32 fragments of the domestic apocalypse After the premiere of this film in Venice, some of the Italian critics called Roy Andersson a Protestant director, and in a number of reviews and interviews you can find bolder statements and guesses that time in the picture is actually apocalyptic. How is it necessary to shoot, so that the inspiration of the idea of fairy tales of Scheherazade created such a gloomy impression on the screen?
The same (not)important. In 32 episodes of the picture (I counted 27 sketches and storylines not related by any characters), the viewer will be shown both lovers soaring in the sky, and a champagne lover, and a woman with broken shoes, and a man with a broken car in the middle of a wasteland, and parents who lost their son in the war, and who once wanted to conquer the world. Happiness, small pleasures, small and large problems, tragedies and historical dramas are all placed on the same level of importance. Everything with the same intonation tells us the schherazade of this film. But the personal and the historical, the important and the insignificant are equalized only on the eve of the end.
"I saw..." - begins the female voiceover of his new story, as if imitating John the Theologian. The woman’s gaze is directed to the ground, not to the sky – even the lovers do not soar into the sky, but fly over the ground, over the carefully recreated ruins of Cologne, attracting the eye no less than the couple themselves. “Is this film right before the apocalypse?” the director was asked.
“I hope not,” Roy Andersson replied optimistically. Losers. The one who lost faith, the one who lost the war, the one who cried in a crowded transport. Most of the characters are not very happy. "There is no hope whatsoever." Life is a tragedy, said Roy Andersson.
Your life was already in the picture of Repin. How new are all these stories today? The director likes to find analogues of episodes of our lives in world art. References to Chekhov, Chagall and Otto Dix. As if nothing unique in your life can happen and everything has been lived and told before you. No wonder one of the critics in the review mentioned the “eternal return”. Maybe honor killings are something new in your Swedish multicultural society. No, this image is "directly inspired by the painting by Ilya Repin "Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan November 16, 1581", disappointed Roy Andersson.
A life broken up into fragments, none of which seems to escape the eyes of a scheherazade. I think that the Scheherazade of this film lives somewhere in a comfortable place and often goes to museums. It seems to her that she has already seen everything in this world in some paintings. She does not know the cold cellar and the dying body beneath her. Therefore, after the hero of the film, Alain René, it is worthwhile to object to this know-it-all: You did not see anything in Hiroshima. What have you really seen in this world, Roy Andersson?
5 out of 10
Original