| Since the dawn of the internet age at the turn of the millennium, there have been lots of great films that have grappled—often prophetically—with the new world being made by the web. Films I’d put on this list include David Fincher’s The Social Network, Spike Jonze’s Her, Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know, and Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade. But last month a new Bo Burnham film, Inside, released on Netflix—and it might be the sharpest critique of internet-shaped life to date. We ran an excellent review of the film at TGC, written by Derek Buikema. In his review, Buikema makes apt parallels between Burnham and the Preacher from Ecclesiastes. The film is nothing if not an exhaustive search for meaning and joy in the digital age. And yet with each sketch and song, Burnham exposes the unsatisfying nature of the internet’s smorgasbord of amusements. Equal parts funny and depressing (a fitting description of one’s average day on the internet), Inside is a revealing reflection on the spiritual malaise of our cultural moment. Buikema does a great job parsing the film’s Ecclesiastes qualities, offering an exemplary theological reading of Burnham’s incisive masterpiece. |