Entertainment

What's annoying about this kind of movie is that if you don't like it, it's assumed you just have no tolerance for dark and depraved realism or difficult films. I've liked many movies resembling this on the surface. I even wrote and shot one of my own before deciding this sub-genre was played out by European films in the 90s and Sophia Coppola ever since. This one is just a total misfire in tone. I'm a huge fan of a lot of the elements individually. I love the 'straight' character Turkington, his on stage character Hamburger, beautiful realist cinematography, and occasionally esoteric, stylized dialogue. They make zero sense when put together in this film.

I'd love to see a film about how it would really be for a character like Tarkington to interact with the world, or somewhat less so a character like Hamburger. But not this stylized dialogue where everyone is a silent foil in a world that looks and feels real but has no relationship to the reality we all inhabit. Just so confused by about 90% of the choices.

Audiences not braced for what Rick Alverson's Entertainment has to offer will be doomed for an unpleasant and gruelling experience. This is anti-entertainment if anything, not in the sense that it uses anti-jokes but the comedian protagonist is on the lowest rung of humour. Using cheap sight gags, resorting to insulting the audience, taking uncalled-for hits at celebrities and using not-so-funny voices, the laughs the characters do get are cheap. This comedian is a 19 year routine from lead actor Gregg Turkington, otherwise known as Neil Hamburger, but that backstory has no relevance to the film's narrative as he's otherwise unnamed. It's performance art, but also satirical as it's not far from the truth of what some comedians actually resort to in their acts. In that sense, it's a study on what's considered entertainment, why people are drawn to it and what it means to people.

The film chronicles a cycle of repetitive sequences that grow darker in despair. The comedian attends novelty tours on his journey, browsing at eye-sore mechanical marvels in the middle of the desert, often away from the main group and guide. Then he performs at third-rate gigs such as dingy bars, often saying how he's travelled from miles away but never where from exactly, and gets upset when the audience don't laugh at his jokes. That's all part of his act, however, but it doesn't get them more comfortable. His warm-up act is an amateur mime artist played by Tye Sheridan, though how they're travelling together remains a mystery. He calls his estranged daughter before bed in hopes that she'll pick up and reconnect, but it's ostensibly in vain. Some other characters take him aside, such as detours from his wealthy cousin played by John C. Reilly, an example of success, and Michael Cera in a four minute cameo as a hustler who wants company.

It feels like the films of Roy Andersson by way of David Lynch as a surrealistic nightmare. From constant stumbles, the comedian is on a broken American dream, both as a father and as a budding entrepreneur with his comedy act – which it must be noted, is far from his stoic self. He seems willingly isolated offstage, but abrasive when he's onstage. If comedy is an escape for some, is that necessarily a good thing? It can be cryptic in these scenes that don't tie in together, but they're all expressing his anxieties and failure in his career and fatherhood. Almost every gig he does is greeted by an apathetic 'good show' from the manager while he looks dead inside. The tragedy is off-screen and internal but it's palpable, highlighted by the washed-out and carefully composed photography. Entertainment is a very unsettling film, and at one point near its middle I found myself tested by it, but it's thoroughly profound for those who want something challenging and hauntingly beautiful.

8/10

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A fascinating and ambitious mess, with echoes of David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch and Stanley Kubrick among others. Beautifully shot and full of careful and striking lighting and compositions, this tragic-comic character study of an abrasive, sad, utterly unsuccessful stand up comic has a number of surreal scenes and images that are deeply affecting and/or quite funny.

There are also a number of scenes that seem needlessly repetitive, or working way too hard to be self-consciously weird. And the film definitely feels long.

Back on the plus side, it's made more complex and interesting by the fact that the stand up character in his off-stage real life is outwardly nothing like the hyper-annoying, aggressively unfunny and gross person he plays on stage. He's quiet and introverted and seems more terribly and dangerously depressed than angry. However, under the surface the comic and his on-stage alter ego share a desperate sense of alienation from other human beings, and it's that terrible modern isolation that's at the heart of the film.

Extending that exploration, 'Entertainment' plays with an interesting meta idea. What if an arty, self-referential surrealist comic like Andy Kaufman (or this film's lead Gregg Turkington) spent their career playing their most difficult and abrasive alter-ego like Kaufman's Tony Clifton (or star Turkington's Neil Hamburger, who is the basis of the on stage persona here), but instead of playing for crowds of hip and 'knowing' urban young people 'in on the joke', they only got to do that act in sad, barely populated working class dive bars out in the middle of the California desert, where the inside joke is totally lost for the audience. It raises interesting questions about perception and comedy, and how much of our enjoyment of hip ironic distance in modern entertainment is a cover for something wounded and broken inside us.

It's a difficult film I'd be hesitant in recommending to most other people, and that I have my own reservations about. Yet I find that since I've seen it, moments, images and performances are aggressively haunting me in a powerful way, and make me look forward to seeing it again.

ENTERTAINMENT is another one of these dramas about comedians. There aren't a ton of them, but there are perhaps a few too many. And they're all mostly the same. If you've seen one, you've seen them all.

This one tackles the topic in a slightly fresh way, but I still couldn't help but feel as if maybe it shouldn't have been made. Maybe there is something here for some people, but I wasn't crazy about it. The acting was at least decent, but overall it's pretty forgettable. Do not recommend.

An exploration through the dark side of entertainment. A feverish introspective nightmare of a character who remains more mysterious by the end of the film than at the beginning. Entertainment drags us along on a slow road trip through the desert with a comedian who loses his self along the way. The line between reality and dreams become completely blurred. The whole film seems like an inside joke the filmmakers refuse to let us in on. Sure, there are funny moments, especially during the first half, but by the end you'll be left with more questions than answers.

It's emotionally heavy, bizarre, heart-breaking, surreal and even somewhat disturbing. What is truly masterful is how, without ever fully understanding who this character is, the film causes us to lose our sense of reality with him. He is explored, with great depth, inwardly without us ever sure of who he is on the outside. Rick Alverson has perfectly re-created the dream logic story telling techniques and beautifully strange cinematography of a David Lynch film. Yet, he does this using his own voice, which is strikingly original. Entertainment is somewhere between a broken character study, an absurdist comedy and modern tragedy.

Entertainment is not for everyone and if you try using your brain while watching it, you may give yourself a migraine. If you try to use your heart to feel your way through, you won't be sure where to put it and may feel depressed afterwards. This film is a trip that you have to allow to wash over you. Let yourself get lost in it's wonderful visuals and be sure to have friends to discuss it with afterwards.