Entertainment

Roy anderson characters if they revealed them selves in a clearer way, arther fleck/joker if he was a real person these are what you'll get from Entertainment in addition to the melancholic and depressing sceneries. But best of it is the intense, surreal and haunting soundtrack. But as I think it's one of those movies that you'll either love it or hate it no grey area here.

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.

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.

The Comedian sprays his unwieldy hair like a pacifist disciplines their dog. Brushstrokes of hair pulse across his forehead concealing a barren head. He is a performer and a disgrace. Vulgarity and apathy are The Comedian's punch lies, and they land like a dirty southpaw. Some entertainers wish to gather admirers. The Comedian, however, knows that folks remember their enemies most vividly.

Economy motels and gas station bathrooms provide refuge from drunken halls and Mexican diners. One stop fails to secure The Comedian a hotel room, and houses him at a relative's casa. Lying on an abbreviated couch and crotchet pillow, he is tempted by lustful dreams. He has no gall to grasp them, and is reduced to a pathetic puddle.

At every stop, The Comedian reminds the audience that he stands before them as an escape. He is a salesman of forgetting. People ought to sit down and laugh, laying their real life worries on the bar counter. The Comedian hurls blazing rebukes at anyone who dares to remind the room that his character is fabricated. And he character is indeed fabricated poorly.

Eddie opens the show each night, once an admirer of The Comedian, but his face broadcasts news of a dying star. Pantomiming is the character Eddie hops into, and the contrast to The Comedian's three drinks and one microphone routine is staggering. A kid delighting common people with a clown nose and a bell hat. Cheap laughs pour out for the phenom, but they do not sand the psyches of the audience.

It would be easy to call The Comedian's work higher art, but fishing for sympathy is just as cheap as the mime's prop work. No, entertainment is an alchemy of exorcism. The Comedian meets a connoisseur of the chromatic scale, a witch of color. He dives into her art for in hopes of self-reflection. Possibly to understand why he only hears his daughter's voicemail.

The Comedian's set lists are packed with tumors. His mission is to milk laughter from an festering breast, to walk into the grime and smile. This journey will take him exactly where he envisions on the bulky televisions, yet he will not be able to stomach his destination. He will deliver a child, but will never be able communicate with the stranger.

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.