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charloweenSo. Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story.
I laughed quite a lot. There were extremely funny moments. I'm pretty sure I liked it. If you liked The Office (the original BBC show), you'll like this movie.
Imagine, if you will, a making-of-documentary (the kind that are a dime a dozen on DVDs), but populated in part by actors playing the director, the writer, assistant, wardrobe mistress, in part by the actual crew playing themselves, and also by the actors in the film-within-a-film playing one (or two) characters in the film-within-a-film and also characters that happen to have the same name as the actors themselves.
A mocumentary, maybe. At one point, a section of the film-within-a-film turns out in fact to be a nightmare being had by "Steve Coogan", played by Steve Coogan. More than once, a shot-reverse-shot takes us seamlessly from in the film-within-a-film to the film-about-making-the-film-in-which-we're-circling. As in: Tristram Shandy being born cut to reaction shot cut to wtf there's crew in the shot, and then the director calls cut and the actors all relax and walk around. Except it's not shot in a way that would suggest that we're making the transition from fact to fiction, and there are none of the usual cues given in Making Of...s that give the audience a solid line between the fiction being filmed and those filming the fiction, which is then being filmed for nerds and geeks and fans.
But it's not one of those "Oh, how are we going to adapt this, maybe we'll just make a movie about adapting this and everyone will think we're so clever" cop-outs. It's better. So very much better. They actually spend the time to develop the characters of the assorted people making the film, and we care about them as much as if not more than the characters in the film-within-the-film.
What it boils down to is an intense 90 minutes of layers of people acting silly. It's like The Office in how it's written (to accentuate the character flaws of these 'normal' people) the comedy is found not in silly situations but in the audience recognizing the absurdity inherent in the natural behaviour of their fellow humans. Characters in this movie and The Office are caricatures or a sort, yes, but they're so subtly drawn that it's easy to mistake them for poor souls who've wandered in front of the camera and are now trapped to play their lives for an unknown audience. (The fact that one actress from The Office - the one who played the annoying pregnant woman - shows up as a costume mistress in this film only adds another layer of mind-bendy to the whole mess.)
Part of what makes the experience so intense is that after beginning of the film (the actual historical comedy part, with reflexive tricks up the wazoo) the thing shifts to follow the production over a single night. Most of what we laugh at in the first, say, 15 minutes, is a dry, dry wit, and the silliness of a goofily self-aware historical film. Then the diagesis expands and suddenly we're dealing with the mundane world of making a low-budget historical comedy. The two leads are bickering. The battle sequence needs to be reshot and the backers don't want to give them the money. The guy playing Shandy has to juggle press appearances, fallout from romps with strippers, being a new dad, being attracted to his assistant and his own ego. Everything is played COMPLETELY straight, no winking at the audience or anything.
It's exhausting to watch the behind-the-scenes chaos, to watch the Steve Coogan character be torn in all directions, to be manipulated when you're told you're being manipulated (ie. the whole holding-the-baby thing). Of course, by the time Gillian Anderson shows up it's all gone to hell. In a good way. The meta exploded all over the film and there were no survivors. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang had the courtesy to stay with just fake people talking about real narrative conventions. This thing goes deeper and hits harder and is truly unsettling for all of it.
The only thing that can ground an audience is recognizing the actors in the piece as being actors playing out their roles. The movie does it's best to confuse the boundaries between fact and fiction (by referring to Steven Coogan's other work, by having crew running around in the background, by filming everything in the same style). The only way you can stay just with the filmmakers on the big joke is by knowing that Jennie was played by Naomie Harris (from in 28 Days Later), Jenny was Kelly Macdonald (Diane in Trainspotting) and neither was caught in a love triangle with Steve Coogan, because Jennie and Jenny are characters and don't actually exist. Everyone in front of the camera is so damn talented that I had to keep reminding myself that these people are actors, damnit, and that Naomie Harris is going to be in the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie, ferchrissakes.
Some actors appear as characters in both the Tristram Shandy that the fictional crew is filming and as themselves (including zomg Dylan Moran and a blonde Gillian Anderson, who have the cutest conversation at the end of the film**), some actors only appear as the fictional crew associated with the production (Ian Hart, Jeremy Northam, and Harris and Macdonald as mentioned above). Some only show up as characters in the film's film, but Stephen Fry (bless him) plays a consultant to the production and a character in the film's film, but not himself.
And then, by the end, you're not even sure if the film-within-a-film actually was being filmed in the way it was presented to the audience. There's enough said about the fluidity of reality in the film/s that what we're shown as the Tristram Shandy movie may not actually be what the actor-characters saw during the scene where they screen their film.
And THEN, over the credits, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon sit there and talk about the film we've just seen (A Cock and Bull Story), not the film that they were making in the film. At one point, they do refer to Naomie Harris by name. But she wasn't playing herself in the movie the way they two were. Hence the head-explody. I don't have a meta-buffer big enough to handle this!
I really do want to see it again, just so I can see how all the layers do fit together. More than one character says something about the State of Humanity and/or The Human Condition and/or the Proper Way to Tell This Story and it all ties into the narrative on that other level. I know I've missed a lot. It's so twisty and good, and there are at least 12 characters that they work into phenomenally complete people, and the plot is all circular and aiiiiie. Okay. I liked it.
I'm just afraid of what the eventual/inevitable DVD release will look like. There'll be a making-of featurette and it'll just be the adaptation of the novel, whole and complete. I mean, just take a look at the movie's official site. These are the people we're dealing with! Check out the "deleted" stuff, and the "rejected" posters with all their gloriously meta taglines. "Loosely based on a real book". "Because everyone loves an accurate period piece". "It's difficult to explain". "A comedy that's completely tragic". I think I need to see 24 Hour Party People, if it's from these same scary brains.
If you wanted to knock out a roomfull of film geeks, show them this movie. Four hours later, I'm still completely incapable of making sense of the movie. Performances fantastic, writing fantastic, that entire midnight fireworks sequence... surreal, beautiful and (like everything else) so damn funny. Historical societies like the SCA behave like that! They do! There's a good 1000 pages of STUFF packed in the 90 minutes. Most films that adapt novels couldn't hope to do so well.
**Her: How many drinks do you have in a day?
Him (as Bernard, I swear): I don't know. [pause] A number.
Me: *cries as head explodes*
EDIT: Five reasons to see this movie:
1. Dylan Moran
2. "A womb with a view".
3. The firecracker sequence.
4. Meta-buffer overload (and Dylan Moran).
5. The best acting of any movie made last year.
I laughed quite a lot. There were extremely funny moments. I'm pretty sure I liked it. If you liked The Office (the original BBC show), you'll like this movie.
Imagine, if you will, a making-of-documentary (the kind that are a dime a dozen on DVDs), but populated in part by actors playing the director, the writer, assistant, wardrobe mistress, in part by the actual crew playing themselves, and also by the actors in the film-within-a-film playing one (or two) characters in the film-within-a-film and also characters that happen to have the same name as the actors themselves.
A mocumentary, maybe. At one point, a section of the film-within-a-film turns out in fact to be a nightmare being had by "Steve Coogan", played by Steve Coogan. More than once, a shot-reverse-shot takes us seamlessly from in the film-within-a-film to the film-about-making-the-film-in-which-we're-circling. As in: Tristram Shandy being born cut to reaction shot cut to wtf there's crew in the shot, and then the director calls cut and the actors all relax and walk around. Except it's not shot in a way that would suggest that we're making the transition from fact to fiction, and there are none of the usual cues given in Making Of...s that give the audience a solid line between the fiction being filmed and those filming the fiction, which is then being filmed for nerds and geeks and fans.
But it's not one of those "Oh, how are we going to adapt this, maybe we'll just make a movie about adapting this and everyone will think we're so clever" cop-outs. It's better. So very much better. They actually spend the time to develop the characters of the assorted people making the film, and we care about them as much as if not more than the characters in the film-within-the-film.
What it boils down to is an intense 90 minutes of layers of people acting silly. It's like The Office in how it's written (to accentuate the character flaws of these 'normal' people) the comedy is found not in silly situations but in the audience recognizing the absurdity inherent in the natural behaviour of their fellow humans. Characters in this movie and The Office are caricatures or a sort, yes, but they're so subtly drawn that it's easy to mistake them for poor souls who've wandered in front of the camera and are now trapped to play their lives for an unknown audience. (The fact that one actress from The Office - the one who played the annoying pregnant woman - shows up as a costume mistress in this film only adds another layer of mind-bendy to the whole mess.)
Part of what makes the experience so intense is that after beginning of the film (the actual historical comedy part, with reflexive tricks up the wazoo) the thing shifts to follow the production over a single night. Most of what we laugh at in the first, say, 15 minutes, is a dry, dry wit, and the silliness of a goofily self-aware historical film. Then the diagesis expands and suddenly we're dealing with the mundane world of making a low-budget historical comedy. The two leads are bickering. The battle sequence needs to be reshot and the backers don't want to give them the money. The guy playing Shandy has to juggle press appearances, fallout from romps with strippers, being a new dad, being attracted to his assistant and his own ego. Everything is played COMPLETELY straight, no winking at the audience or anything.
It's exhausting to watch the behind-the-scenes chaos, to watch the Steve Coogan character be torn in all directions, to be manipulated when you're told you're being manipulated (ie. the whole holding-the-baby thing). Of course, by the time Gillian Anderson shows up it's all gone to hell. In a good way. The meta exploded all over the film and there were no survivors. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang had the courtesy to stay with just fake people talking about real narrative conventions. This thing goes deeper and hits harder and is truly unsettling for all of it.
The only thing that can ground an audience is recognizing the actors in the piece as being actors playing out their roles. The movie does it's best to confuse the boundaries between fact and fiction (by referring to Steven Coogan's other work, by having crew running around in the background, by filming everything in the same style). The only way you can stay just with the filmmakers on the big joke is by knowing that Jennie was played by Naomie Harris (from in 28 Days Later), Jenny was Kelly Macdonald (Diane in Trainspotting) and neither was caught in a love triangle with Steve Coogan, because Jennie and Jenny are characters and don't actually exist. Everyone in front of the camera is so damn talented that I had to keep reminding myself that these people are actors, damnit, and that Naomie Harris is going to be in the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie, ferchrissakes.
Some actors appear as characters in both the Tristram Shandy that the fictional crew is filming and as themselves (including zomg Dylan Moran and a blonde Gillian Anderson, who have the cutest conversation at the end of the film**), some actors only appear as the fictional crew associated with the production (Ian Hart, Jeremy Northam, and Harris and Macdonald as mentioned above). Some only show up as characters in the film's film, but Stephen Fry (bless him) plays a consultant to the production and a character in the film's film, but not himself.
And then, by the end, you're not even sure if the film-within-a-film actually was being filmed in the way it was presented to the audience. There's enough said about the fluidity of reality in the film/s that what we're shown as the Tristram Shandy movie may not actually be what the actor-characters saw during the scene where they screen their film.
And THEN, over the credits, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon sit there and talk about the film we've just seen (A Cock and Bull Story), not the film that they were making in the film. At one point, they do refer to Naomie Harris by name. But she wasn't playing herself in the movie the way they two were. Hence the head-explody. I don't have a meta-buffer big enough to handle this!
I really do want to see it again, just so I can see how all the layers do fit together. More than one character says something about the State of Humanity and/or The Human Condition and/or the Proper Way to Tell This Story and it all ties into the narrative on that other level. I know I've missed a lot. It's so twisty and good, and there are at least 12 characters that they work into phenomenally complete people, and the plot is all circular and aiiiiie. Okay. I liked it.
I'm just afraid of what the eventual/inevitable DVD release will look like. There'll be a making-of featurette and it'll just be the adaptation of the novel, whole and complete. I mean, just take a look at the movie's official site. These are the people we're dealing with! Check out the "deleted" stuff, and the "rejected" posters with all their gloriously meta taglines. "Loosely based on a real book". "Because everyone loves an accurate period piece". "It's difficult to explain". "A comedy that's completely tragic". I think I need to see 24 Hour Party People, if it's from these same scary brains.
If you wanted to knock out a roomfull of film geeks, show them this movie. Four hours later, I'm still completely incapable of making sense of the movie. Performances fantastic, writing fantastic, that entire midnight fireworks sequence... surreal, beautiful and (like everything else) so damn funny. Historical societies like the SCA behave like that! They do! There's a good 1000 pages of STUFF packed in the 90 minutes. Most films that adapt novels couldn't hope to do so well.
**Her: How many drinks do you have in a day?
Him (as Bernard, I swear): I don't know. [pause] A number.
Me: *cries as head explodes*
EDIT: Five reasons to see this movie:
1. Dylan Moran
2. "A womb with a view".
3. The firecracker sequence.
4. Meta-buffer overload (and Dylan Moran).
5. The best acting of any movie made last year.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-19 03:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-19 05:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-19 05:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-19 06:00 pm (UTC)Ha, take -that- po-mo!
Date: 2006-02-19 03:25 pm (UTC)From what I know of the book, it's pretty cracktastic. At one point there an entire chapter blank and later in the book the author states "I wasn't ready to write that chapter then, but now I am!". Not to mention that the book covers his conception, time in the womb, and birth. And it at one point asks you to draw a female character enough like your mistress to be attractive, but enough like your wife so you don't get in trouble.
Re: Ha, take -that- po-mo!
Date: 2006-02-19 03:57 pm (UTC).....I still love you. >>;
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-19 05:10 pm (UTC)Sorry.
*cries for Sam*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-19 05:12 pm (UTC)*cries*
...I'll buy it off of whoever created it. ._.; I'll give them a shiny quater.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-19 05:15 pm (UTC)I mean... ME! ME! It was all ME!
*grabs quarter*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-19 05:17 pm (UTC)My quater. D: *sadness*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-19 06:01 pm (UTC)Though, I like pomo because it rhymes with more things that Post-Modern. Thinks like... snowcone. Or not. Blow. Flow. Joe. Grow. Post-Modern only rhymes with 'slobbern' and that's just wrong.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-19 05:11 pm (UTC)CRACK.
Man...I gotta read this book
Date: 2006-02-19 05:29 pm (UTC)Me too!
Date: 2006-02-19 06:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-19 04:04 pm (UTC)Not just because Scully's in it...
I mean Gillian Anderson.
I mean, I know she has a real name and isn't Scully in real life. Heh..heh...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-19 05:18 pm (UTC)And she's good in it, if a bit... scary. Blonde and scary. Slightly ditzy. UnScully. Blonde. *scares*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-19 08:02 pm (UTC)But then there was a time where I had a clip of her laughing on an mp3 cd because it made me all giggly and happy inside. But then I'm pretty sure I just told myself she was laughing because I had said something really medically witty,
'Why, I'm sure you hear this all the time but you can sure make a cadaver stiff, ahemhemhem.' or! 'Would you like me to warm your stethascope?'
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-19 10:10 pm (UTC)Aaaaah! Doctor jokes! I'd like to make Scully laugh, too. Lucky Mulder.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-19 04:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-19 05:14 pm (UTC)I'm actually glad I waited to see it, because I wouldn't have had time to process it if I'd seen it during the festival.
What'd you think of it?
"A womb with a view."
Date: 2006-02-19 09:09 pm (UTC)Some bits seemed a little "slow" to me, but I found myself laughing most of the time, so I didn't feel the need to complain.
YES. Hee!
Date: 2006-02-19 10:03 pm (UTC)Once I realized they were doing an Office thing, the slow bits weren't so bad. But there were some times I had no clue why I was laughing. Strange.