So what do you get when you hire a bunch of the ugliest actors you can find, then give them lines to memorize that depress them so much that they commit mass suicide – but, surprise! The director knows a witch doctor, so they re-animate the actors as zombies, cover them in chalky, white makeup and force them to recite the lines in front of a camera as S L O W L Y and L I F E L E S S L Y as possible anyway? Then suppose that the zombies forgot almost all the lines they learned and can only recite the same 4 or 5 lines over and over? Well, you get “A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence“. This is apparently the third movie of a trilogy, so there’s *that* to look forward to. Is this really what passes for “pitch-black comedy” in Sweden?
Oh look – a monkey being tortured. Why? Who knows. I don’t. And again, for the 20th time in the movie, someone reciting “I’m happy to hear you are doing well” lifelessly into a phone.
There’s about 8 minutes of this thing slowly turning around in a fire, making weird orchestral drones, while a bunch of unexplained soldiers stand motionlessly around it. This is by far the most interesting thing that happens, both story-wise and visually.
Okey-dokey, then…….
But, then again, anything with the description “an absurdist, surrealistic and shocking pitch-black comedy which moves freely from nightmare to fantasy to hilariously deadpan humour as it muses on man’s perpetual inhumanity to man…” has to have SOME perversely twisted value…
(And I’m bizarrely fascinated by the giant, rotating music drum…. Oh God, I’ve been mind-infected, haven’t I..?)
I dunno, maybe the jokes land better in Swedish. Tough to get comedy across in subtitles. Kind of like the “OSS 117” films – they look great, and I can tell jokes are happening, but the subtitle dialogue heavily hints that one needs to have a very Gallic sense of humor to get any enjoyment out of it.
I don’t do well with subtitles, otherwise I’d be all over this. Subtitles often fly by so quickly one spends more time reading than watching. If I want to read, I’ll read a book. Even though dubbing is usually pretty silly, I’ll take dubbing over subtitles any day.
Well, that may be the case with me too – I did really enjoy “Hausu” in Japanese with no subtitles as my first watch, just letting the craziness wash over me. Then I watched it again with the subtitles, and enjoyed it even more. That maybe what I should be doing with them all.