Book
2021 · 10m · USA
Directed by Anthony Oberbeck
Genres: dark comedy
Tones: darkly comic, melancholic
A despondent man finds comfort in a novel about another aimless character, until something he sees on a train tilts the whole comfort sideways.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Oberbeck's premise is the kind of nested misery that usually curdles into navel-gazing. Somehow this one keeps the joke alive while the floor falls out.
Oberbeck folds existential drift into a recursive joke about a man reading about a man drifting — Kaufman by way of Dupieux, deliberately small. A slim conceit treated with patience.
Anthony Oberbeck's despondent stoic finding comfort in a novel about another aimless character, then having the comfort tilted by something on a train — treating existential drift as recursive joke rather than sermon is exactly Oberbeck's lane.
Reviews
A dark comedy about feeling lost and without purpose, and not only feeling that, but everyone in your life telling you that you definitely are.