deadpan absurdity

Films in which the comedy — and often the tragedy — emerges from a radical mismatch between the strangeness or bleakness of what happens and the flat, affectless register in which it is presented: characters absorb humiliation, coincidence, and existential absurdity with the same inexpressive equanimity, and the audience laughs precisely because no one on screen signals that anything is funny. The register requires this deadpan delivery as the film's sustained tonal mode — applied uniformly across performance, pacing, and visual framing — paired with absurdist or surreal incongruity that the film refuses to underline; occasional dry detachment or wry humor within an otherwise expressive register does not qualify. Distinct from emotionally-restrained (which withholds genuine emotional stakes in service of drama and suppressed feeling) by requiring absurdist or comic incongruity as the primary engine — the flatness is not tragic withholding but the deadpan delivery mechanism of the joke; distinct from theatrical-style (which externalizes and amplifies stylized performance) by being specifically minimalist in affect, finding its power in what is not expressed rather than what is performed.