ABOUT ENDLESSNESS

Sweden, 2020, 76 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Roy Andersson.

For those not familiar with the films of Swedish director, Roy Andersson, a filmmaker from the 1960s to the present, a warning is needed. A prospective audience needs some kind of preparation for the experience of an Andersson film, especially when the word ‘endlessness’ is in its title.

Andersson is a cinema essayist. He is also a cinema philosopher. And he is a visual artist. And, expected narrative is not his forte. Which means that this is a special type of cinematic experience, an acceptance that the director is wanting to elicit a questioning response, a willingness to be challenged, and no expectations that one can put QED at the end of the film!

With that in mind, it is worth looking at the career of Roy Andersson, a director who has enjoyed Film Festival and critical acclaim (For Endlessness he won Best Director in Venice, 2020), with titles such as Songs from the Second Floor and, his film prior to Endlessness, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence. So, here we are, reflecting on existence once again.

Andersson is Swedish, his first film made in 1967. He incorporates over half a century of Swedish culture into his films. And his settings are the city, a range of views of the city itself, looking over it from a hilltop park, then going into its streets, a variety of ordinary locations, shop windows, restaurants, homes, shops, the church… And, while his emphasis is on the visual, always in the background, sometimes very softly, a classical music accompaniment and a great deal of choral music.

So, Andersson has intellectual themes, visual illustrations, dramatic moments, asking for an emotional response which leads us back to our intellectual understanding and our philosophy.

And, audiences will notice that each episode is contained in a single frame, from a fixed camera, any action taking place within this fixed frame – except for one sequence where an embracing couple (who are seen in the clouds as the film opens) float over the ruins of the city of Cologne and the camera, almost imperceptibly, moves its way left across the screen.

Which means that coming into the film is something like entering an art gallery, requiring an audience to know something about what they are coming to see. Because it is cinema, the audience is moved on from frame to frame (or, if available, push the Pause button). The film is something of a gallery installation. There is the instant impact, the time available for contemplation, ultimately the cumulative effect of the images.

So, the question of endlessness. Never-ending, infinite… The timeless, endless existence of the universe. An infinite God? And there is a whole lot of waiting going on right throughout the film.

There is a sequence when a young student sits at home reading about thermonuclear dynamics, his sister playing with her hair, not exactly interested. He speculates that everything is part of continuing energy, the endless energy, changing its shape as it moves along – and that we are all part of this continuing energy, part of its endlessness. Good or bad? Just continued existence? We might have an end as individuals, we do. But the energy is endless.

There are, in fact, some narrative moments, an old man coming up steps and telling us about a school acquaintance who passes by without comment, the old man having heard him in the past – and this repeated later when the old man talks to his wife about the experience happening again.

But, the most significant narrative element starts with a Way of the Cross, a middle-aged man bearing a huge cross, coming up a city hill between buildings, the crowd yelling that he be crucified, bystanders gaping or yelling insults, a small group with whips hitting and kicking the man as he falls and gets up again. So, the introduction of a character resembling Jesus, a Christ-figure.

Then he wakes up. It has been a nightmare (a recurring nightmare) and he has a sense of nails through his hands. Some frames later, he goes to visit a psychiatrist, revealing his religious experiences, his sense of the loss of faith. And, the narrative continues when we see him vested in a church sacristy, preparing hosts and wine for communion, communicants seen kneeling through the sacristy door into the church, his drinking the wine, swigging it, unsteady on his feet, going out to distribute communion. And, later in the film, he bangs on the door of the psychiatrist, the rather starchy and immovable receptionist announcing that they are closing, the psychiatrist not helpful, saying he can’t miss a bus, their ousting the man, locking the door, and his still crying out asking what he must do as he has lost his faith.

So, an explicit theme, and the audience responding depending on their own religious and church experiences, whether Andersson is pro-faith, objectively looking at what faith might be, against faith in the contemporary world.

There is a grim execution scene, soldiers tying a prisoner to a post, his pleading and begging for his life…

And, unexpectedly, three Nazis in a bunker, collapsed and demoralised – and Hitler coming in, their attempts to Sig Heil, Hitler’s being ineffectual and walking out. Was Hitler a threat to our endlessness?

We have moved from image to image, such as a portly man reading his newspaper in a restaurant, sniffing and tasting the offered wine, but the waiter absentmindedly continuing to pour the wine as it overflows; a girl coming out of a shop to water and spray a plant, a young man passing and gazing; fussy grandmother trying to photograph the baby held up by the father and many more.

Throughout the film, each frame is introduced by a voice saying “I saw man….�, “I saw a woman…�. Finally the voice says that they saw a man driving a car along an empty road, flat countryside, trouble with the car engine, his getting out, looking in in, no one in sight, little prospect of someone passing by, little hope of help… And the film fades to black.

The running time the film is actually only an hour and a quarter – and one could spend at least that amount of time just beginning to explore the themes, Roy Andersson’s style, his provocations…