World of Glory
1991 · 14m · Sweden
Directed by Roy Andersson
Genres: drama, experimental
Tones: absurdist, dark, darkly comic, provocative
A man in white face paint guides the viewer through a series of bleakly absurdist vignettes of modern life, opening with a harrowing Holocaust gas van scene and building a damning portrait of everyday complicity, passivity, and spiritual emptiness.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Opens with a gas van and dares you to find the deadpan suburban tableaux that follow even bleaker — Andersson at his most surgical. The page is gone, of course, because nothing this severe stays online.
Andersson's deadpan tableaux essentially invented his later trilogy in twelve minutes, and the opening gas-van sequence remains one of the most morally implicating gestures in short film. The YouTube account is terminated, however.
Andersson's locked-off deadpan tableaux are the foundation of his whole feature catalog - this is where the formula gets invented. YouTube has terminated the primary URL though, so the vault link is broken.
Reviews
If World of Glory were only three minutes long, it might qualify as the most shattering thing I've ever seen.
World of Glory suggests that the most remarkable thing in this world is our insensitivity, our passivity, our disconnection. In his other works, this leads to moments of great awkward laughter, yet here in this small film he holds us to the pain.
Festivals
- Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival 1992, Canal Plus Award & Press Prize