Word: absurdist
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...does could have been done better. On the other hand, it is a very difficult movie to judge because it takes up a previously forbidden subject-the blacklisting of showfolk suspected of Communist leanings during the early '50s-and has the nerve, and grace, to take an absurdist view of that deplorable era. For that, and for Woody Allen's fine performance (against his usual comic grain) in the title role, it deserves respectful attention...
...discovers unplumbed depths of amusement in emotional deformity, physical abuse and psychic shock waves. If Chinatown found Polanski in a slightly more mellow mood -owing probably to the keyed-down romanticism of Robert Towne's screenplay-The Tenant shoots him right back to the center ring of his absurdist circus...
...seasons the Theater of the Absurd has seemed like an endangered dramatic species. Purebred examples of the genre, with their vaudevillian non sequiturs, wryly autumnal philosophizing about existence and wackily disconcerting knee-jerk humor, have become rare. In part, audiences have adjusted to the metaphysical void that permeates absurdist drama, the absence of meaning and purpose that so puzzled and infuriated them when the early Pinter plays appeared...
...theater. The current word on this literary-intellectual exercise maintains that The Blacks concerns not so much racial schism as the general violence and absurdity of the modern world. This theory nicely dilutes Genet's paranoid tension and allows the white audience to sit back comfortably, philosophizing about French absurdist theatre and Saint Sordid Genet...
THERE ARE MOMENTS when Inserts seems to aspire to tragedy and others when it verges on absurdist farce. The broadly farcical sequences lighten what might otherwise be a plodding melodrama and heighten the pathos of The Boy Wonder's plight. A contrast is effected between The Boy Wonder's intelligence and dedication to cinematic art, and the foolish self-serving idiocy of the world around him. At one point, Stephen Davies as Rex, dubbed the Wonder Dog, an empty-headed young undertaker with visions of film stardom who moonlights as porno stud, proposes a perverse idea for flaunting his masculinity...