Over five decades of filmmaking, Sweden’s Roy Andersson has fashioned not just a distinct style but a unique approach to cinema. Watching his films can often seem like walking through a gallery of Magritte paintings come to life.
Andersson’s mordant surrealism has never been more apparent than in his latest film. About Endlessness (streaming on Amazon) isn’t a continuous narrative but a set of vignettes. They are colorized a bit like antique postcards in hues a little strange and less than realistic. The settings, whether outdoors or interiors, are as sparse as the emotional lives of their inhabitants. About Endlessness is about loneliness, disconnection, lack of communication, lack of empathy.
The character who recurs most often is a Lutheran pastor introduced while dragging a heavy cross down a cobblestoned Swedish street, his tormentors shout “Crucify!” while shoppers on the sidewalk look on impassively. The spectators are numb to violence and the participants revel in it. The pastor awakens from his nightmare in the next vignette and tries to tell his wife about the bad dream. She gives him a drink of water, says nothing and goes back to sleep.
After several unconnected vignettes, the pastor returns, seeking help from a disinterested psychiatrist. He explains he has lost faith in the existence of God and wonders what purpose to find in life. “Maybe be content with being alive?” offers the psychiatrist, whose lifelessness belies his own counsel. When the pastor returns to the therapist’s office later in the film, the receptionist is adamant: “We’re about to close” she says firmly. And the psychiatrist insists he can’t stay, he has a bus to catch. “What should I do now that I’ve lost my faith?” the pastor repeats, pleading as they push him out the door.
Maybe the pastor is the film’s default central character because he’s the only one who once believed in anything? In About Endlessness, he’s among several figures pleading for help in a world where no one listens. And those who aren’t crying “Help!” nurse obscure resentments against others and against themselves. Society has come unstuck and individuals walk on an unending treadmill of routine.
The tone is drolly humorous rather than tragic, keeping About Endlessness from sinking into misery. A striking image opens the film and pops up again midway—a couple in archaic garb, their arms lovingly wrapped around each other as they float, like Marc Chagall figures, in the murky sky above a ruined city. Maybe love can be endless? Wisely, Andersson didn’t choose to illustrate endlessness through epic length. His film clocks in at a modest one hour, 18 minutes.
