Darkness and Light

To paraphrase a very old saying, death is easy, it’s comedy that’s hard. But finding funny in hardship, especially the emotional kind that can rip people to pieces and destroy families with the ease of an A-Bomb? That’s borderline impossible, and while certain filmmakers have been able to do it over the years finding a solidly entertaining Black Comedy rooted in real pathos and pain isn’t exactly an everyday occurrence.

Or is it? Over the last week I’ve seen three such motion pictures, one I can’t really say too much about until its general release later this Summer and then two others I could wax poetic until my little heart desires. On top of that, if you want to throw Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg into the mix – and by golly you should, it’s both terrific and terrifically unsettling – then that’s four of these well made and hugely enjoyable dark comedies I’ve had the pleasure to discover this year, each of them offering up their own idiosyncrasies making them utterly unique.

But focusing entirely upon SIFF, the three films I’m talking about are the Duplass Brothers’ Cyrus, the Siberian coal black satire Devil’s Town and Nick Whitfield’s somewhat macabre but ultimately heartwarming slice of British witticisms Skeletons. In regard to the first one, due to the review embargo all I can really say is that I really, really loved it. John C. Reilly hits it out of the ballpark, Jonah Hill has reminded me why I liked him so much in Superbad and Marisa Tomei is deserving of another Academy Award nomination. Directors Jay and Mark Duplass follow up The Puffy Chair and Baghead brilliantly, and to say this is arguably the best comedy of the year so far isn’t just a bunch of hyperbole.



As for Devil’s Town (Djavolja Varos), director and writer Vladimir Paskaljevic’s cutting satire goes into corners similar motion pictures don’t just fear to tread, they run away screaming from them. A day in the life in Belgrade, the film fools you for a brief moment thinking you’re about to see some sort of sweet coming of age drama about the friendship between two young girls, one wealthy the other the daughter of her parent’s maid. But before you know it Paskaljevic charts a labyrinthine course in and around the city offering up prostitutes, mafia dons, working class everymen, business entrepreneurs, a crazed taxi driver and a pair of young lovers who confuse dysfunction for romance. It’s a nasty stew full of images and sounds that are as off-putting as they are mesmerizing, and by and large I can’t really say I ever knew where this story was going.

Yet there is sweetness to be found amidst the disgusting, light hiding within the dark. All the characters are colored in varying shades of gray, many of them willing to do the remarkable if pushed into a corner and forced to stand up for what’s right. They might flee in anger afterwards but their heroism cannot be questioned, the director doing a great job showing how even the most monstrous have it within them to become saviors if the opportunity presents itself.

It’s all very shocking, but it’s also extremely funny and at times remarkably endearing. What does it say when one of the sweetest scenes I’ve seen this year involves a geriatric gynecologist and a gentile young prostitute, the latter allowing the former to examine her so he can relive his glory days for a brief moment? Or that a scene of a young wannabe tennis star and a kind-hearted workingman passing one another on the sidewalk amidst a sea of fluffy white bunnies brought joy to my soul and laughter to my eyes both at the very same time? This is the type of movie where a vicious mob hit can both be bloody shocking and bloody hilarious, and where other films would feel the need to play up such a scene’s sensationalism Paskaljevic uses it instead as a much needed precursor to a bit of subtle mother-daughter kindness that broke my heart.

At the other end of the spectrum lies Whitfield’s Skeletons, an ingenious bit a British comedy where two traveling salesmen literally pull skeletons out of their clients’ closets. They’re exorcists of the human soul, finding the truth at the heart of relationships whether those paying for their services really want to know what’s been haunting them or not.



The film plays a bit like Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice crossed with a hearty dollop of Ivan Reitman’s Ghostbusters yet with the same kind of slashing wit that made Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz such wondrous delights. But Whitfield’s film is far more subdued than any of those four, the director more concerned with the internal plights of his characters than he is with the wickedly surreal world he’s delicately constructed.

Of the three Skeletons is arguably the weakest. The midsection does tend to drag a little bit and the filmmaker doesn’t exactly go out of his way to try and explain how all the mystical hocus pocus allowing his two heroes (wonderfully portrayed by Andrew Buckley and Paul Dallison) works. But I found these to be relatively minor problems, the last third of the film building to a beautiful coda that’s both darkly sinister and yet winsomely uplifting. It was the kind of movie where I found myself wanting to hang with the characters long after the credits had ended, the smile the whole collection of them put on my face one I didn’t want to see ever erased.