Four Good Days
About Endlessness **
Over the course of 20 years, Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson has remained committed to his stylistic gimmick—master-shot tableaux of simple situations, often building to absurdist punch lines—to the point where it’s not clear what more he might have to say within this framework. Once again, his episodic scenes aren’t really connected to any overarching narrative, though a couple of characters—including a minister despairing over his loss of faith—do recur at various points. Mostly, however, we have moments in the lives of everyday people, here supplemented with the voice of an omniscient narrator (Jessica Louthander) whose observations at times step on whatever simple emotion might have been found in a bit like a father pausing during a downpour to tie his young daughter’s shoes, or a woman arriving at a train station to find no one waiting for her. At their best, Andersson’s meticulously constructed shots can hit their black-humored marks, or capture something painterly in a scene of people transfixed by falling snow. At their worst, those shots can start to feel like someone doing a parody of a Roy Andersson movie.