"My friend told me he sees dead people. It's not that strange though, he's a mortician"
Ed is a comedian, a pretty bad one, and in Tom Shkolnik's debut feature, we get to watch his pitiful but familiar life splutter and stall until he finds a kindly voice to give him a jump start. Watching the last ebbs of his passion drain away via Shkolnik's super naturalistic direction is strangely compelling. It's eerily beautiful at times, a little mediocre at others, but the invasive camera angles and minimal improvised dialogue will either draw you in with its seductive allure or bore you senseless.
I for one, was totally absorbed by this 75 minute film until that is, the end when, in the most banal dialogue I've heard in a long time, we hear Ed and a taxi driver – yep, the wise ol' cab driver character – have a heart to heart with few words, much history and a lot of 'chin up lad' pseudo-inspiration. It's hugely disappointing and goes on for way too long. You could call it brave, but it's an excessively simple cliché trying really hard not to be one.
It's so bad in fact, that it makes me reconsider the entire film. Ed's call centre job, for example, is soulless in itself but Shkolnik takes it not a step too far but a shade too obvious. Ed's not just part of the thankless millions of call centre workers selling crap to old people, he's selling cancer insurance. Cancer insurance! It makes me question whether I've just been fooled by the simplicity of Shkolnik's camera work and his everyman characters, suckered into a substance-light storyline?
Maybe, but I was mesmerised nonetheless by most of The Comedian, a film which favours sentiment over wit, and that says something about Shkolnik's ability to present the human condition poetically and seductively. He has Ed (Edward Hogg) meet Nathan (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Misfits) after he bombs at one of his gigs. They flirt, they date and they piss each other off as Shkolnik allows a cautious but affectionate relationship to develop through dialogue that we've all heard before because we've said these things ourselves. It's not long however, before Ed and his beautiful flatmate Elisa (Elisa Lasowski) complicate things.
She has fallen for him and realising that it's never going to happen for the pair, she asks him to move out. They're both in tears at this gentle, quiet eviction and it's hard not to join them but unlike Elisa, Ed isn't crying about love. With his relationship looking hopeless and his job destroying him, he's now lost his home and his best friend.
So don't be fooled by the title of this film, there are very few laughs to be had from The Comedian. But if you like your relationships naturalistic, your cinematography intimate and your dialogue intense and familiar, this is definitely worth your time.
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