What a bold, beguiling and utterly unclassifiable director Andersson is. He thinks life is a comedy and feels it’s a tragedy, and is able to wrestle these conflicting impulses into a gorgeous, deadpan deadlock.
Though it abounds in the kind of sardonic humor intrinsic to life’s absurdities, the film is rarely laugh-out-loud funny. In a nutshell, quiet desperation prevails.
80
EmpireDavid Hughes
EmpireDavid Hughes
If Chris Morris had grown up in Sweden watching Jacques Tati and Ingmar Bergman films, he might be making films like this. Based on Andersson’s mordantly funny observations about the human condition, the pigeon has it pretty good.
80
Time Out
Time Out
Excruciatingly funny and streaked with coal-black humor.
75
Slant MagazineJesse Cataldo
Slant MagazineJesse Cataldo
It confirms the Roy Andersson universe as one of near-fossilized similitude, in which any effort or movement is disruptive, revealing new cracks in the set illusion of order.
One of the strangest films you’ll see this (or any) year, it unsettles, bores, elates and amuses in equal measure. Not for everyone, but there’s plenty to chew on.