‘Curse’
Creators: Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie
Address: Nathan Fielder, David Zellner, Nathan Zellner
Distribution: Emma Stone, Nathan Fielder, Benny Safdie, Corbin Bernsen
Country: United States of America
Duration: Between 38 and 62 minutes. (10 episodes; three viewed for review)
Year: 2023
Gender: Black humor
Premiere: January 5, 2024 (SkyShowtime)
★★★★
The ‘curse’ is the result of an unlikely alliance between several unique talents. its creators Nathan Fielder And Benny Safdiethat is, a visionary with a disturbing sense of humor (remember his last experiment, ‘The Rehearsals’) and one half of a duo of sibling filmmakers who revived and intensified some of the best essences of New Hollywood (in acclaimed films, for example). ‘Good time’ anyone ‘diamonds in the rough’). They also star in the series together with Emma Stone, an actress who is gradually moving away from her America’s sweetheart image and is more courageous in her project choices; this is evidenced by his collaboration with Yorgos Lanthimos in ‘The Favorite’ and, above all, by this review. Feminist from ‘Frankenstein’ called ‘Poor Creatures’. If an extra guarantee of ‘coolness’ is needed, we are talking about a series co-produced by the most stylish studio imaginable, A24.
Nothing can and will go wrong. Except for everything that happens to newlyweds Whitney (Stone) and Asher Siegel (Fielder). Project to revitalize the small town of Española, in New Mexico. your opinion Attract wealthy hipsters with cutting-edge sustainable homes: passive houses lined with mirrors, looks suspiciously like those raised by artist Doug Aitken. All his bad decisions and stilted dialogue are captured by the camera of slippery reality television producer Dougie (Safdie, also recently seen as an actor in ‘Oppenheimer’), who will pull off the impossible and the immoral. A reform program that could compete with the products of the Scott twins.
Neither the calculating Whitney nor the rude Asher are the nicest people, although they insist on telling them this over and over again. It’s hard for them to even act like humans this way. The work he does both in front of the cameras and off the cameras is a strange simulacrum of humanity: Cheerful to the point of artificiality, and the man vacillates between lethargy and aggression, the latter sometimes melodramatically. However, if we had to name the worst of the two, it would definitely be Asher, who made the most questionable decision, that is, the one who gave birth to the curse that gave the series its name. From that moment on, the life of the marriage and the television project begins to be seriously shaken.
With its almost supernatural sense of (fake) tension, ‘The Curse’ seems to invite us to take the Siegels’ misadventures seriously, but the series is above all The opportunity to enjoy the misfortune of others and indirectly experience wonderful embarrassment. This is something Fielder got us used to; In fact, this project represents for him a return to the absurdist satire of reality television, which he had already developed in the great parody of business rescue programs called ‘Nathan for You’. But we also see him leave his uncomfortable comfort zone to dare to be an almost standard performer and scene. The problems of mis-enlightened liberalism with one of the best actresses of her generation.
To relieve that pressure, Fielder is co-directing the series with the Zellner brothers, writers of ‘Kumiko the Treasure Hunter,’ a deeply harrowing adventure based on an urban legend linked to the other brothers’ movie classic, ‘Fargo.’ Coens. The seventies style prevails, with a grainy image and long zooms as if inspired. Robert AltmanThe Safdies have a clear influence on his work. With this musical episode production Oneohtrix Never Point and original compositions of avant-garde jazz masters John Medeski. No, there is nothing like it on the SkyShowtime menu or in the audiovisual landscape in general.