DIVINE COMEDY

ABOUT ENDLESSNESS Sweden’s Roy Andersson is back with – maybe – his swansong.

HIe’s only made five films in 45 years, but Roy Andersson still weighs in as one of European cinema’s heavyweights. His last film, 2014’s A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence, won Venice’s Golden Lion. Now he’s back with About Endlessness, a typically droll series of 32 comic vignettes about life, the universe and everything.

“I think that this movie has been in my head a long time – but not exactly formulated,” he tells Teasers, shortly before winning Best Director – again in Venice. “People say this movie’s melancholic. Maybe it is a little, but I think it is a mirror of how I regard myself. Maybe I’m melancholic! But I think it could be also based on humour. Without humour, it would be terrible to be alive.”

Admittedly, with skits about a boozy dentist, a priest suffering a crisis of faith and an embittered husband, it’s not hard to see where Andersson gets his miserabilist tag from. Even Hitler (played by Magnus Wallgren) gets a look-in here. “All of them are in the same basket, our basket as human beings,” he says of his characters. “I feel related to all of them, even to Hitler.”

With a documentary about his life, Being A Human Person, also currently on release, Andersson feels ubiquitous right now. But will About Endlessness see an end to it all? Given that he’s now 77 – and takes at least five years between films – word has it that this will be his final movie outing.

At least he’s leaving us in good spirits. “The older I get, I am less pessimistic,” he smiles. “I think that I was more pessimistic when I was young. When you’re young, and you have all these possibilities in your hands, you are also very vulnerable… you can destroy it all.” Cheery. JM

ETA | 7 NOVEMBER / ABOUT ENDLESSNESS WILL BE RELEASED IN CINEMAS AND ON CURZON HOME CINEMA NEXT MONTH.