This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Liv’s review published on Letterboxd:
This review may contain spoilers.
Saw this many years ago before I could really comprehend it, but there's a certain coldness to The Comedy that made a pretty indelible impression on me. This is probably The movie when it comes to trust fund guys (apologies for not knowing the correct Marxist term), with Heidecker embodying this character with the exact sort of necessary honest cruelty. Rick Alverson's identification of a certain kind of Obama-era "ironic" fascism is incredibly spot on; I mean there's multiple bits here where Heidecker is practically repeating Sam Hyde lines. And it's not like the surrounding culture doesn't encourage it. His friends play act at companionship but in a way that reduces it down to pure patterns of communication, as if understanding how socializing works makes the very act meaningless (the homoerotic antics of the opening give this dynamic an especially depressing tone). I also love the early scene where a fellow Williamsburg woman tries to talk to him about how there's "different kinds of socialism," but still chuckles along to his "Hitler had good ideas" "joke." The following scene indicates that she slept with him. The class solidarity is real.
It's not like there's zero empathy either. Heidecker's character spends half the movie in a sort of daze, wandering around New York and playing pretend at different jobs for fun. These are the only moments where he seems remotely fulfilled, but when he eventually holds a steady job as a dishwasher this does not last. Most work in the 2010s is not exactly characterized by a sense of fulfillment, of course. There's one single speck of joy, right at the very end, but after the preceeding 90 minutes it can't help but play like a blip.
(Side note: James Murphy being in this is the most I've ever respected him).