharing this moment with you, Andersson starts the frame with noise gradually going down as the voice of the waitress grows higher and higher, the scene started visually with the waitress standing where the empty space of the frame is concentrated, leaving the viewer at first confused where the sound is coming from, notice the foreground, how unimportant it is in relation to what’s happening in the background, but why do we even need the man in the foreground? well, the man here is guiding you where to look, you mimic his reaction immediately, as he is centralized by the rule of thirds, and suddenly time stops, you are feeling the loneliness of this man, and the momentary beauty that we spoke about in our first section, with disregarding the incredible motion of the waitress and the amazing choreography of the scene, only because it will take us 10 pages to talk about it, let’s look closely at the structure of some of the frames.
We can see a “Double Shot” taking place here, maintaining an unbalanced structure, where “ The Entropy of the frame* is starting to flow” as shown with the green arrows, the yellow lines are horizontal and vertical horizons, to observe where the shot is divided, it is like the customers are a team, against the lonely waitress, we can see the group of “Soldiers” in the back of the waitress as their frame is preparing to come. The double shot here is preparing for what, at first, appears to be symbolizing a “chaotic scene”, but then the slow flow of time, the fixed frame, constructs a sense of normality to the frame that way, it’s like driving a bicycle with switched sides, at first it’s weird and unnatural, but after a while, it grows on you, and become normal, this “Frame Normalization” will in a second go through a “Conformal Transition”, this frame is setting a mood for the sense of brief happiness that will come later, while still observing loneliness “The man in the foreground”, as truth. Now, look at the beautifully made composition on the final frames.
Look at this masterpiece! First We have two frames layered on top of each other, the man in the foreground “That represented loneliness”, and the theatrical kissing scene in the background where tension flew and merged with the calmer spaces, indicating a unity between the waitress and the customers. Notice also the blocking of each individual group, the soldiers, group A”, “The regular customers, group B”, the two main blocks “Lonley man group C”, and “The Waitress group D”, notice how A, B, and D are happening in their timeline, unaware of the existence of C, who at first, group D focused on, C became one of us, the audience, and merged into our timeline, while the theatrical show of A, and C started, with the anticipation of the behavior of group B, ca you see the circular motion around the column? This is for us to anticipate that C will stay in his place sitting and having his beer, while the rest of them will leave. That is Comedy! It is the ability to look at truth from all perspectives, knowing that merging perspective will give you an absolute, but instantaneous truth, and that’s why this scene is a Heagilian one, you “The viewer” are observing love, poverty, hatred, revolutions, and submission of authority, in one extremely-well choreographed dance, time freezes, and causality seized to exist, Notice what makes the frame more comical, it is the appearance of the chef from the window, giving an extra perspective to the frame, I will not go any further than that, because you also need to have a good understanding of the context this scene is put into. However, If you don’t believe this compositional translation take a look at this photo of Roy Andersson in the same place where the scene is yet to be shot.
What makes comedy so complicated, is that it is not a natural emotion, Laughing is not an emotion, it is more of a tool, a defense mechanism that the brain holds, in order to release some of the pressure it contains, Laughing is not “Being Happy”, as most of you already know of course, and Laughing at tragedy is a way of accepting it, of observing it, of living it. the experience of time as a dimension, is very important, especially within the chaos “processes of thoughts” make. Andersson is basically saying “The World is full of tragedy that we ourselves made so Live as you like, but always remember, to let go of your memories, of your identity, of who you are, and just try to experience time, to sense time, to love time. Be for a moment, a Pigeon sitting on a branch reflecting of Existence”.
References
- Oxford's dictionary of film Studies https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199587261.001.0001/acref-9780199587261.
- The Cinema of Scandinavia a book Edited by Tytti Soila. Preface by Jacob Neiiendam. 2005
- Roy Andersson’s “Songs from the Second Floor”: Contemplating the Art of Existence (Nordic Film Classics) academic book by Ursula Lindqvist 2016.
Books I recommend
- Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings book by Gerald Mast 1974
- Sculpting in Time Book by Andrei Tarkovsky 1983
- Film as a Subversive Art Book by Amos Vogel 1974
