Irish Film Institute -A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE

A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE

Director: ROY ANDERSON

100 minutes. Sweden-Norway-France-Germany, 2014, Subtitled, Colour, D-Cinema


This film was released on Friday 24th April 2015 and is no longer screening.

After 2000’s Songs from the Second Floor and 2007’s You, The Living, the inestimable Roy Andersson now presents what he calls “the final part of a trilogy about what it means to be a human being”. As with the earlier films, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence consists of meticulously composed tableaux in which a large cast of characters endure life’s travails, shot through with an absolutely bone dry sense of humour and of the absurd that finds hilarity in the mundane, making for a unique style of comedy.

However, Andersson’s real genius is in creating profound resonance with the lightest of touches – the context given to the familiar, mechanical recitation “you have no messages” produces a heartbreaking depiction of loneliness, while a wordless sequence close to the end is a remarkable articulation of rage at the legacy of colonialism. (Notes by Kevin Coyne)

Winner of a Dublin Film Critics Circle SPECIAL JURY PRIZE at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2015.

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★★★★★ The Guardian ★★★★★ The Irish Times ★★★★★ Entertainment.ie

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