Roy Andersson (the director)

Nobody left at that part when I saw it but there was a noticeable shift of mood in the room

the new hou hsiao-hsien movie apparently uses some fake-looking digital smoke and fire as well

art house directors should probably stay away from cheap digital effects

kinda pleased to see i wrote about this upthread slightly because it's a while since i've seen it, but: i thought it was so major. just so affecting. there's such power & feeling underneath some of the most comic scenes, like the amorous dance instructor. just so tragic. its couple of major set pieces are astonishing, too, are just literature compressed.

fandor interviewer's george tooker catch is so tonally otm btw

http://cdn.emptykingdom.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/tooker-lunch.jpg

hey did anybody see the documentary about him?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MH8TvTuYCc

the latest film i like, though the scene that might be the terrible thought referred to above (involving people from an earlier age and fire of a sort) seemed to come out of nowhere i think and jarred heavily. like an unwanted, unexpected, unrelated sudden scene of horror. bad taste i thought. easy shock tactics. ruined the film for me. i put him in the same genre as jarmush and kaurismaki.

It threw me out of the film.

For me it seemed of a piece with the scenes with King Karl XII. Putting a spotlight on the bad and violent parts of Swedish history.

If he’s trying to show man’s inhumanity to man, the sequence doesn’t unfurl as a natural development from what preceded it. “Seems” because Andersson’s darting, affectless manner inoculates him from accusations. He wants it both ways.

I don't think that's what he's trying to show. He's trying to show the dark side of Swedish history, how all the happiness that the characters feel that they should be feeling is based on the suffering of others. Somehow wonderful Nordic Welfare Society isn't fulfilling to it's members, and part of the explanation Andersson gives is that the paradise only seems like that if you close your eyes to 1) death and 2) the suffering of the rest of the world.

maybe so, but as a moment of genuine horror and cruelty, compared to the darkly comic moments of cruelty/misfortune that preceded it, it just did not fit.

I'm not sure I get that? Why is the implied rape and death on the battlefield of generations of Swedes in the imperialist wars in the 18th century not genuinely horrific and cruel? And the scene with the brazen bull is surely darkly comic as well?

It is horrific – by itself and as a fact – but in the movie it's too jarring.

that scene actually made me dislike RA. made him seem like someone getting a nasty kick out of delivering this random (to me at least) scene of horror. it just seemed to come out of nowhere, i didnt see the context, which i also found a bit insensitive to the subject/history of that scene. the fact that the other stuff was implied rather than actually shown also makes a big difference.

It's not at all random! That you don't see the context doesn't mean it's not there. Please don't dislike a director because you don't understand the context that he's talking about, especially not a foreign director talking about the history of his country. And colonialism is also a part of Swedish history, and I think he should be allowed to discuss the horrors of colonialism from the context of Swedish history.

And we don't see what happens in that other scene, it's not shown, that's the entire point: We see a cylinder rotating and beautiful music coming out. What happens is actually also just implied. But the people close their eyes to it. In the same way, that we see dead people coming home from Russia, but we don't see where they come from, what they've done. We close our eyes to it.

I can't argue that it seems too jarring for you, that's up to each spectator to decide. But it's definitely of a piece with other scenes in the movie, very much so.

And it isn't unique for 'Pigeon' either. Songs From the Second Floor included the ghost of an executed partisan, and a short clip of his execution. And You The Living ends (spoiler) with the implied bombing and death of all it's characters (as I see it). So. The suppressed darkness in the world, hidden from the welfare state, has always been a central part of the trilogy.

I understood the point of that scene and appreciate the message it was trying to impart, but I think the thing that jarred for me and still makes me incredibly uncomfortable with it is that it is the only time non-white characters appear in the entire film. It makes the scene itself feel exploitative, as well as that which it is trying to condemn.

(In general, I loved the film.)

youre right - im not seeing the film as a film about swedish history, as im not well versed enough in it. im interested in films exploring colonial legacies, i just didnt expect it really in this film. the tone just seemed off. ive not seen the earlier parts of the trilogy to compare. but i dunno, colonial legacies/slavery/people-as-chattel just seems like too big of a subject for a film with a tone that doesnt seem serious enough for that topic. yes, there were other scenes of wars, etc, but there was nothing as bleak in the other scenes, IIRC. wars have been done to death (pun unintended) in cinema, slavery/colonialism i would say less so. so when i do see it on screen, and dealt with in slightly offhand, cavalier way like this, it seems poorly judged.

I understood the point of that scene and appreciate the message it was trying to impart, but I think the thing that jarred for me and still makes me incredibly uncomfortable with it is that it is the only time non-white characters appear in the entire film. It makes the scene itself feel exploitative, as well as that which it is trying to condemn.

(In general, I loved the film.)

― emil.y, 12. august 2015 17:19 (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is probably true. And also, a failing of so much Scandinavian cinema. I could defend it, that Anderssons aim is to portray the Swedish people who have closed their eyes to poverty and war, which excludes most non-whites in the country, who are 1st or 2nd generation immigrants or refugees. But that's a bad defence. It could have been done, and it would probably have been a more interesting film. Even more interesting.

There's a really interesting new Danish film called The Gold Coast, about Danish colonialism in Ghana, and on the one hand it's a searing indictment on every white character in the film, the venal illegal slave traders, but also the idealistic fighter for progress, who sends black soldiers to their deaths to fight for ideals he's unable to follow up on. Which is interesting, and an inversion of the 'white savior' narrative. But it's also told exclusively from the viewpoint of the wannabe white savior, to the exclusion of any black voices in the films.

It's really a struggle to tell polyphonic stories from monocultures almost exclusively white. It does happen, especially in Sweden, with Ruben Östlund's Play as the very best example. But we're definitely stumbling along.

About Endlessness mesmerized me; no uh misplaced sequences like in A Pigeon....

Is it a continuation or a divergence from the style of his last few?

Not by much.