About Endlessness
Magnolia Pictures | Release Date: April 30, 2021 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
87
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 30 Critic Reviews
Positive:
27
Mixed:
3
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Wall Street JournalJohn AndersonMay 5, 2021
A film like About Endlessness invites comparisons not to other movies, but to other media. The Preludes of Chopin or Debussy, for instance, brilliant flashes that don’t need to go anywhere, but might. Or something like Baudelaire’s “Paris Spleen,” an intriguing whole composed of incongruous poetic fragments. Read full review
100
The Irish TimesTara BradyApr 29, 2021
It’s life, both not as we know it, and yet precisely as we experience it. Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinApr 29, 2021
He remains a master of composition, subtly guiding your eye towards details that reveal the kind of stories we might usually overlook – in life as well as in the cinema itself. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottApr 29, 2021
Each shot is a kind of sight gag, a visual and philosophical joke with absurdity in the setup and sorrow in the punchline. But this time, more of the jokes are one-liners, in which the premise and the payoff are one and the same. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawNov 5, 2020
Andersson’s films are endlessly rewatchable. To view them is to abolish gravity. Read full review
91
The PlaylistMel ValentinMay 1, 2021
As usual, Anderson offers a stirring, compelling counter-example to mainstream film, eschewing familiar, conventional character or plot-driven storytelling, mobile camerawork, or traditional editing. Instead, Anderson has deliberately embraced a rigorously minimalist, austere approach: deadpan-inflected, satirical vignettes, one-shot/one-scene camera set-ups, and occasional fade-to-blacks or abrupt cuts to mark the ending of one abstractly connected scene or idea to another, all meticulously planned, filmed, and edited from Anderson’s beloved Stockholm-based soundstage. Read full review
91
IndieWireDavid EhrlichSep 9, 2019
The least funny and most tender movie that Andersson has made since building his own studio with the profits he’d saved from decades of enormously successful commercial work, About Endlessness adopts the same qualities of life itself: it’s both short and infinite. Read full review
91
The Film StageMark AschSep 9, 2019
Andersson’s sketches feel sketchier—sparser and more suggestive—with every film; About Endlessness hits perhaps a handful of blackly humorous punchlines, and the only irony is cosmic. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreMay 2, 2021
At the age of 78, Andersson continues to make films that desire to capture no less than a grand sense of human existence — and that somehow achieve it. Here’s hoping this one isn’t his last. Read full review
90
The New YorkerAnthony LaneApr 30, 2021
You could argue that a little of this goes a long way, but that’s the point. An Andersson movie is a gallery of littles, each of them going a very long way. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangApr 30, 2021
The absence of God, the trauma of war, the weight of history: None of these are new ideas for Andersson, a fact that reaffirms the wisdom of this movie’s title. But the implied grandiosity of those themes is dissipated, again and again, by the exquisite lightness of his touch and the startling tenderness of his gaze. Read full review
90
TimeStephanie ZacharekApr 29, 2021
It’s meditative, mournful and gently funny, and celebratory, too, but in a muted way. If you don’t know what kind of movie you’re in the mood for, this may be the one. It’s a tonic for listless times. Read full review
90
VarietyGuy LodgeSep 9, 2019
If we’ve been here before, the immaculate, somehow tender-hearted execution of About Endlessness ensures this is not a complaint. Read full review
90
Screen DailyJonathan RomneySep 9, 2019
Andersson’s consistency may have made him a director for acolytes above all, but they will find this a satisfying and richly resonant lesson in obliqueness and sometimes opacity. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleJosh KupeckiMay 6, 2021
Funny, tragic, moving scenes unfold in Andersson’s meticulously crafted frames. In cafes, bedrooms, offices, street corners suffused in muted off-whites and grays, with characters (mostly nonprofessionals) participating in a sublime ballet of choreographed insecurity, doubt, and frustration, but also of tender and fragile grace. Read full review
88
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenApr 29, 2021
It’s another astounding assemblage of dryly humorous, immaculately designed, fixed-camera vignettes, if an even more morose collection than the previous ones. Read full review
88
Paste MagazineTim GriersonApr 29, 2021
It’s a slow-burn stunner. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineCarson LundApr 28, 2021
Rather than eliciting surprise and wonder, Roy Andersson channels his full stylistic arsenal in search of something far more delicate: a recognition of the sublime in the prosaic. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrApr 28, 2021
The film has an epic sense of devastated wonder that can only come from standing as far back from the parade as one possibly can while still holding on to one’s empathy. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubCharles BramescoApr 28, 2021
While Andersson has continued in his signature style for this coda, erecting pallid beige-and-grey backlot dioramas with a painterly eye for crowded composition, he repurposes the technique toward a newfound elegiac, gentle register. Read full review
80
Time OutDave CalhounApr 29, 2021
It’s smaller in scale than his last two, 2014’s A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence and 2007’s You, the Living. It also has a more maudlin air to it overall than those others – which, if you’ve experienced their bleak absurdity, you’ll know is saying something. Read full review
80
EmpireNick de SemlyenNov 12, 2020
Lord knows how it all connects, but there's a strange power in how About Endlessness flows, jumping around the whole spectrum of human experience and the ridiculous places to which our emotions push us. Andersson's pigeon is at flight once more, and cinema is a richer place for it. Read full review
80
The GuardianXan BrooksSep 9, 2019
About Endlessness contains moments of devilish wit, but at heart it is a sad, sweet picture, threaded with themes of estrangement and separation. Andersson isn’t exactly asking us to laugh at or pity these people. Instead, we’re being encouraged to wonder at their predicament – and perhaps relate it to our own. Read full review
80
CineVueJohn BleasdaleSep 9, 2019
Made up of a series of related but not necessarily connected vignettes, each filmed with a static camera, they resemble New Yorker cartoons scripted by Samuel Beckett. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comGlenn KennyApr 30, 2021
The “endlessness” of the film encompasses a lot of absurdity and disappointment, but its notes of grace sound the loudest. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayApr 27, 2021
Dreamlike and deliberate, pedestrian and theatrical, bland and strangely beautiful, About Endlessness takes in the suffering, struggle and moments of vagrant joy in life and propels them into the cosmos. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungSep 9, 2019
The famous dreamlike lighting and mise-en-scene are always perfect in capturing human foibles. But the offbeat sense of humor that characterized the trilogy is less evident than ever. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Mark KermodeNov 10, 2020
As is customary, absurdist humour, global history and abject horror sit side by side, all equally weighted and witnessed. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleBob StraussApr 27, 2021
About Endlessness is like a bunch of Debbie Downer skits directed by Ingmar Begman, just not as entertaining. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreApr 9, 2021
While I like the challenge of his self-conscious cinema, I find the urge to go glib every time I encounter one of his films almost too hard to resist. Read full review
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