Roy Andersson's A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence is presented as the third part in a trilogy of films about the human condition, following the Swedish auteur's previous efforts Songs from the Second Floor and We, the Living. The director seems to have gotten a little more morose lately, the film not offering as much sympathy for the poor participants of his loosely connected tableaus of human existence. In place of that compassion, the movie mines darker comedy out of banal scenes of life that might as well be interpreted as death itself.
The characters in the film are practically made to look like the walking dead, the actors all made to look pale and ashen. They walk slowly, stumbling through every scene as if every step was a little death. And each scene seems designed to extract as much absurdity from everyday situations as possible. There is a lot of repetition, the movie fully capturing the exhausting rhythms of mundane existence. Salesmen spout the same spiels over and over. Phone conversations are reduced to the same banal sentiments again and again.
A lot has been said about the banality of evil. This film is about the evilness of banality, which is a completely different thing. It presents the human race as caught in a purgatory of its own making, paying for complicity in sins perpetrated throughout history. It's brilliant stuff, though I must admit that I prefer the first two pictures. This film is at times discomfiting in ways that don’t feel entirely justified.
Bor Ocampo’s Dayang Asu depicts a literal dog-eat-dog world. It takes place in a town in Pampanga, and mainly the follows a mayor’s goons that they set about doing the kind of dirty work that they do. They intimidate, they whore, they abduct, and they kill. Along the way, they try and track down dogs for cooking in a stew. The film kind of frames itself as a coming of age tale for the son of the head goon, his entry into this dark world of horrible happenings.
Here is where I acknowledge that I probably wasn’t in the mood for this film. I’ve taken on a lot of nihilism lately in cinema, and I admit that it’s probably worn me out. Because this film is really well made. It features some of the most elegant steadycam work I’ve seen in local films, and its darkness is definitely drawn from something very real and important. The story is really engaging, even though it gets a little sketchy in the details. But there came a point where I just couldn’t engage with the film anymore. It is, in the end, a story of the bad guys being on top. The film doesn’t offer up a struggle to defeat that evil, or even just a glimmer of hope within all that darkness. It just keeps layering on the black.
Sheron Dayoc wields the trappings of religion as a source of horror in Bukod Kang Pinagpala. Bing Pimentel plays a paralytic woman who suddenly recovers from her affliction. She is then visited in her dreams by a man who says he is God. She is told that she must spread his Word. She starts dressing like the Virgin Mary and holds devotional meetings in her home. This behavior alarms her daughter, and it soon becomes clear that whatever’s visiting her mother may not be what it seems.
The film is mainly an atmospheric piece. There really isn’t much in the way of plot. Once the mother is awake and receives her holy mission, the movie pretty much stalls until it gets to its climax. The characters just don’t have anything else with which to concern themselves. The movie just continues building atmosphere, even without a plot to progress.
Given that, I was still pretty willing to embrace Bukod Kang Pinagpala as a genre exercise, especially as the film gets downright crazy in its climactic moments. There is a shot in here of Bing Pimentel that almost makes the entire enterprise worth it. But then the film makes a really late bid for social commentary that leaves a pretty terrible taste. I was ready to accept this film as a nutty bit of horror filmmaking. Its tacked-on bit social context ends up making the whole thing feel just kind of icky.
