Anyone familiar with Roy Andersson’s work knows what to expect from On infinity, winner of the award for best direction at the 2019 Venice Film Festival living pictures that make up the film we find the elements that characterize his cinema, made up of fixed cameras, meticulously reconstructed sets, more or less absurd fragments of life, anonymous people, even when it comes to historical characters, paradigmatic characters even when they are totally anonymous. These paintings are introduced by a female voice (is it infinity speaking? Is it life?) Who completes their meaning as captions in humorous cartoons might do. And Andersson’s film is full of humor, which is obviously particular, subtle, profound, tragicomic. Not cold, but Nordic.
Anyone unfamiliar with the work of the dean of Swedish cinema – one of the cornerstones on which Svenska Filminstitutet, under the leadership of Anna Serner, has revived the cinematography of his country internationally – can get an idea by looking at his films. commercials, of which there are extensive anthologies on YouTube. For years, in fact, Andersson, after his exploit at the lively Berlin festival in 1970, devoted himself mainly to the creation of commercials, finding in the short form one of the keys to his return to feature films and to the victory of the Golden Lion, always in Venice, in 2014 with the film A pigeon sitting on a branch reflects on existence. Somehow On infinity seems like an ideal continuation. Andersson is perhaps convinced that his career is coming to an end and perhaps with this film he tries to suggest that, if he could, he would be able to go on indefinitely.
On infinity
By Roy Andersson. Sweden / Germany / Norway 2019, 76 ‘. In the hall
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