THE LIVING WAKE (2007)

This absurdist comedy tells the tale of K. Roth Binew (co-writer Mike O'Connell), a self-proclaimed artist and self-proclaimed genius, as he plans the titular party for just prior to his imminent demise from a "yet to be named" disease.  His faithful manservant Mills Joaquin (Jesse Eisenberg) chauffeurs him by rickshaw around their surreal little town; the film's official description calls it a 'timeless story book universe'.  The film seems to deal solely in serious concerns that it does not take seriously, reflected by the fatuous, dandy, grandiloquent nature of the main characters, not to mention their wardrobes.  The faux-serious demeanor that K. Roth presents to almost every encounter might seem a little off putting at first, but it grows on you.  When he offers an neighbor an invitation to his party, and receives a haranguing for his trouble, he responds "That's the stuff Reggie!  First thing in the morning, I like to get empty threats from a shallow man, it gets my blood going."

His neighbor Reginald (stand up Eddie Pepitone) returns throughout K. Roth's final day to add more chapters to their long rivalry, as K. Roth attempts to set his affairs in order in addition to planning his wake.  Some last-day-on-earth tasks include getting drunk with no money, getting a library to accept some donations of completed puzzle books, procuring a prostitute with no money, touring a small farm, visiting his icy mother, wooing an old lady he's fallen in love with, getting his fortune told by a gypsy, bartering to learn the correct time, and making peace with his long-ago vanished father (Jim Gaffigan).  All these adventures take place against the backdrop of rural Maine which lends to the delightful lost-in-time feeling of the proceedings.

Quirky might be an understatement for this film, but I like a movie where someone moans of their "cursed typewriter", calls a shop clerk "liquor-smith" or tells a beautiful woman "its too bad the vagina's not more involved with death."  The self-awareness of the film also provides clever jokes like K. Roth pining for a "brief yet powerful monologue" from his father, or a few drunks suggesting that K. Roth Binew's own name might be a suitable moniker for his disease provided one says the name as fast as possible to make is sound more ghastly.  The recurring themes are appropriately absurd, with a children's book about a beloved pair of pants later paralleling a revenge scheme involving the defilement of numerous pairs of pants.

Instead of a more traditional wake, K. Roth opts for a variety show on a hastily constructed stage, with performances, reunions, farewells, continued neighbor-bickering, a viking funeral pyre, and a blow-out musical number: an inspirational, humanist sprechsang piece that celebrates life, mocks death and contains such philosophical lyrics as "If I never lived this life then it never would have been lived!"  Indeed.