Boobirt Stylish but barely mediocre overall

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Michael Fuchs The movie takes painstaking care to portray humanity at its worst. With thespian scenes, set camera and no movement, the unlucky viewer is led through a series of mostly disconnected tragedies of the mundane and less mundane life, with the actors generally mostly half-way to their grave both in agility and complexion. Lacking respect of death and the dying, death, greed, cruelty, slavery, torture, poverty, heart-break, loneliness, depression, suicide, war, grief. There is no character development, no hope, no love, no colour. In a regrettably dystopian image of a world, Andersson is treating the audience to misery and despair, without bothering with too much imagination. Attempts of understated comedian expression repeatedly fall flat. The end credits come as a relief from utter boredom.

I-Am-The-Movie-Addict watching this flick wouldn't be possible if i hadn't come across ROY ANDERSSON's name and his body of works 3 months ago. but now i have so it becomes my duty to tell what this film is all about and why you should be watching it nevertheless if you don't watch films like these or don't want to gamble onto some unheard director-writer.this film as pre-told in a synopsis by IMDb tells about Sam and Jonathan, a pair of hapless novelty salesman who goes through various real and non-real situations. but according to me, it is more of different people told as situation and occurrence wise. it just happens that these two salesmen becomes the eyes of what goes around. Even there are many things which cannot be said in few words to explain what the film is about. To sum up, i can say that it is about events and conditions of human related and to where and how they live. Some go through normalcy while others through weird and out of this world.if you want to hook up with this film you need to also go through his previous works and 2 prequels of this third part. i am not saying that it is continuous but revolves around same atmosphere to know what the filmmaker and the film is telling about.at last, if you are one of those who have a keen and sharp eye for small and unnoticeable things that play a vital role in life and living then this will work wonders for you plus don't fail to guess that fun and absurd comedy is also a part of the troop that will make you love and take note of things in life that films like this come up to reveal to us when we are lost in something we don't know about.

Martin Bradley The third part of what writer/director Roy Andersson calls a trilogy about 'being a human being', "A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence" is even more like a sketch-show than its predecessor "You the Living". The various scenes are tenuously linked without amounting to what you might call a plot and like Andersson's earlier work marks him out both as a classic surrealist as well as a humorist of the first rank. Yes, "A Pigeon Sat on a Bench Reflecting on Existence" is genuinely very funny though you may need a very dry, (and dark), sense of humor to get its jokes, and speaking of jokes, Andersson's claim that it's about being a human being may be one of them since the human beings in this movie may not be quite like anyone you know.

Camoo Where to start? The title. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on it's Existence is about as inchoate, strange, and long as its title suggests, and I doubt that anybody entering in this film is going to be misled as to what they should expect.And different it is. Roy Andersson is already well established as Sweden's best living filmmaker, a master of macabre humor and sweeping, complex productions with shots so meticulously crafted (it takes him close to a decade between films) that it's a wonder he's still around to present his latest effort. The set up is the same as his two previous masterpieces; Songs from the Second Floor and We the Living were startling when first introduced, a new precedent for surrealist filmmaking and imagery so alive with detail and meaning that they were immediately praised. Taking a careful look at his work shows that he has been perfecting this wide screen, hideously fluorescent - living corpse approach to just about every thing he's ever made (mainly commercials) except for his earliest film, the fairly more straight forward, but just as well crafted 'A Swedish Love Story'. I'm not sure if Pigeon is as successful as his earlier films, or if I've just grown weary of this sort of cynical, existentialist outlook. This film was depressing. It does feel as though he has less to say here too. Instead of the tight, laser like satire of Songs from the Second Floor, or bright, surrealist musical We the Living - we get a more scattered, discombobulated theme of general malaise and unhappiness with institutions of government, apathy, and lots and lots of grey tones. There are scenes that pick up and suddenly propel us into a world almost as vibrant as his earlier films, such as the procession of singing sailors in Limping Lotte's bar circa 1940's or several extremely long and complicated takes involving many extras that mirror back to Songs from the Second Floor's best scenes. It's also interesting to note that it appears out of all his work in the past twenty years he's moved the camera a total - I think - three times. I noticed the camera move once in this film, a process so laborious we might as well be watching somebody try and move a mountain. There aren't many complaints. I yearn to see more films as daring as Andersson's, so I will have to make do with the fact that his world - as bleak as it is - is completely unlike any others.