DVD Review - The Roy Andersson Collection

Roy Andersson makes Terrence Malick seem like Woody Allen in comparison when comes to gaps between films, he took 25 years off from his 2nd film to his 3rd film. Besides the obvious gap of years, his style totally changed in the meantime from relatively naturalistic drama with A Swedish Love Story to the surrealistic comedy of his “living” trilogy. His later films have been called “Ingmar Bergman meets Monty Python” and that’s not a bad comparison.

A Swedish Love Story as the title suggests is a love story but it’s about this young boy and girl for fall in love over the summer. Their parents dismiss their love and it’s a relatively cynical film about adulthood and the director says the grown up world of the parents was his main focus. It has an overt influence of the Czech new wave which was dying out by 1970 (the film’s release year) and you can certainly see the influence of Miloš Forman’s Loves of a Blonde for example. It’s a strong debut film but his own unique style is still a couple of decades away from developing.

During the gap he made one more film Gillap which was hated on its release and seems near impossible to find in English-speaking countries, there is a Swedish DVD however. During the 25 years between features it’s totally unfair to say he didn’t do anything because he made two shorts Something Happened which is an educational film about Aids and World of Glory. He resumed making features in 2000 but they take a decidedly off beat turn.

His films from Songs from the Second Floor are so similar in style and subject matter that especially watching them in quick succession of each other they bleed into one another. They are all surreal comedies about the pitfalls of modern life which use somewhat connected vignettes, almost similar in style to the more satirical work of Jacques Tati such as Playtime or Mon Oncle and the loose episodic ’70s Fellini films like Roma. They are set in a borderline dystopia but rooted still in the modern world.

The closet contemporary filmmaker in style would be the Icelandic filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki who has a similar deadpan sense of humour. They both also share the border of comedy when it falls into tragedy and how tragedy can itself be humorous in certain circumstances. His final film in this trilogy is the equally bonkers named A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence which in fact may be his best but it’s hard to tell until on multiple of all three films.

The set available on DVD and Blu-Ray with a hosts of special features including interviews, commentaries, documentaries, short films and more.