The Curse Episode 1 Review: Most Provocative and Polarizing Television Products Of The Year
Cast: Emma Stone, Nathan Fielder, Benny Safdie
Director: Nathan Fielder
Streaming Platform: Showtime
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4/5 (four stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
The Curse premiered at the New York Film Festival and was enthusiastically received now available to stream on Showtime. There were many expectations overseas for this creature that bears the signature of both A24 and modern indie gurus such as Benny Safdie and Nathan Fielder. The Curse, which also features a very good Emma Stone, is a deliberately cringe-like concentration on the concept of embarrassment and hypocrisy, of insensitivity and the pain of living, where in the end no one is innocent, completely guilty, or immune. The first episodes of this corrosive miniseries were presented with excellent success among the public and industry critics at the New York Film Festival, but now The Curse is preparing to dominate the end-of-year streaming offering by debuting on Showtime, on Friday 10 November.
Produced by A24 Television and distributed in the USA by Showtime, the series created in tandem by the American comedian Nathan Fielder and the actor and director Benny Safdie is a caustic social commentary that touches many exposed nerves of Western contemporary life, including all its contradictions. In our review of The Curse, we will delve into the contents and themes that this provocative series puts forward, starting first of all with its excellent performers, including (in addition to the two showrunners Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie) the Oscar-winning actress Emma Stone, in her second participation in a TV series since the little-appreciated Maniac on Netflix.
The Curse Episode 1 Review: The Story Plot
The Curse features a young couple, Asher (Nathan Fielder) and Whitney Siegel (Emma Stone). The two are the classic thirty-year-olds full of ambitions and frustrations, who have decided to make a name for themselves thanks to a housing development project in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in an area populated by minorities and natives. They agreed with the director Dougie (Benny Safdie) to create a sort of documentary that can attest to the goodness and above all the great innovation connected to their project, which aims to renovate and revolutionize the disused homes in the area and convert them into technological homes and above all ecological.
Convinced almost obsessively of the goodness of the idea, the two spouses hope to become the next phenomenon of HGTV programs. For those who are uninitiated, it is a television channel (incredibly popular in the United States) with programs of various and wide nature at the center of which there is the design, revaluation, construction, renovation, and of course sale of houses and buildings, in short, everything which has to do with the real estate market for the general public. Both in front of the cameras of local journalists, they continue to insist on the profound link of his vision with that of personalities of the caliber of Aitken or Heiser, combined with a new idea of sustainability as a product of a local economy.
So far it seems like a sort of adventure of liberal yuppies 2.0, but what Safdie and Fielder (co-authors and co-directors together with David Zellner) give us is different. Halfway between mockumentary, grotesque comedy, and couple drama, The Curse very quickly becomes a sort of odyssey that has at its center the concept of embarrassment, inadequacy, insecurity, and of course lies. None of the protagonists are immune to the judgment of the spectator who finds himself dealing with a schizophrenic, battered, neurotic human nature struggling with immaturity, the inability to overcome one’s fears and traumas, but above all to speak oneself and tell the truth. The whole becomes, as in the most classic of indie products, a sort of deconstruction of American society.
The Curse Episode 1 Review and Analysis
The Curse has its ace above all in the couple formed by Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone. From the beginning, they do not skimp on neurosis and mediocrity. He is full of complexes due to a tiny penis, he is the symbol of the crisis of the modern male. She seeks success and consensus in every way from anyone who can be useful to the realization of her project. The Curse is armed with strong, embarrassing scenes, a portrait of a thirty-year-old bourgeois couple who overestimate themselves and feel they are destined for a sort of indefinite greatness, as is the director Dougie, repressed, suffering from narcissism and delusions of protagonism. A reasoning about modern media narration is revealed, the inability to have a truth, which is realized in some hilarious and even embarrassing scenes, between false alms, false tears, curses, robberies, an unhealthy sexual life, and the concept of image that ultimately end completely distorts that of identity.
There is no denying that the whole thing can only be consistent with what Safdie has already done with his brother Josh, in absolute cult films of American independent cinema such as Good Time, Diamonds Rough, and Heaven Knows What. There remains the same desire to portray the worst of who we are, in total antithesis to the enthusiasm, the optimism of this millennial generation which, it is evident, has a much more cynical, desolate, but not therefore moralistic, idea. The Curse will certainly be a surprise for the Italian public, obviously excluding the director’s fans, since you can never understand where the joke is and where the drama begins. The reality is that this miniseries is a perfect mix of both things, it points straight towards our everyday life, towards universal sensations and emotions, everyday life with all due respect to the American dream.
No one is spared, neither the paternalistic white middle class nor the natives with their falsely authentic identity, modern art, the world of design, and above all the media that falsify everything. The final sensation is that of being faced with a sort of veil that is lifted on the universality of human mediocrity, of couple relationships, on the lies with which we try to fuel our internal engine, without knowing where we are going. The whole meaning of this curious television black comedy can be contained in the very first scenes of episode 1: the couple formed by Asher and Whitney Siegel is preparing to record an episode of their reality show “Flipanthropy”, aimed at the renovation and construction of housing entirely eco-friendly within the suburbs of Española, New Mexico. A satellite neighborhood that for decades has had a difficult history of poverty and economic difficulties, inhabited mainly by citizens from Central and South America.
One of these ecological accommodations is made of shiny and reflective external panels, which irremediably distort their shape when close to objects or people. A distortion of forms, things, objects, and people that reflects (here both on a literal level and a more hyper-stratified reading of Fielder and Safdie’s product), the contradictory nature of the vision of the world of the protagonist couple of The Curse. Two young people with high hopes moved for a year, desperately looking for a pregnancy and television faces of a reality show that cares about the economic and working difficulties of the less well-off inhabitants of the suburbs. But do they care about them or do their gestures, their projects to build and renovate dilapidated housing into state-of-the-art and carbon-free homes hide something more sinister behind it? In reality, none of this, nor does the series on Showtime dare to pyrolytically mix too many tones and narrative languages, yet The Curse, starting from its ambiguous title, seems to want to tell much more behind the veiled blanket of caustic irony.
Ultimately, the troubled and grotesque story of Asher and Whitney is that of a universalized attempt by white ethnic culture and society to appropriate cultures, customs, and traditions that are not their own. Favoring a process of agglomeration that from the phenomenon of Western globalization par excellence is moving dangerously more and more towards the dangers inherent in today’s gentrification and class struggle. A social disparity that The Curse emphasizes in the ethical and moral ambiguity of its protagonists; firmly convinced that they are doing good for the inhabitants of Española and giving a second chance at life to citizens in poverty and of an ethnic and cultural background different from their own, Whitney and Asher irresponsibly fall into the fatal vortex of the perverse game to which they choose unknowingly participating in their distorted reality show.
By giving the viewer false stories of poverty and redemption on the small screen at home, instead subtly celebrates the gray moral areas of a white culture which would even stage a false gesture of economic generosity towards a little girl of color to save its reputation and clear your conscience of guilt. A “white guilt” in the series created by Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie takes the form of a story with grotesque and uncomfortable tones, always in a conscientious balance between an ironic and layered tragicomedy and the narration of a mysterious curse to be dissolved which will bring about the destinies of the two young protagonists to intertwine in the dangerous fabric of the limits and contradictions inherent in the morality of Western society.
A television series on multiple levels of reading and analysis that even leaves room for the class struggle and the returning racism that has long given color and characterizes the white guilt towards different yet close populations and ethnic groups. It is a pure and fortuitous coincidence that The Curse is debuting on TV at the same time as Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon is being released in theaters around the world. Which, despite a format, tones, and artistic ambitions at odds with those of Fielder and Safdie, seems to want to speak to the current viewer of a society, the American one of yesterday and today, in which the processes of racism, oppression, guilt, and (false?) atonement towards the victims are the controversial founding bricks.
The Curse Episode 1 Review: The Last Words
The comedy series created by Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie is among the most provocative and polarizing television products of the year. Between the suggestions of Sam Raimi’s Drag Me To Hell and Nightcrawler with Jake Gyllenhaal, The Curse is a perfect social commentary on Western gentrification and the pseudo-liberal values on which it is based. With an always excellent Emma Stone. The Curse is a well-made and thought-provoking series that is worth watching for those who appreciate dark comedy and unconventional storytelling. However, the show’s darkness and bleak outlook may be too much for some viewers.
The Curse Episode 1 Review: Most Provocative and Polarizing Television Products Of The Year - Filmyhype
Director: Nathan Fielder
Date Created: 2023-11-10 19:27
4
Pros
- Sharp writing: The show's dialogue is sharp and witty, and the writers do a great job of creating a sense of unease and suspense.
- Performances: The performances are all excellent, with standouts from Emma Stone, Nathan Fielder, and Benny Safdie.
- Unique blend of humor and horror: The show is darkly comedic, but it also has some genuinely scary moments.
- Thought-provoking themes: The show explores themes of guilt, redemption, and the consequences of our actions.
Cons
- Darkness: The show is very dark and bleak, and some viewers may find it too much to handle.
- Bleak outlook: The show does not offer much hope or optimism, and some viewers may find this off-putting.
