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Tristram Shandy!

mrkgnao

New Member
"Director Michael Winterbottom attempts to shoot the adaptation of Laurence Sterne's essentially unfilmable novel, "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman." " (imdb.com)

:eek: Well, it's certainly brave to try... :rolleyes: And I suppose it could be done, if it's done with imagination and huge ambition? (Apparently there's loads'n'loads of play with intertextuality and meta-storytelling. There'd have to be, probably :) ) It'll be interesting to see how it turns out...


*mrkgnao*
 
I watched the movie and found it hilarious i don't think i've watched a funnier film during the last 18 months. I've never read the book so i cannot say if the scenes from it in the movie did it justice, it's really about the mishaps in filiming and ego of the two stars steve coogan and rob brydon. Now that i've typed that i regret not seeing it a second time :(
 
I loved it too, Ms. Here are some comments I posted about it on another forum.

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I thoroughly enjoyed Michael Winterbottom's adaptation of Laurence Sterne's unfilmable novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (which I once got about, ooh, 30 pages into in my younger and more vulnerable years). If you've read about the film already, or seen leads Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in their endless media appearances, then you'll not be surprised, but should still be pleased.

In the novel Tristram Shandy the eponymous narrator attempts to tell the story of his life, but keeps getting sidetracked into family history and other background details, so much so that by the end of the book he (Tristram) hasn't actually been born yet. And the film echoes this by centring on the circumstances surrounding Tristram's (Coogan's) birth, with a good deal of background on his uncle Toby (Brydon) - and of course the film never gets made in the end. Instead we are diverted into the making of the film, where Coogan and Brydon play exaggerated versions of themselves, vain and insecure about looks, height, billing and screentime, and bickering with one another brilliantly. These are the funniest scenes in the film, from the pre-titles sequence in make-up (with Brydon worrying about whether his teeth are white enough for him to be a leading man, and Coogan suggesting various Dulux-style colour chart names for them, including 'Pub Ceiling'), to the exchanges during the closing credits, where they argue over who does the best Al Pacino impression and Brydon urges Coogan to trace his bald spot with a finger so he can tell how large it's getting.

The extracts from the book are entertainingly handled too, and funny enough for humour written a quarter of a millennium ago, but the background is the real story, and even becomes quite touching in parts as Coogan battles his (real-life) womaniser image and struggles to remain faithful to his girlfriend and child.

What most disappointed me was not in the film itself but in the cinema where I watched it, where ten people (I kept count) left during the film, though admittedly ambling rather than storming. Now obviously nobody should be forced to sit through something they're not enjoying, but it's a short film, frequently funny and rather original for mainstream fare. I've never seen anyone walk out of a drearily predictable rom-com or special effects blockbuster. So why walk out of something which is genuinely interesting and different? Naturally I longed to dash out after each couple who left, and ask them, but I was too busy laughing at Steve Coogan with a hot chestnut in his pants.
 
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