Nathan Fielder’s newest television show, The Rehearsal—which was renewed for a second season at the recent close of its dizzying six-episode run on HBO—is a true comedy, in the sense that it’s really a tragedy. A deeply funny show wrapped around a startling core of sadness, The Rehearsal sets its sights on the tangled notion that the more we instrumentalize or attempt to control the world, the more the reality of that world and those in it seems to escape us. This is not a novel concern: historians and philosophers have long argued over whether reality’s recession, as the flip side of individuals’ growing alienation from lived experience, dates from the Industrial Revolution, the Reformation, or some other, earlier event. But The Rehearsal’s dizzyingly sharp take on the issue reveals…
You're reading a preview of
Cinema Scope (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 92- Fall 2022