Tim Heidecker's turn as Swanson in director Rick Alverson's THE COMEDY feels all at once like a departure from his absurdist Adult Swim television series and a role that plays to the very thing that makes his and his partner Eric Wareheim's unique brand of comedy work. The film is as black as any dark comedy I've ever seen, and watching it feels something like a test of fortitude at times.
Swanson spends his days and nights riding around on his boat, hanging out with his friends, drinking at parties, and indulging in various means of wasting time, all with a disdain for everyone and everything around him. An honest word from his mouth is a rare thing, and Heidecker's performance conveys a prevalent layer of sarcasm with deft cadence and body language. He is the definition of jaded, and the film paints hims as a very sad and lonely portrait of a modern young man. He seeks respite from his depression in vitriolic interactions with people who don't understand him. The ones he considers friends are those who are his cynical equals, and even those characters are bullied for breaking the group's synergy of darkly humorous, ironic rhetoric. Those on the outside of this vicious clique react to his antics in largely the same way — by ignoring him.
Swanson's family life is something of a mess. His father is dying, his brother is "on his way to the loony bin," and he has some type of a sexual relationship with his sister-in-law, although this is hardly fleshed out in the narrative. The film spends far more time jumping from scene to scene of Swanson's increasingly reckless flights of mischief. His lack of concern for those around him and his general ignorance of danger suggest something closer and closer to sociopathy as the film progresses.
The climax of the film comes in a character moment between Swanson and a girl he works with as a dish washer in a small restaurant, a job he doesn't need but appears to do for the ironic time waste that it is. The girl proves herself to be Swanson's discontented equal over a couple of scenes of irreverent and occasionally depraved discourse. While getting high and preparing to become intimate on his boat, the girl begins to have what appears to be a seizure. Swanson doesn't react. He stares at the half-undressed girl as she thrashes and gasps, mostly out of frame. The difficultly of this is knowing that these two characters lack any kind of perceivable honesty. Conflicting thoughts race through the mind watching this uncomfortably long moment play out. Perhaps she's faking it, or at least he thinks she is, or she's not and he's really this far gone. The scene brilliantly divorces the audience from any empathetic feelings they may have had for his character, and in a strange way, gives clarity and a sense of finality to his hopelessness. Finally, we feel about him the way he feels about himself.
The Comedy's indie film aesthetic and narrative sensibilities feel a little cannibalistic considering its character depictions. Swanson and his ilk are 'hipsters' by the contemporary definition of the word. The film goes to great pains to illustrate this. V-neck T-shirts, plaid garments, fixed-gear bicycles, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, and a reference to Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood are all present and accounted for. These elements fail at illustrating the emotionally empty Swanson and his small group of friends and only serve to indict a subculture with its most prominent stereotypes. To use a strangely apt analogy, like one of Tyler Perry's Madea comedies, the film seems to undermine itself by supporting potentially harmful generalizations of the very group it appears to be speaking to. In a particularly contradictory scene, Heidecker's character is further vilified as he generalizes a group of black men to their faces. The movie hates its characters and by association seems to hate 'hipsters' — whatever that means.
In an act of mercy on the audience, THE COMEDY closes with what is probably Swanson's only honest moment, a short scene of Heidecker's character playing in the ocean with a small boy. It's sweet and real and lends some hope to a man who feels hopeless before cutting to black.
Re-posted from my blog at http://dk421.wordpress.com
Swanson spends his days and nights riding around on his boat, hanging out with his friends, drinking at parties, and indulging in various means of wasting time, all with a disdain for everyone and everything around him. An honest word from his mouth is a rare thing, and Heidecker's performance conveys a prevalent layer of sarcasm with deft cadence and body language. He is the definition of jaded, and the film paints hims as a very sad and lonely portrait of a modern young man. He seeks respite from his depression in vitriolic interactions with people who don't understand him. The ones he considers friends are those who are his cynical equals, and even those characters are bullied for breaking the group's synergy of darkly humorous, ironic rhetoric. Those on the outside of this vicious clique react to his antics in largely the same way — by ignoring him.
Swanson's family life is something of a mess. His father is dying, his brother is "on his way to the loony bin," and he has some type of a sexual relationship with his sister-in-law, although this is hardly fleshed out in the narrative. The film spends far more time jumping from scene to scene of Swanson's increasingly reckless flights of mischief. His lack of concern for those around him and his general ignorance of danger suggest something closer and closer to sociopathy as the film progresses.
The climax of the film comes in a character moment between Swanson and a girl he works with as a dish washer in a small restaurant, a job he doesn't need but appears to do for the ironic time waste that it is. The girl proves herself to be Swanson's discontented equal over a couple of scenes of irreverent and occasionally depraved discourse. While getting high and preparing to become intimate on his boat, the girl begins to have what appears to be a seizure. Swanson doesn't react. He stares at the half-undressed girl as she thrashes and gasps, mostly out of frame. The difficultly of this is knowing that these two characters lack any kind of perceivable honesty. Conflicting thoughts race through the mind watching this uncomfortably long moment play out. Perhaps she's faking it, or at least he thinks she is, or she's not and he's really this far gone. The scene brilliantly divorces the audience from any empathetic feelings they may have had for his character, and in a strange way, gives clarity and a sense of finality to his hopelessness. Finally, we feel about him the way he feels about himself.
The Comedy's indie film aesthetic and narrative sensibilities feel a little cannibalistic considering its character depictions. Swanson and his ilk are 'hipsters' by the contemporary definition of the word. The film goes to great pains to illustrate this. V-neck T-shirts, plaid garments, fixed-gear bicycles, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, and a reference to Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood are all present and accounted for. These elements fail at illustrating the emotionally empty Swanson and his small group of friends and only serve to indict a subculture with its most prominent stereotypes. To use a strangely apt analogy, like one of Tyler Perry's Madea comedies, the film seems to undermine itself by supporting potentially harmful generalizations of the very group it appears to be speaking to. In a particularly contradictory scene, Heidecker's character is further vilified as he generalizes a group of black men to their faces. The movie hates its characters and by association seems to hate 'hipsters' — whatever that means.
In an act of mercy on the audience, THE COMEDY closes with what is probably Swanson's only honest moment, a short scene of Heidecker's character playing in the ocean with a small boy. It's sweet and real and lends some hope to a man who feels hopeless before cutting to black.
Re-posted from my blog at http://dk421.wordpress.com