Welcome to my 2026 project honoring the first quarter of the 21st century. In this extremely lax project I watch a movie from each year to hopefully give myself some insight with what has changed within cinema during this century. At the very least I’ll have watched 25 interesting films and paired them with a dinner inspired by the movie, the place its from, and maybe a little bit of nostalgia for the past 25 years. You can watch along with me or find out what’s up next by checking out the full list of movies.
Today’s feature is from the year 2014, we are headed to Sweden to contemplate death…
Movie: En duva satt på en gren och funderade på tillvaron [A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence]
Year: 2014
Director: Roy Andersson
Country: Sweden
The Elevator Pitch: A series of shorts explores the timelessness of man’s thoughts on death.
How Was the Movie?:
This isn’t quite a movie in the traditional sense that most people would characterize as a movie but instead a series of vignettes, some deeply interconnected (with a small story line technically following two characters throughout the movie) and some vignettes tentatively hanging on to the theme for dear life, seemingly left flapping in the wind. If you’re not familiar with Roy Andersson’s “Living Trilogy” I’m not sure this is the first one that you should watch but like the other two movies it’s part-comedy, part-tragedy, and part “oh I guess this is happening now.”
This is the final of the three and it was very hard not to compare it to the other two and find it actually kind of lacking but I can’t tell if I wasn’t in a place to receive this information or if this one was slightly more disjointed than the other two. While the movie has a lot of delightfully thoughtful and funny moments I did find myself mostly just experiencing it instead of wanting to dig into thinking about.
Several scenes linger long after they are uncomfortable or unremarkable to the viewer and like all of his movies the people in them are seemingly not quiet alive and mechanical in their delivery of their lines and that is something that will either be amusing and forgivable or make this a nearly two hour uncomfortable slog that feels like nails on a chalk board.
This movie is built up of these kind of “rhyming couplets” of scenes that more or less revolve around the central idea of how cruel people are to each other and that causes others misery until they die. I felt like this one was darker than the other two which did make it feel like a big downer note but I think the trilogy is an interesting reflection on either the aging director becoming even more cynical about the cycles of life or the turn that happened in society after his last film in 2007.
While I overall enjoyed this movie and really enjoyed two specific parts of this movie, the “main” story line really didn’t compel me and I found this the weakest of the trilogy. Instead I would suggest people go back and watch Songs from the Second Floor.
Almost no tech in this movie but scenes clearly don’t follow a single time period so that’s to be understood.
What was for Dinner?:
I made the quintessential Swedish meal, which is basically what you get at IKEA. I’ve never had the Köttbullar med Gräddsås [meatballs with cream sauce] at IKEA though so I only have other meatballs to compare it with and it was, meatballs. This was a fantastic dinner, we ate absolutely 100% of everything I made which is pretty unusual for us (we love a good leftover). The recipe for the meatballs I found had no egg but it turned out that didn’t really matter if you make the meatballs super small they kind of just are nice round balls of delight. The cream sauce is very very plain you can see I actually added some spices to it because it literally tasted like straight cream.
The odd star of the show was easily lingonberry jam. I make lingonberry syrup for my husband all the time (he likes it mixed with tonic water). Generally I find the berries way too acidic and sharp for my liking but if you put enough sugar in them they actually come back around to being delicious. The acid and sweetness really cut through the cream and chicken.
The mashed potatoes were mashed potatoes. I would suggest everyone buy a potato press, possibly from IKEA to make better mashed potatoes and of course, like many cultures Sweden has a cucumber salad that is fine. This time it’s pressgurka which is basically a quick pickle.
Great meal overall but it is a bit of work so I would probably organize it differently and just skip the cucumber salad and make some steamed vegetables instead.
That’s it for 2014, see you in the future year of 2015!