Endlessly Artsy-Fartsy

(061821) About Endlessness is a unique film from Sweden that is slightly reminiscent of some of Ingmar Bergman’s films especially his Silence of God trilogy because it painfully artfully explores the lack of meaning of life and general hopelessness of existence. But is also conveys the joy that can happen by accepting life’s little absurdities. It is a difficult film to process or to review because it often employs dream logic or no logic at all.

It (along with the Italian reincarnation film Le Quatro Volte) is a notable example of the genre called slow cinema. The movement is a highly arty type of film that typically includes extremely long takes and contains extraordinarily little plot. These films may push some viewers hard to construct their own reality or meaning from the few crumbs of logical, understandable visual moments in the films. It takes a lot of work to process the films.

Although it was finished in 2019, About Endlessness has only recently become available for streaming on Vudu, Google Play, Spectrum, Apple TV, iTunes, and FandangoNOW. The film is in Swedish with English subtitles.

About Endlessness is a boldly experimental minimalist film that contains many elements of absurdism and surrealism. The film has no extended plot that goes beyond a few minutes and is made up of a series of  over 30 odd and sometimes lovely vignettes often shot in a single take that only tenuously connect if at all. Sometimes the shots become static (often while using deep focus) for extended periods of time, or the screen goes black and viewers not familiar with his style might think there is something wrong with the movie or film makers. These shots may be used to knock viewers out of their emotional or mental lethargy.

The film was directed by the Swedish avant-garde director, Roy Andersson. He has declared that he is going to retire, and this will be his last film. This feels a bit like a summation of his career, and he returns to many of the themes of his early works. The film was allegedly tough to complete because the director was going through bouts of alcoholism and detox during the making of the film. Andersson is best known for his critically acclaimed “living trilogy” of films, Songs from the Ocean Floor (2000), You the Living (2007), and A Pidgeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014). He is very acclaimed in his native country and so far, four of his films have been submitted to Academy Awards for consideration for Best Foreign Language film. His work is too weird and esoteric to have a serious chance of winning. Compared to him Lars Von Trier is John Hughes. Some critics have paradoxically argued that he is able to achieve more realism than most film makers even though he avoids some of the conventions of realism such as avoiding the exclusive use of non-actors and making everything stagier and more artificial.

The film opens with its most beautiful shot of a couple floating in the clouds deliriously happy in Cologne over the Nazis who are creating havoc during World War II. It may be implying that when faced with historical tyranny and brutality we need to still cling to life’s little pleasures (aren’t many people caught in the throes of romantic love lost in the clouds?). Art lovers will notice that the shot evokes Marc Chagall’s The Weepies which depicts a similar (but arguably not as beautifully rendered) scene.

In the most disturbing sequence in the film a pastor suffers from a recurring dream in which he is chased down the streets he is forced to carry a cross after being savagely whipped and beaten. He struggles to carry his heavy cross which threatens increasingly to weigh him down as he tires. But the odd thing is that he is dressed in a modern business suit the whole time and the people oppressing him are wearing jeans and the incongruity will may provoke uncomfortable nervous laughter from viewers-perhaps the same kind of laughter that was inspired by David Lynch’s Wild at Heart when I saw it in a theatre.

But the dreams are not just cheap parodies of a passion play. The same priest later goes to a psychiatrist and like Father Karras from The Exorcist he admits he has lost his faith which makes it hard to go on ministering. A psychoanalytic interpretation would also see the cross in the dream as the burden of going on a preaching without any belief or the director struggling to complete the film during his bout of alcoholism. The priest can also be seen as representing modern people who frequently have trouble believing on anything including what constitutes reality-how many still believe for instance there was no virus?

Other moments also may inspire viewers to laugh at life’s day to day ridiculous banality. There are many moments when an unseen female narrator describes something as if were happening right then, but it does not happen until she is done. “I saw a woman who had problems with her shoe,” she declares, before we see a woman staggering on a broken heel at a train station. Sometimes life is a bitch. It is more amusing than it sounds because her voice is as solemn that it gives the event as much gravity as a life changing event. The film is jarring when it switches from depicting the sublime to the banal in a second.

You get the sense that the film’s strange and unconventional use of time signatures was done to mess with the minds of the audiences, and it is sometimes hard to tell if an individual scene takes place before or after another one. The same technique was used by David Lynch in his film Lost Highway.

But the film cannot be reduced to a depiction of despair. What joy the film shows come out of little day to day moments like when three men observe three women that spontaneously dance as if they were having the best time of their lives. Suspense is generated because we hope but are not sure the men will join them. Even the smallest events take on a large significance.

Of course, as you may have figured out, the film was not designed for a casual viewer, and it could not ever be confused with a popcorn movie. Like previous great existentialist works such as Albert Camus’ The Stranger, the film suggests since there may not be a big plan or meaning behind everything viewers can enjoy little moments in the here and now. The slow pace and deliberate portrayal of grim images of emotional despair is designed to capture life’s real-life tedium. This is juxtaposed with brief moments of joy and bizarre humor will put off most viewers who may see the film as difficult, opaque, and obscure. But adventurous art film buffs (especially fans of David Lynch) will find much to admire and adore in the film.