The Comedy

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🎙️ EPISODE 277: 07.13.2020 A great tonal shift occurs before the next pair of feature films from Rick Alverson (now using his full name in the credits) but the subject matter, nonetheless, remains on the continuum 1 (even if, on the surface, that doesn't feel like the case). Our protagonist in The Comedy (Tim Heidecker's Swanson) is an almost diametrically opposed force to that of Colm O'Leary's lead in both The Builder and New Jerusalem. Whereas the latter attempted to destroy the void through faith, Swanson seeks to expand it, and suck anything and everything inside it until there's no difference between joy and pain; his religion is apathy.

This is my entry point into the Alverson filmography, and I assume that's the case for a lot of people. Heidecker (of Tim and Eric fame) has a fervent following, and the "controversial" nature of this movie (actively lacking a moral compass) no doubt added to its quasi-cult status. Watching this was one of those beautiful times when I could genuinely say that I'd never quite seen anything like it. There is even less of a plot here than in the first two films and next to no emotional arc either. It's essentially a series of vignettes focused on Swanson, "a restless, aging New Yorker, indifferent to the notion of inheriting his father's estate, passing time with his friends in games of mock sincerity and irreverence," as the tagline reads. In fact, I find myself struggling to write about it now. It has to be seen.

In terms of how this fits into the oeuvre, I'd say that it broadens the lens. We are moving toward The Mountain, a full-on critique of the American life experience / failed experiment. This is still largely insular, but how Swanson interacts with the world, his very existence, in fact, is starkly connected to the experience "normal people" have when it comes to reckoning with the void. The audience yearns to connect with a protagonist but both The Comedy's Swanson and Entertainment's The Comedian are too abhorrent (for different reasons) to do so; the unease and unsettling feeling it inspires is the human brain attempting to parse this. A lot of "smart" people (top critics!) couldn't do it...


Alverson is moving past the fly-on-the-wall postmodernism of his early work into much deeper territory, and the tools critics have used to assess films are proving insufficient (to say the least).

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FOOTNOTES:
1. I've addressed this further with my Director Focus piece on Rick Alverson, which I implore you to check out if you have any interest. [BACK]

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 276B - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 277B ⫸

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