A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence (2014): Review

Stub • 273 Words • Film, 2025 • 11/22/2025

⚠️ This post contains a rougher cut of my thoughts on the topic and may be updated in the future. Please forgive any mistakes or lack of polish!

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• My Year Wrapped - 2025

An absurdist, surrealistic and shocking pitch-black comedy, which moves freely from nightmare to fantasy to hilariously deadpan humour as it muses on man’s perpetual inhumanity to man.

There are 298 words in this article, and it will probably take you less than 2 minutes to read it.

This article was published 2025-11-22 00:00:00 -0500, which makes this post and me old when I published it.

It took an estimated to develop this article from conception to publishing.

A film rich in style:

• drab colors
• depth in frame and dynamic backgrounds
• fixed camera one shot scenes
• doors and windows or mirrors
• It’s Not Easy Being Human – The Living Paintings of Roy Andersson | Film Qualia on YouTube
• The Magnificent Anders(s)ons - The Look of Reality

Repetition:

• The sales pitch
• “I’m happy to hear you’re doing fine”
• Battlefield hymn of the republic
  • That war-chant in “A pigeon sat on a branch reflecting on existence” | r/TrueFilm
• One sided phone calls

Tone: eerie, uncomfortable, awkward/cringe

Usage of Humor:

• This movie is funny, but in a heady way that doesn’t produce any huge laughter (at least in my experience).
  • This is a real study in absurdity and how just incongruity can provide some spontaneous laughter but that anticipation really does a lot of the heavy lifting in humor.
• Deadpan surrealist nordic humor = whimsy??
• I think the absurd/surreal is definitely to showcase the inherent absurdity of life.
  • “You can’t feel the day of the week”

Contrast:

• The miserable novelty toy salesmen is a good humorous contrast.
• “i’m happy to hear you doing fine” and all the different contexts it could be said
• charles xii and current time
• the main characters mostly experience misfortune but then in the vignettes:
  • little moments of beauty; helping an old man put a coat on, little girls blowing bubbles, a mother playing with her baby
  • the vignettes don’t really follow the style of the movie they seem almost outside of it

I do think that some things are played purely for shock value.

• Animal cruelty
• Sexual assault (kinda played for laughs?)
• Murder/ethnic cleansing (could’ve been a dream technically)