Experiencing the Mundane
The poster of Meanwhile on Earth communicates something mundane yet mysterious. Something human… And Carl Olsson’s documentary, screened at the Tempo Documentary Film Festival in Stockholm, delivers exactly that. Although it evokes associations with the films of fellow Swede Roy Andersson, it never exits the framework of non-fiction. Olsson creates his own universe that happens to be on Earth.
With the right dosage of humour and seriousness, enhanced and weakened by music, director Carl Olsson forces us not to look away but to observe the ordinary. In his latest documentary Meanwhile on Earth (Samtidigt på jorden in Swedish), he shows us a sequence of actions we prone to ignore or find trivial yet what play an essential role in our lives. Relying heavily on the camera standing still documenting some of the most mundane conversations, the various elements of the route from the pathologist to the funeral home and the cemetery appears on the screen. Indoor and outdoor takes, locations and processes alternate, but the monotony and stillness of movements never seem to break. Nor does the circle of life. Every body, that is, everybody receives a number that accompanies them on their last journey facilitated by a handful of people.
Olsson gently moves between tones and keeps the camera in a fixed position during the majority of the documentary capturing the moments from a frontal camera angle, thus placing the viewers behind the fourth wall as if they were sitting in a theatre or a museum. With this artistic choice, the film converts into a theatre-like performance, sometimes like a set of tableaux akin to the ones of Roy Andersson. Even the directors’ palettes show similarity due to the dominance of rather gloomy colours. And while the characteristic hues emanate sadness and calmness, the perfectly fitting music and sounds always lighten the mood. The playfulness of the diegetic and non-diegetic music, songs and sound contribute to building up the humour, complemented by the completely ordinary, sometimes job-related activities performed by the subjects observed from a comfortable distance.
Olsson’s ambitious audiovisual plan doesn’t misfire and the film never turns into a parody. The camera lingers just enough on everyone, including the guests in the nearly empty, painfully typical small-town bar. The short intro to leisure and the snippets of conversations between co-workers in the hospital, the funeral home, the hearse, the church or the cemetery give depth to the film. The dialogues about ICA (Maxi), one of the largest Swedish supermarket chains, the 2018 drone incident at Gatwick airport, the challenges pathologists face daily or the song about love might seem dull but tell a lot about the human condition. The honest self-reflection or the relaxed approach to death depicted also characterize other Nordic fiction and non-fiction films, to a greater or lesser extent: Entrepreneur (Finland), Giants and the Morning After (Sweden), Nokia Mobile – We Were Connecting People (Finland), My Heart Belongs to Daddy (Norway), Putting Lipstick on a Pig (Sweden/Åland), Under the Tree (Iceland), Euthanizer (Finland), Men & Chicken (Denmark) or About Endlessness (Sweden) – to mention a few.
Carl Olsson undoubtedly proves his talent and creative vision in this somewhat bizarre piece, which comes across as restrained but humorous, dark but bright, light but heavy, weird but ordinary, mundane but spiritual… Nevertheless, these contrasts remain blunt, thus ensuring the smoothness of the narrative flow until the very end…
Featured image by Jonathan Elsborg. | The film was also screened at the Göteborg Film Festival.
