OKLAHOMA CITY – For many, December is a time for wall-to-wall holiday movies celebrating the season, the spirit, and all the cheer that movies can musters.
But let’s face it, not everyone is going to be feeling the spirit and not everyone wants their screens or stories stuffed like a stocking with holiday fare.
In fact, plenty of folks (this year especially) might be feeling quite a bit sharper or more pointed around year’s end, preferring something much more biting, satirical, or even downright dark.
Well, amid all the usual holiday films, Christmas classics, and guaranteed “White Christmas” screenings, OKC moviegoers will also have some seriously dark comedy selections in December, casting off expectations and lampooning politics, religion, masculinity, and society itself.
So start practicing your best “bah, humbug!” because we’re shrugging off the season and diving into these dark comedies.
‘Brazil’ – Oklahoma City Museum of Art – December 20th & 21st
Director Terry Gilliam is assuredly one of cinema’s greatest and strangest auteurs, and his 1985 dystopian sci-fi satire “Brazil” is just as assuredly his masterpiece.
While most dystopian fiction tends to center on a deadly totalitarian government or an all-powerful evil dictator, “Brazil” instead presents a dark and sardonic look at a future that feels frighteningly closer to probability, in which the world is overrun by a head-spinning, interminably convoluted bureaucracy that seems to run itself.
When a fly gets caught in a printer and misprints a single letter on an arrest warrant, hapless office drone Sam Lowry (a career-defining role for legend Jonathon Pryce) gets launched into a nightmare of forms, files, and flying fantasy, crossing paths with government lobotomizers, plastic surgeons, and an infamous anti-state terrorist/freelance plumber.
It’s anti-corporate satire at its very best – hysterical, harrowing, and deeply prescient all at once – and it might well be the single greatest cinematic statement of the hyper-capitalist takeover of the Reagan/Thatcher years.
But beneath all the disquieting, industrialized futurism and oddball, “Monty Python”-esque comedy, it’s a story about the power of dreaming in a cold, soulless world, and the danger that dreamers pose to the profits of that soullessness.
For times, tickets, and more, visit okcmoa.com.
‘The Day of the Beast’ – Oklahoma Film Exchange – December 29th
What if you had to commit as many sins as possible and completely destroy your own soul’s good standing in order to avert absolute calamity?
That’s the question posed by 1995’s “The Day of the Beast,” a Spanish-Italian film that takes that pitch-black, pure evil premise and runs it straight into the realm of screwball comedy.
Convinced that the Antichrist will be born on Christmas Eve, a Basque priest tasks himself with committing as much evil as possible to be granted access to the birthing ritual so that he can rid the world of the demon before it destroys all life.
Naturally, that means pushing people down stairs, robbing the homeless, and teaming up with record store rockers to seek out the most evil heavy metal album.
It’s goofy, ridiculous, and probably more than a little blasphemous during this holiday season, but if you want to explore the flipside of the surprisingly thoughtful and delicate religion of “Wake Up Dead Man,” look no further.
This is about as dark as dark comedy can get.
For showtimes and more information, visit oklahomafilmexchange.com.
‘Eyes Wide Shut’ – Rodeo Cinema – December 18th; Oklahoma Film Exchange – December 30th
A contender for one of the most misunderstood and unfairly disregarded films in American history, the final offering from the untouchable Stanley Kubrick is an unflinchingly tense, willfully uncomfortable psycho-sexual exploration of male insecurity.
But too many people also miss just how funny it is.
Sure, Kubrick gave the world the crashingly disturbing portraits of war, madness, and societal collapse that were “Full Metal Jacket,” “The Shining,” and “A Clockwork Orange,” but he also gave us “Dr. Strangelove,” perhaps the bleakest and most hilarious dark comedy of all-time.
But “Eyes Wide Shut” is a strange and challenging animal all its own, playing less like a biting, madcap satire and more like a literary comedy of errors by the likes of Voltaire.
At-the-time-married superstar couple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman – each at the height of their screen powers – play, of course, a married couple, Alice and Dr. Bill, brushing up against New York’s high society and watching the comforts of their relationship fray at the edges.
Following Alice’s admission of unfaithful fantasy, Bill sets out on an increasingly unsettling one-night sexual odyssey that sees his insecurities tested, his expectations broken, and his own naïve power fantasies shattered in the face of something much more dangerous and threatening than he’d ever imagined.
Through it all, Bill’s psyche is put through the wringer just as badly as Cruise’s own screen persona, as Kubrick dismantles the megastar’s carefully constructed charm so completely that the whole film might as well be a Hollywood humiliation ritual.
So yeah, that sounds like a comedy to me.
For showtimes and more information, visit rodeocinema.org and oklahomafilmexchange.com.
Catch Brett Fieldcamp’s film column weekly for information and insights into the world of film in the Oklahoma City metro and Oklahoma. | Brought to you by the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.
Brett Fieldcamp is our Arts and Entertainment Editor. He has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for 15+ years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
