Nirvanna the Band and the pleasure of trying
What stayed with me was not success, but the strange dignity of people who keep making a plan anyway.
What I liked about Nirvanna the Band was the texture of trying. The characters are ridiculous, but not because they want too much. They are ridiculous because they keep turning wanting into a plan, and a plan into another failure, and failure into the next performance.
That rhythm feels close to research, or maybe to being young in general. You prepare a stage that may not open. You rehearse a story that may not land. Still, the attempt itself leaves a trace. It makes a life slightly more authored than it would have been otherwise.
I think I am drawn to works that do not mock failure from far away. They stay close enough to show that foolishness and sincerity often share the same body.
Trying can be comic, but it is also one of the few ways a life becomes authored.
Tags: film, comedy, trying