If I finish this special, that means I have to not work on it anymore, and that means I have to just live my life and so I’m not gonna do that and I’m gonna not finish this special. I’m gonna work on it forever, I think, and I’m never gonna release it. So I’m not talking to anybody right now, I’m just talking to myself. So, yeah, who ******* cares? **** you and goodbye and let’s keep going.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a tragedy for a lot of reasons. A lot of suffering was also caused by the lockdowns that were put in place and the changes a lot of people made to their lifestyles during the pandemic. I imagine the emotional trauma of the pandemic still hasn’t really been plumbed and we will probably never know exactly how many people developed mental and emotional disorders or had existing disorders greatly exacerbated by the day-to-day experience of living through COVID-19. For some people, that trauma involved being on the frontlines of the fight in medical facilities; for others, it involved dealing with feelings of intense fear and paranoia and turning those feelings into rage and anger; for others, it was depression and anxiety created by social isolation. And, humans being humans, a whole lot of people turned to art as a way to work through and express those emotions. And while a lot of that art had tremendous resonance at the time and a lot of it continues to do so, for my money there is one piece of art that I think will stand as the definitive masterpiece of the pandemic. That piece of art is, of course, Rob Savage’s Host, the movie about a demonically possessed Zoom call.
No, just kidding, of course. That piece of art is Bo Burnham’s Inside, a work that kind of defies easy categorization. A lot of people, Burnham included, called it a comedy special and I think that’s fine, but it’s certainly like no other comedy special I’ve ever seen. If this is indeed a “comedy special,” then Burnham has kind of perfected and also destroyed the genre as I don’t think I’ll ever again really be that thrilled to just watch a guy stand on stage with a microphone and tell jokes. After Inside, that just seems about as of the moment as sending someone a joke by telegram. Inside is also a documentary about creativity, a movie that is, in my opinion, as much about making a comedy special as it is a comedy special. It’s also a psychological character study of Burnham, at least the Burnham being presented here, as he slowly comes unglued during the lockdown. And, of course, given Burnham’s incredible song-writing and performing abilities, it’s also a musical.
Of course, it’s also just a movie and, while I think we all know the auteur theory is both kind of true and kind of bull-****, Inside is a pretty interesting case. Burnham created the bulk of the film entirely by himself while trapped at home by the pandemic and it seems like as close to a singular vision as one is likely to get. And that singular vision is rich and multi-layered in fascinating ways. Burnham goes out of his way to keep things visually interesting in a way that I wasn’t really expecting. On the song 30, for instance, Burnham uses a single white light as a way to create a constantly shifting play of light and shadow; this isn’t even necessary as 30, a weary and wry commentary on the banal despair of leaving behind your twenties, has lyrics that are sharp and funny and biting enough that they stand on their own.
The songs here are really the stars of this production, of course. There are funny skits here and there as well, like a riff on the culture of “reaction videos” that unfolds into a cacophonous cascade of ever-increasing layers of commentary. But the songs are the things you’ll remember most intensely. They’re often very funny as with the incredibly catchy That’s How the World Works. They’re often funny AND incisive as with the brilliant Problematic, a song that manages to satirize both the culture of outrage and those who rail against it. And by the time the special gets to the climactic All Eyes on Me, the emotions are so intense that it genuinely feels as large and cathartic as a stadium performance.
The two standouts for me are absolutely Welcome to the Internet and That Funny Feeling and they couldn’t be more different. Welcome to the Internet is a frenetic, blisteringly funny take on our current shared online culture and yet it also manages to have a strangely emotional section right at its center; this one is also given a vibrant presentation with flashing lights and lasers. That Funny Feeling, on the other hand, is a simple acoustic lament, just Burnham and his acoustic guitar in a dark room, musing on modern life. This song, really, is a masterpiece. It’s not a comedy song at all and I think that its stream of consciousness lyrics are probably the best lyrics I’ve heard in any song for a decade. I probably have to go back to Song for Zula to find a song with lyrics I find as poetic and striking as these. “Carpool Karaoke, Steve Aoki, Logan Paul” and “The quiet comprehending of the ending of it all,” are lines that just continue to haunt me in the way they absolutely sum up that strange modern sick feeling. It’s truly astonishing songwriting. And I love that the song never actually defines the titular “funny feeling.” We all know what it is. We all feel it during those moments when our real lived reality becomes . . . uncanny in some way. As Burnham sings, over and over, “There it is, that funny feeling, that funny feeling again,” it captures as well as anything could that strange cocktail of emotions and sensations that make up life today.
But I suppose I’ve talked about this special enough, though I’ve hardly scratched the surface of it really. I watched it one evening and then turned right around and watched it again the next day, start to finish all over again. It’s just a truly magnificent piece of art and as a sophomore directorial film, it continues to signal that Burnham is capable of fantastic work. We can only hope to be lucky enough that he’ll continue to innovate and experiment and expand his artistic vision. Frankly, it really doesn’t seem at all like this movie and his wonderful debut, Eighth Grade, actually came from the same person; I find that incredibly exciting. Burnham, as an artist, is going to be hard to predict, I think. Except for one thing: I predict I’ll be watching, whatever he does next, wherever he goes next . . . now that the doors are finally open again. 4 stars.
tl;dr – genre-bending “comedy special” is a wide-ranging, mind-blowing snapshot of our troubled reality that manages to be hilariously funny and profoundly emotional; a masterpiece. 4 stars.