Douglas Review (Film, 2020)
When Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette released in 2018, I named it the best film of the year. I stand by that. Gadsby’s one hour and change standup special had better writing, clearer cinematography, and a better leading performance than any other film released that year. It’s strange to call a standup special particularly cinematic, but it made sense to me with Nanette.
Douglas is a very different special in a lot of ways. For one thing, it’s not a standup special about trauma. Gadsby makes that clear in her prelude, a delightful device where she quite literally announces the exact order of her set and the intentions of key moments before beginning the actual show. This special has a much lighter tone than Nanette. It also feels more like a traditional standup special, though director Madeleine Perry keeps the focus on Gadsby with clear camera work and multiple angles.
Douglas feels like a natural extension of Hannah Gadsby’s excellent TED Talk from a few years ago. In that, she breaks down the formula of writing and performing standup comedy while writing and performing standup comedy. Nanette was championed as a deconstruction of the form of standup, but I think disruption is a better term to use after seeing Douglas.
The prelude I mentioned early is one layer of this deconstruction. It’s a theatrical conceit, that one character announcing exactly what the story will be before the story begins in earnest. The difference here is that you are watching the special to see this narrator who sets the agenda for the day then perform the entire setlist by herself onstage. She even calls out when she’s built in moments that will cause specific reactions from the audience, going so far as to spoil the surprise of an ironic moment of sincerity (complete with a big old spotlight and moody blue lighting). Gadsby does not lie; Gadsby uses the prelude as a device to set up specific callbacks, as a guide the viewer through a wider variety of material than they might expect after Nanette, and as a masterful act of misdirection.
At this point, I firmly believe that Hannah Gadsby is the best writer working in standup comedy today. Much like Diablo Cody in that indie character study form, Gadsby is a master of structure and pacing. There’s a rhythm to good standup and Gadsby knows how to manipulate it for the exact reaction she wants out of the audience. Good standups anticipate how the audience will react and use that as part of the form of their comedy. Gadsby is such a master at this that she can announce exactly what she’s doing and still have the audience reacting like they had no idea what will come next.
The substance of Douglas is a bit freer than Nanette. Ultimately, the unifying topic is Gadsby’s autism diagnosis. The various jokes and longer stories all swing back around to self reflection on how her perception of the world is influenced by the newer understanding that she is autistic. She also tackles criticism of her standup in the wake of Nanette, some very bizarre trends in High Renaissance art, and how to handle online hate.
Writing about Hannah Gadsby’s standup specials poses the same challenge as writing about someone like Maria Bamford or Tig Notaro. Gadsby has such a distinct voice and approach to comedy that going into too much detail is both a disservice to her skills as a comic and a showcase of a critics comparative inadequacies as a creative. I mean that with the highest praise you can imagine. If you enjoyed Nanette (as much as you can enjoy something so emotionally raw and upsetting by design), I encourage you to try out Douglas to see what Gadsby can do when her primary goal is to make you laugh.
Douglas is currently streaming on Netflix.
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