The traditional solid structure of setup, confrontation and resolution was not always as ubiquitous in the film industry as it is today. In earlier stages of cinema there were many attempts to break this conventional mould. One film that recalls such experimentation is the Iranian filmmaker Rakhshan Bani-Etemad's Tales. It received the best screenplay award at the Venice Film Festival in recognition of the film's portrayal of lower-class suffering in Tehran. It uses the alternative method of moving from one seemingly unrelated story to another. Iranian cinema has done this before, notably in Jafar Panahi's The Circle, which won the Golden Lion at Venice in 2000. But in the case of Tales, the filmmaker does it in her own unique way. Tales opens with a journalist-documentary filmmaker setting out to take stock of the suffering of the poor. Holding onto a camera, he is in a taxi talking to the driver about his project. Through their conversation the first tale emerges. The film ends with the same situation, turning this character into a strong reference point, like a silent narrator who reflects the presence of the filmmaker. As the driver speaks to his mother on the phone, it appears as though this will be the topic of the film. A little of the taxi driver's life is revealed, followed by the problem of another passenger who is carrying a sick child: she needs money to buy the child medicine. At night the driver goes to his mother's house to collect his daughter, and the story shifts to the mother and her problems with the retirement benefits department. It then shifts to an old man before returning to the taxi driver's mother as she boards the metro. And then we leave her for a fellow passenger, for good, never returning to the mother's story. Such a transition is accomplished by shifting the focus from the foreground to the background, with the stories revealing themselves bit by bit. There is a story of a worker who is being made redundant because the factory is being sold. His emotional state makes him suspect his wife is seeing her ex-husband. The tale takes on melodramatic hue, but moves on before it turns into a tearjerker. The film sets itself apart not only by its use of a particular structure but also by the hand-held, constantly shaking, camerawork. There is also a crescendo-like development of the dialogue, which moves quietly and reveals its secrets slowly, until the viewer has understood the full implications of the tale being told. *** Another film that breaks the traditional narrative mould is Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson's A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, the third film in a trilogy that includes Songs from the Second Floor (2000) and You, the Living (2007). Narrative here relies on absolute scenes or sketches that are in no way sequential and bear little relation to each other. One recurrent narrative strand, for example, is that of the two vendor brothers who are trying to sell three items: vampire teeth, a device that emits a shrill laugh and the scary mask of a one-toothed man. Together with the style of acting, such motifs give the film a black-comedy quality as the viewer learns about the predicament of these two men. The director is constantly manipulating the viewer, making the audience laugh during the most painful scenes. This is particularly the case with the opening scene, which talks about death, but also when we see a doctor carrying out research on a monkey talking on the phone while the monkey is repeatedly zapped with electricity. The film also subverts normal time. For example, the army of Sweden's 18th-century king, Charles II, is about to wage war on the Russians. On the way, the soldiers terrorise the occupants of a present-day bar. Andersson alludes to historical claims that the king was homosexual, showing Charles taking a liking to the barman. Soon the army is defeated by the Russians and returns to Sweden, marking an important episode in the history of Sweden. Andersson achieves such feats through exquisite, painterly frames executed in a palette of cold pastels, the better to contrast with the zombie-like makeup worn by the characters. In some parts of the film, the director presents the viewer with a perfectly static scene, without any movement of the camera. The film progresses at a slow pace and lives up to Andersson's professed painterly inspiration: The Hunters in the Snow by the Flemish master Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The film offers a harrowing laugh at humans and their intractable strangeness. *** Indian filmmaker Adityavikram Sengupta's Labour of Love breaks Bollywood stereotypes — unmerited anyway, considering the extent of variety within the Indian film industry — by presenting a picture of workers struggling for their rights during a time of economic crisis. The story is spelled out in the form of titles while the film concentrates on the aesthetic, image-based portrayal of the film's two heroes and their lives. This photographic focus is clear from the first few shots. The camera follows the heroine through the narrow alleyways of Calcutta. She reaches a main road, where she gets on a tram, followed by a bus, and eventually reaches her factory. At this point, the director switches to a young man inside his tiny house in the early morning. Regardless of the setting — house, factory or street — each shot is invested with a remarkable degree of precision, whether in terms of the composition or the amount and distribution of light. The film shows the young woman's day at the factory alongside the rest of young man's time in the house: he goes out to the market for a little shopping, then comes back home to sleep. At a certain point, when the woman is on her way home in the evening, the two characters' roles are switched. The young man leaves his house to go to the print press where he works the night shift. It is only then that we realise that the woman and the man are actually a couple. The woman is then shown inside her home while the young man is at the press. Both characters are seen to be unhappy though no specific reason is given, and the viewer senses the heaviness of their difficult lives. The sound track of the film completes the rich settings. There is street noise that penetrates the house's walls, the drone of a ceiling fan and the hubbub of the workplace. In this soundscape there is no room for dialogue. When the husband and wife finally meet, their bed is turned into a garden. They remain there until the next day, when work must begin again. It is the only imaginary or surrealistic scene in the film, and works to intensify the effect of the film as a whole. It is a wholly aesthetic comment on the suffering of India's working class.
