Director Roy Andersson is at it again. His latest, titled “About Endlessness,” which won him the Silver Lion for Best Direction at the 2019 Venice Film Festival, is another reflection on human life from the Swedish auteur. The purposely foggy and surreal photography from Gergely Pálos strikingly creates a world like no other. In a way, Andersson’s "Living trilogy," which includes 2000’s “Songs from the Second Floor, You”, 2007’s “The Living” and 2014’s “A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence,” has now been expanded into a quadrilogy. Focusing on both the beauty and cruelty of life lived, this dream-like statement wanders through time, showing us both mundane and historic events: a couple floats over a war-torn Cologne; on the way to a birthday party, a father stops to tie his daughter’s shoelaces in the pouring rain; teenage girls dance outside a café; a defeated army marches to a prisoner of war camp. If anything, the film should have been titled “About Existence.”
SCORE: B+