2019 ‘Om det oändliga’ Directed by Roy Andersson
A reflection on human life in all its beauty and cruelty, its splendor and banality, guided by a Scheherazade-esque narrator. Inconsequential moments have the same significance as historical events. Simultaneously an ode and a lament, presents a kaleidoscope of all that is eternally human, an infinite story of the vulnerability of existence.
Roy Andersson Filmproduktion AB 4½ Essential Filmproduktion Société Parisienne de Production ARTE France Cinéma
On Endlessness, One Thousand and One Nights, About the Eternal, Über die Unendlichkeit, Om det uendelige, 千日千夜, ホモ・サピエンスの涙, Pour l'éternité, Par bezgalīgo
the perfect film for anyone who loves the colours grey and brown but hates camera movement
There’s something amusingly dry about the idea of a 76-minute film called “About Endlessness,” but Roy Andersson isn’t joking. Well, he isn’t only joking.
A Swedish renegade whose pointillistic dioramas of the human condition are pieced together with drollness in much the same way as George Seurat’s landscapes were painted with dots, Andersson has always been amused by the sheer absurdity of life on Earth. His films laugh at the perversities of existence, the purgatorial likes of “Songs from the Second Floor” and “You, the Living” comprised of dark comic vignettes in which the banal and the epic go together hand-in-hand. A huge crowd lines up to see a little girl ritualistically shoved off a cliff. Hundreds of people —…
About Endlessness is filled with the oddest observations on life. It is wonderfully meaningless, like the world itself. An omniscient voice takes us through a series of vignittes, made without camera movement and often no dialogue. The stunning images are beautifully abstract at times, yet the whole film is a comedy delivered in the most deadpan manner. Hitler even turns up for a cameo. Perhaps About Endlessness is about a crisis of faith and the state of a world with no belief. Or maybe we are all soldiers in a snowstorm, trudging forward with little choice. Nothing is as delightfully soul-crushing as Roy Andersson's cinema and this is my favourite film by him. It presents the most entertaining boredom. There are moments of love, moments of pain, moments of sadness. Isn't it all just endless?
I have no words... watching this felt like as if I had an out-of-body experience and ascended to a higher plane of consciousness. The passivity of its sheer ambition overtook me, with every frame being an intricately staged painting reminiscent of masters such as Van Ruisdael and Chagal.
A true artistic masterwork.
Desaturating the grayscale of human frailty: How to ruminate on the absurdity of existence.
A Masterclass by Roy Andersson.
Me, at a party, just minding my own business near the snacks.
Andersson: I saw some people on a bench the other day.
Me, eating a chip: Ok.
Andersson: I also saw people at a restaurant the other day.
Me, slowly edging away because I don’t want to be stuck with the obligatory party weirdo: Alright.
Andersson: Wait, I haven’t told you about the guy and his kid I saw the other day! Also life is painful but sometimes there are moments of sublime beauty and history will forever march on and -
Me, quoting my favorite line from „About Endlessness“: Goodbye.
- Isn't it fantastic?
- What's that?
- All of it. All. Everything's great.
- Yeah, well...
- At least, I think so.
- All right.
- Well, I do, anyway.
Me too, man. Me too...
Consisting of a magnetising procession of concise vignettes, and conceivably the final film from the now seventy-seven-year-old Swedish auteur Roy Andersson, About Endlessness is a fascinating and ever-changing poetic requiem of the human condition. It's a testament to the filmmaker, together with the spectacular cinematography from Gergely Pálos, that the congregating impact communicates a unified visual poem which encapsulates the despair, loneliness and often bizarreness of life.
A stationary camera commandeers the graphic representations of hopelessness and the frequent farcicalities of life, and each of its filmed sections features a particularly allotted distinct and stunning aesthetic. It carries more than a few passing similarities with a few of his previous films, perhaps most specifically to his prior, the haunting and…
Action!: Anderson, Anderson, Anderson…. Andersson? – Roy's Offbeat Swede Detour
And we’ve reached to the end of our detour with perhaps not his best work, but certainly one that lives to the expectations and hypes built upon his previous trilogy. We get the randomness, we get some laughs, but this one goes for an entire different direction. The film plays for the absurd, but not for the laughs rather the whole thing goes for a more existential discourse about life in general from social norms to religion, healthcare. There’s a heavy focus on religion and spiritual life with the whole scene that the poster borrows from is just beautiful and encapsulates many of the core themes of the movie to…
An older woman sits across from you at the train station. She is alone in a packed room, buried in the thoughts of years beyond which you can even imagine. You dart your eyes forward, throw a quick smile her way, but it just as soon gets lost to the shuffle of fractured memories and faded time.
You cross the road and a vaguely familiar face lets itself be known. Names course through your mind as you come to pass. You extend a hand as a name finds its way to your tongue. An old schoolmate has shoved past, ignoring your embrace entirely. They used to be the life of the party, the regular class clown. You replay the split-second…
Ich sah einen Film. Den jüngsten von Roy Andersson. Es war, als blättere man durch ein Poesiealbum über das Schöne und das Schreckliche, das Glückliche und das Traurige, das Irre und das Einfache, das Anmutige und das Erbärmliche im menschlichen Leben. Jede Seite ist eine neue Szene. Ohne eine einzige Kamerabewegung. In Graubraun. Und Adolf kommt auch noch aufn Schnaps vorbei. Dann hat ein Mann Probleme mit seinem Auto: Ende. Kleine Geschichten, kurz und spröde. Mit zartem Rhythmus erzählt, der das Interesse aufrecht erhält. Witzig, wunderlich, weise, widerspenstig. Nächster Schritt: Eine Taube sitzt auf einem Zweig und denkt über das Leben nach.
