#inside analysis

someone pointed out that they feel kinda... guilty and nostalgic when they hear ‘goodbye’, specifically the house full of smoke bit. and while the special didn’t hit me as much as a lot of people, i felt so connected to that commenter. ‘goodbye’ is such a heartwrenching piece because it’s a reflection song. it shows you that this entire thing really has been a wave rising, and it crests and crashes back down onto him at the end. as he repeats lyrics he’s been singing to us, even if the ‘audience’ was imaginary, it emphasizes that he’s just broken and this is, ultimately, all to him. 

It feels like it has been a very long time since something has came about that has been so universally acclaimed and it has grown on me more and more since my first viewing. At the time of writing this, I have seen it four times.

It’s funny because my initial praise seemed fairly pedestrian in that I enjoyed it because it struck the comfy place between base-level silliness and excavated deeper meaning. You can still enjoy this work of art if you take it for what it is but the iceberg is there if you want to take a deep dive underwater which is precisely what you want out of any art. But there, I’ve praised INSIDE for essentially being extremely competent at visual storytelling and thematic resonance as opposed to telling what those themes and story are. How themes of living with anxiety and depression, the blurred lines between the creative self and the human underneath the skin and aspects of self-awareness.

It also couldn’t have released at a better time or in a better way. It wasn’t hastily knocked together in prime pandemic hour when every production company was scrambling for some COVID-19 related media. It isn’t really about the pandemic either and I feel like he could’ve made this whenever and it would still touch and relate to people like it has. It’s just even more relatable to a lot more people. Personally, I think it’s a bit of a mistake to put this out in cinemas because it obviously isn’t crafted for a crowd of people. I feel like being in a massive theater full of other people would detract from the claustrophobic experience of watching it.

I can go on and on about how brilliant INSIDE was at achieving all this and more but I want to talk about the infectious creativity behind Burnham’s latest song-and-dance.

The term ‘home-made’ is synonymous with low-effort. Not anymore. Sure, it’s obvious that Bo Burnham’s equipment wasn’t bought in an alleyway and that it is bound to have cost an arm and a leg. But the point is that it could’ve been made with electronic equipment that Burnham found at the back of his shed and it still would’ve went down just as well. The power was in his all in his hands to make something exceptionally good and be in complete control of the output which is an abject rarity in this world. So he made what he wanted and had to answer to nobody - on paper anyway.

As an aside, something that I found frustrating was that everyone and their dog was trying to get ahold of him for an interview about it or a podcast or whatever when, I really don’t want to know behind the scenes or the thought process. It’s not something we should want to know. It would be like asking Salvador Dali what he was thinking when he turned the urinal on it’s side and signed it with a fake name. That may sound a little pretentious but it’s true that once he tells you, some of the magic has gone. You should want the magician to baffle you.

Anyway, it’s clear Bo Burnham is writing about himself whilst simultaneously expressing a self-consciousness about how he is percieved by himself versus the perception of others. This is especially present in the reaction scene where Bo Burnham reacts to himself reacting to himself reacting to himself reacting to his song Unpaid Intern. The end result of him writing about himself is fantastically earnest and thought-provoking despite the groundwork being very small.

It’s something you appreciate as a viewer when you’re watching it because it’s not like you are being let inside someone’s thoughts and feelings, you are being let inside someone’s thoughts and feelings. He has used the concept of being by oneself to think about oneself conceptually. That is perhaps what I admire most about INSIDE because it’s a special, secret slice of Bo Burnham. Personally, I’m self-conscious that I’m scrubbing myself and who I am over everything I do when it isn’t entirely necessary or that I’m tricking myself into thinking people are interested. No-one looks at INSIDE and thinks that Burnham is being narcisstic or self-absorbant.

Of course, it isn’t a new thing that an artist has put a piece of themself into something that they’ve made but it’s rare that someone has done it this way.

Conceptually, Burnham has created something unique that does defy the laws of what movies should be. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but if you’ve ever tried to recommend this to someone else, you struggle to describe what it even is because, unlike the fucking boring Death Stranding, it actually has invented a new genre. If there is one thing I hate in craft, it’s rules. Bo has given me something to aim for in that respect.