Fri, Jan 21 / 7pm
Sat, Jan 22 / 9:10pm
Wed, Jan 26 / 7pm
Thu, Jan 27 / 9:45pm
Directed by Roy Andersson
2015, Sweden/Germany/Norway/France/Denmark, 101 mins
Swedish & English w/ English subtitles
In the “Living Trilogy”’s final installment, two hapless novelty salesmen wander around town hawking vampire fangs and rubber masks while bickering like an old married couple. Their small cruelties towards one another are contrasted with sequences involving Charles XII, Sweden’s most bellicose king, who reappears in the present to lead the country to a new series of disastrous defeats. The film culminates with a blistering, disturbing indictment of humanity’s lack of empathy for other humans and their fellow creatures. Though often compared to Fellini and even Monty Python, Andersson seems closest to Luis Buñuel here, in both the surrealist flourishes and the rage — as well as the genuine empathy and sorrow — that underlies his humour. Like late-period Buñuel, he is intermittently amused by human foibles, and even finds some grace notes. Two children blow bubbles off a balcony, while an aging patron in a Gothenburg bar recalls the establishment’s glory days in the 1940s in an unexpected musical number. (This being Andersson, the tribute is double-edged: the tune they sing is the same one Charles marches off to war to.) Andersson has cited Dostoevsky’s influence, and like the work of the great Russian master, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch… is not for the faint of heart. It is a provocative and disturbing critique of our times. The film earned Andersson the Golden Lion at Venice, making him the first Nordic director to win that prize since Carl Dreyer.
Songs from the Second Floor: The Films of Roy Andersson was made possible as part of Nordic Bridges 2022 in collaboration with Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, and TIFF.
