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  • Sunday, 6 August 2006

    • Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story

      Film StarStarStar
      Dir.: Michael Winterbottom

      The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is notoriously unfilmable. It is an attempt at an autobiography that features lines to represent plot, a black page, and sufficient diversions that the book ends without getting so far as Tristram's birth, let alone death. Winterbottom's film is clearly an exploration of this thesis, that the book cannot be a movie.

      And the conclusion? Well, the movie presents the plot in a random sequence that jumps from scenes within the book, to dreams, to dressing room scenes and on-set discussions, to the personal lives of the actors. There are even radio clips of news from Iraq, reminders of other projects Winterbottom has been working on.

      One character comments in the film that the book represents a post-modern novel written before the modern novel was even invented. And this is the brilliance of the novel.

      The film leaves you slightly dissatisfied in the way that a film that discards traditional plot structures inevitably must. By incorporating a great deal of behind the scenes footage, it feels increasingly like a "making of" documentary instead of the film itself, which leads you to think you should be flicking through the extras on a DVD rather than paying $13 to sit in a theatre. But it captures the essential frustrating character of the book: the denial of plot progression, the refusal to move forward.

      Posted by Matthew at 11:24:05 AM | Permanent link | Comments (0) | Email Matthew | Movies | Back to top

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