I saw a man who didn't trust banks

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's Top 50 Movies of 2020...

#25 : About Endlessness (Om det oändliga)

This is the sixth and reportedly final feature by the idiosyncratic Swedish auteur Roy Andersson, a meditation on the human condition filmed with an utterly distinctive combination of colour palette and vividly detailed tableaux.

So the last time we had a film from an auteur, I think it's fair to say things didn't end too well with me having to watch the film at double speed just to get through it.  And I can't say that the phrase "a meditation on the human condition" was massively filling me with confidence here either, but let's go for it anyway...

...well, there's some good news before we even start - it's only 75 minutes long, which means I should be able to get through it without needing to speed it up.  Hoorah!  Oh - it looks like I might have spoken too soon though.  The first scene is one minute of two people sitting on a park bench looking out over Stockholm and the entire dialogue is her saying "It's September already" and he replies "Mmm".  Ah...

And basically, that's how it continues - 2-3 minute vignettes of varying levels of dialogue and insanity involved.  The scenes without any dialogue are very offputting - not necessarily in an unpleasant way but you are left wondering exactly what they add.  Some of the scenes vaguely relate to other scenes and others are completely separate (to my limited powers of observation anyway) - it all leaves you feeling a bit discombobulated.  And even though some scenes are linked, there's no obvious overall theme running through the film.  I don't intend to list all the scenes (Wikipedia does that for you if you're desperate to find out) but, to give you an idea of the randomness involved, some examples are a waiter overfilling a glass, a man explaining the first law of thermodynamics, the last days of Adolf Hitler, a woman getting off a train and a couple floating over a ruined city.

However, to my surprise, there's also a reasonable amount of humour in there - but it's a very dry, wry humour and generally not something you see coming.  There's also often a somewhat bizarre voiceover which provides varying levels of detail around each vignette - my suspicion is that the director showed his initial draft to his mates who came back with "you what, Roy?" so a decision was made to add this to "explain" things further.  And obviously, it doesn't really explain anything but it does at least provide some context for you to work with.  The acting is all fine, but there's only one guy who's in it for more than one scene and he probably gets about ten minutes of screen time in total, so I can't really say that any of them stood out for me.

As the description above states, the film does feature very detailed tableaux - lots of the frames have a picture-like quality to them,  It also has a very distinctive colour palette - it somehow manages to be both dialled back and distinctive, which is very cleverly done. Generally the colours are mostly whites and greys, but then you have patches of understated colour which wouldn't normally stand out (eg pastels), but because of the lack of other colours, your eye is drawn to them.  It's impressive and must have taken a lot of thinking about - and I really wish I didn't have the sneaking suspicion it's all just a bit pointless.

As with the previous auteur-provided output, it would have been perfectly possible to watch this at double speed and miss nothing, but I didn't feel the need to do so here - I think this is mostly because if a scene was dragging a bit then I knew another one would be along in a minute and it would be completely different from what had come before.  

Overall, I didn't hate this film but I'm also not sure I really saw the point to it - I think Roy is trying to tell me that life is pretty random and multi-faceted and these are all things that might have happened, are happening or will happen.  And he does it in a very stylish, tender and surprisingly funny manner (which is also pleasingly short) but at the same time, I don't feel I particularly gained anything from watching it.  I guess others may take more away from it - I'm think I'm going to go with saying that I'm not not recommending it, but I'm not sure who I would actually recommend it to.

At the time of writing, the film is available to rent in most of the usual locations but I'm not sure how many of you will be rushing to do so.

#26 - Too much dancing!
#24 - A fine film indeed