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ABOUT ENDLESSNESS
Director: Roy Andersson Cast: Martin Serner, Jan Eje Ferling, Bengt Bergius, Thore Flygel, Tatiana Delaunay, Anders Hellström, the voice of Jessica Louthander MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:18 Release Date: 4/30/21 (limited; digital & on-demand) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 29, 2021 A priest has lost his faith and asks a doctor what can be done about the nightmares he has been having. The doctor responds with a question that doesn't help much: "What if God doesn't exist?" Later in About Endlessness, the priest returns to the doctor's office, begging for more help. The office is about to close, though. With the priest wailing and pounding on the locked door, the doctor hopes he hasn't missed his bus. This is one of the few vignettes in writer/director Roy Andersson's somewhat experimental film with something of a through line. Most of them exist isolated and brief, like the little moments in life and, on the grand scale of the universe, life itself. Such are thoughts that come with Andersson's simple but ambitious, wandering but emotionally grounded narrative, which takes us on a kind of tour of the 20th century, by way of scenes about the mundane things in life and moments of historical import without any apparent connection. They are connected, though, because they happened and continue to happen. They're also united in how most of the people in these scenes seem incapable of making any real connection with themselves, with other people, or with some sense of purpose within life or with something beyond it. A young man walks past a young woman on the sidewalk, and our constantly observant narrator points out the man has yet to know love. A man sobs on a bus, telling people he doesn't know what to do with his life, and the passengers avert their eyes or scold him for showing his feelings. One man regrets an old classmate's refusal to acknowledge him, because of some decades-ago bullying, and comes to resent the man. A father who has murdered his daughter to preserve family's "honor" cries with too-late regret, and a man begs for his life, as soldiers drag him before a firing squad. A defeated Adolf Hitler stumbles through his bunker, saluted by drunken officers. A lot more happens here, even if nothing "happens" in terms of a plot. Andersson doesn't care about such trivial things, because his film is about the trivial, the everyday, and the routine, whether that takes place in a home, at a café, or in the midst of a war. About Endlessness treats them with equal concern and care, because all of these moments belong to us. Copyright © 2021 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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