A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence

The last film of Roy Andersson's Living trilogy, after Songs from the Second Floor and You, the Living, with seven years between each. There is no story. There are around thirty-nine scenes, each shot in a single fixed take. The camera never moves; the frame is set once and the event begins and ends inside it. Sometimes what matters is happening in the background, in a corner nobody is looking at. The narrative is loosely tied together by two salesmen who hate each other and are trying to sell novelty goods. They have vampire teeth, a laughing bag and a mask with a single tooth. Nobody buys. Between the scenes an eighteenth-century king rides through a bar full of people, and one of the most disturbing sequences comes near the end; that passage, built on colonialism, is the film's hardest moment. The colour is drained, the rooms are empty, the performers are made up to look bloodless. It won the Golden Lion at Venice in 2014. The right ending to the trilogy for anyone who knows Andersson's form. For a viewer wanting narrative, the film deliberately goes nowhere and its humour is extremely dry.