Who would have thought that this pigeon had read Hegel? "The spirit is a bone," said the German philosopher, and many would have thought that this could be a bad, obscure joke, one could feel sympathetic with, if one could frame it uttered in a school(?) performance by some kid with down syndrome, as in a central "tableau" of the film.
But Hegel, and Andersson, proceed a bit more systematically, than what seems at first: we first encounter the pigeon dead and embalmed; what would the pigeon think on this branch (were it alive?)? What does the man that watches it would probably think? What do we think when we encounter this man's stunned and dead-pan face? The spirit is a bone, means that at best what the spirit does is expand on the negativity of our first encounter with that phrase, when we presumably utter "what the hell!? no, the spirit is not a bone!" but our spirit has already hit on the bone of that phrase.
The next step of the dialectic is on the aforementioned "tableau" of the performance by kids with down syndrome, where we get the supposed explanation of the title through the forced recitation, to call it that, of a little girl: the pigeon sat on a branch, yes (says and repeats the stupid teacher), and it reflected, yes, on existence, yes, then thought it had no money, yes, and returned to its nest, yes.
How should we get what this is about? Is it simply absurd? No. Do we feel uneasy with the anthropomorphism of money? Yes. (But should we feel, in the exact reversed ratio, amused by the anthropomorphism of the repeated "I am happy to hear you are alright"? More of this later.) How can we escape the racist logic of this being uttered by a girl with down syndrome, so the poem must be, even in the slightest way altered? Where do we stand in the line between logic and absurdity?
I am glad to report that Andersson frames his questions in a much more rich and surely dead-pan (but what tableaux! what palette of colours!) way than mine: in the last step of the dialectic, not just one, but a whole bunch of off-screen pigeons, gurgle and somewhat wearily attract the gaze of a bunch of humans underneath, who have just argued inanely about whether it is Wednesday or Thursday, and how one should distinguish between them. Their communal, weary gaze, does it rhyme with the penniless question of the earlier poem? This somewhat constrained note, does it match the absurd riches before and underneath? Roy Andersson has suggested that the pigeons might be wondering what these humans underneath are doing; extending that line of thought, should death - as in the first scene - stop a pigeon from thinking? Is it not rather that death flies over our heads and reflects all the time?
It surely rhymes with the end of "You, the living", the film that came before this one in Andersson's trilogy: the retro-futurist, bizarre planes that half-wearily, half-mockingly, but in perfect, alarming alignment attracted the gaze of the humans underneath, may not be here, but on the other hand one does not need their off-beat, epic quality in this film; it is to Andersson's credit and honor, that he chose to end this film, and the trilogy, with such muted ethos.
For we have had a fine share of dead-pan directness after we dead have awaken: I will pass on the (mock?) Kantian horror of the simple heart (re)imagining the horror of Phalaris' brazen bull; the sequence in the underground bar, changing to 1943, with its parade of mock-heroic free kisses, a simple tune sang again and again, and then reverting to the elderly, deaf protagonist of our time, exposed in a heart-wrenching manner our mock-heroic, free dreams of yesteryear, our disfigured dreams that sing now and forever, as they receive their amusing, knowingly non-corresponding payment in kisses, in times that were difficult, yet had their own reign of inventiveness, before a deaf, absent-minded now (so who dreams this?).
And then the impossible happened: in a bar with some strange whiff of Americana, with a couple kissing in the corner and observed by the people in the bar, we witness the intrusion of King Charles XII of Sweden on horseback. What blew this viewer away is who could have thought that the most astonishing scene of one boy courting another could be found in a Roy Andersson film? Young King Charles offers to the so handsome, as he says, barman, to come and fight on his side, and sleep in his tent - and here is the impossible happening - touching their hands in his plea, the tune of the scene in the bar back in 1943, slightly altered, with new words, but expressing from another perspective the transience of human dreams repeats itself, acquiring explosive force: this comments and commends the absurd validity of passion, from the mock-heroic vanity of nations and epochs to the electrifying, absurd directness of enamourment, that, as always, is as if leaping centuries in order just to grasp a hand. This is wondrous. The equanimous hilarity of "happy to hear you are alright" may expose and play the anthropomorphism of amusement, as well as the anthropomorphism of uneasy money (maybe the weariness of the faces in the last tableau comes from the fear that the pigeons while thinking the penniless question might poop on their heads - if the spirit is a bone, it is also because the self is money), but this is undercut by the pathos of years and centuries leaping for a kiss or a plea, doing as they want to do, and as they have to do, from bone to money to gurgling off-screen in the skies above, proving the mock-hegelian thesis-antithesis-synthesis Swedish-style, any inane, debatable Wednesday. Thank you.
