Screening Room: ‘A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence’

(Magnolia Pictures)

If the question of what exactly isA Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence would bother you if it can’t be answered, then by all means, don’t see it. Philosophical investigation, bad joke, or just a series of modern-art video installments strung together into a “film,” it resists easy definition. That doesn’t make it a masterpiece, but it’s something different, and in a good way.

A Pigeon… opens this week in limited release, and should cause a few furrowed brows as...