Returning to the cinema in 2019 after a three-year hiatus dedicated to the family, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is now also ready for TV: two decades after the end of A family of the third kind, is the creator, performer and often also the screenwriter and director of Mr. Corman. Comedy with surreal incursions, it tells the everyday life of Josh Corman, a failed musician and elementary school teacher. A project of which the author-actor says: «It is largely a series about me, or about some version of myself. When dealing with family dynamics or similar situations, a song can be the best way to express one’s mood ». In fact, an episode dedicated to Josh Corman’s relationship with his mother, played by Debra Winger, ends with a musical number, which, however, makes the lack of communication between the two even more heartbreaking.
Similarly, when a fight outside a club is depicted in a comics fashion – as if it were a cross between an episode of the TV series Batman and the movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World -, the viewer is left to dream only for a few minutes, before returning to a much harsher reality. Characterized by some sequences with backgrounds designed or made in style collage – Gordon-Levitt had already used them on the TV show HitRECord on TV -, the series boasts a cast of notable guest stars such as Juno Temple, Lucy Lawless, Shannon Woodward and Hugo Weaving, in the role of the father.
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Mr. Corman approaches the first two seasons of Master of none for the way each episode gives space to a specific relationship, all in the shadow of woke culture and social media. But unlike the Aziz Ansari series, the main theme is not the search for a partner, to which only two out of ten episodes are dedicated. Furthermore, Josh does not live in a hipster neighborhood of New York, but in the suburbs of Los Angeles, in a modest house that he shares with a friend separated from his wife and of Latin American origins. Theirs housework it is not the simplest, because Josh is perpetually dissatisfied with the failure of his musical career. Being a teacher – and therefore acting as a teacher of life – causes him a sort of impostor syndrome and the stress worsens when he realizes that he cannot communicate with his mother, that he is abandoned by his father and that his bourgeois sister does not like him.
His anxiety almost reaches panic attack, represented by a meteor approaching the earth and above all by a powerful musical chime, like a crushing clock. Then when the pandemic breaks out, including masks, compulsive hand washing, periods of self-isolation and distance learning, the series presents one of the most successful portraits seen on TV so far of the condition we have experienced in the last year. However, not everything is hopeless: the ending closes the circle by recalling thestarts of the series – where the protagonist beat a lively rhythm on his reddened chest in the shower – and lets a ray of light filter through.
Mr. Corman /Joseph Gordon-Levitt / Apple Tv