PAGE 18 • GO! MAGAZINE
Thursday, June 10, 2021 • The BuLLeTIn
MOVIES & SHOWTIMES
bendbulletin.com/gowatch
‘Bo Burnham: Inside’ satirizes modern life
BY MAKENZIE WHITTLE • The Bulletin
E
very creative person would probably like to think that they could have made “Bo Burnham: Inside,” but they’d be wrong. What Burnham has done
with his latest special is manage to feel incredibly personal and at the same time universal while making us laugh and sometimes cry a little. Normally, I
wouldn’t review a comedy special as comedy is incredibly subjective, but this isn’t your typical stand-up special. It’s performance art and comedy and social
commentary and a musical and an existential crisis happening in front of your eyes.
Filmed entirely on Burnham’s own, in
what looks like his guest house or some
other kind of ADU, he takes the audience
who, like himself, like everyone, has been
stuck inside for a year for quarantine. Us-
ing his signature musical-comedy style and
irreverent observational humor, Burnham
starts out wondering “Should I be joking at
a time like this?” as he lists all the things that
are wrong with the world.
Yes, he ultimately decides that “Healing
the world with comedy” is just what a priv-
ileged white guy should be doing right now.
And with satire and pathos, we’re off as
Burnham reveals through vignettes what we
all need to see and hear, that we’re not really
alone in this.
The comedian takes on capitalism, white
Bo
Burnham
performs
in a scene
from “Bo
Burnham:
Inside”
(2021).
Netflix
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women on Instagram, labor, technology,
distance relationships that all have his sig-
nature stylings and he mixes the ha has with
some brief moments of depth that come at
you from out of nowhere and quickly build
to that mix of laughing through gritted teeth
or welled up eyes.
Aside from the content, which is bril-
liantly written, the actual process of creating
the special all alone is pretty fantastic. Burn-
ham utilizes cinematic lighting and camera
work that is impressive on its own and then
occasionally giving us a peek behind the
curtain to the tedious and frustrating world
of editing and what piercing together art re-
ally feels like.
It is just a pretty piece of film to look at
too, seeing Burnham turn from a slightly
shaggy guy in quarantine to completely di-
sheveled and sweaty kind of tortured artist
with a light show at his fingertips.
Anyone who has ever created anything
will feel for Burnham as he tells his audience
that he simply won’t ever finish this so no
one will ever see it and the hair pulling and
cursing that goes along with trying some-
thing.
The whole special builds from something
More Information
“Bo Burnham: Inside”
87 minutes
TV-MA
typical of what you may see a comedian or
sketch artist do on something like TikTok
or YouTube and transforms into something
more profound than that. Blending the lit-
eral and figurative light and darkness of the
world we live in offers a unique catharsis not
often seen in comedy specials.
“Inside” comes at the perfect moment
where we’re all so tired and fed up with be-
ing shut away and are just beginning to see
the glimmers of light beyond the door. By
the end, Burnham gives us through his own
brand of storytelling and comedy an odd
sense of peace. And the notion that you may
need to rethink your Instagram posts.
e
Reporter: 541-383-0304, mwhittle@bendbulletin.com