After a lengthy and successful film festival run, plus a series of roadshow-style screenings paired with an excellent assortment of short films, Adrian Anderson and Patrick Gray’s Pomp & Circumstance (2023) returns to the Roxy Cinema tonight alongside Michael Bernieri’s short film Bronze Dog (2025). Depicting a relatable struggle with “the ennui of the college experience,” as Anderson puts it, I believe Pomp & Circumstance deserves to be mentioned as one of the funniest and most ambitious indie comedy feature debuts in recent memory.
Charlie (Sociology BS), Marie (Filmmaking BFA), and Thomas (Literature BA) are three lost undergrad students prepping and pining for their impending college graduation. Other characters in this academic satire include their Prof. James Cherry (adjunct), who is running a bizarre campaign for Mayor of Burlington, and a local Elvis “tribute artist” preparing his routine. Sections following our three main characters are interspersed with vignettes showing us their friends, neighbors, and “assignments.” All of this is accompanied by a great score from Jake McKelvie.
Cinematographer Dillon Toole captures the students’ meandering lives on gorgeous 16mm, with an occasional homage to ‘60s underground films. The dialogue references Whit Stillman and Hal Hartley, with stream-of-consciousness rants and overlapping character dialogue that constantly abandons each joke in favor of the next one. At times, the film feels like a crystallized version of someone’s early 20’s college neuroses. Pomp & Circumstance is irreverent but innovative, and while the onslaught of references packed into the film’s 66-minute runtime might seem disorderly at first, it becomes twice as impressive that it remains funny throughout such a lean runtime.
The film’s co-directors, Anderson and Gray, obviously made this with love, and such is evident in their treatment of characters. After meeting at Emerson, the two directors bonded over indie comedies and TV series like Stella and Mr. Show, as well as the early films of Brian DePalma. Soon after, they developed a script containing an endless stream of literary references, jokes, and undergrad malaise. Pomp & Circumstance was practically created to be seen with friends in a theater, and its endearing nature is rewarding in both scope and farce.
Pomp and Circumstance screens tonight, September 30, at the Roxy. Director Adrian Anderson will be in attendance for a Q&A.
