A Cock and Bull Story (2005)
Country: GB
Technical: col/scope 94m
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Cast: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Keeley Hawes, Shirley Henderson, Dylan Moran, Jeremy Northam, Kelly Macdonald, Stephen Fry, Ian Hart, Gillian Anderson
Synopsis:
Tristram Shandy presents the story of his life, commencing with his birth, but soon gets sidetracked into discussing his Uncle Toby and the forceps used by the doctor at his delivery. We then step back and view a film crew realizing a script based on Sterne's book, complete with behind-the-scenes griping and flirting from its star, Steve Coogan.
Review:
A perfect solution to filming the unfilmable; it keeps up the choppy, digressive, satiric tone of the novel for a time, but could not hope to continue like that for the whole running time: the film would be exhausting and too long. So turning the camera around is the obvious correlative for the self-reflexive pranks of the book. Shandy does not succeed in telling of his life and opinions; Coogan does not finish his film, at least as far as we are concerned. The tricksy approach by Winterbottom (writing in Widow Wadman because Gillian Anderson will play her and it gets them a battle scene) extends to the music, which includes Handel's Saraband (Barry Lyndon, another eighteenth century adaptation), Fellini's 8½ (another film about making a film in which the creator's own life is brought into the frame) and The Draughtsman's Contract (a film about self-reflexivity itself).
Country: GB
Technical: col/scope 94m
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Cast: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Keeley Hawes, Shirley Henderson, Dylan Moran, Jeremy Northam, Kelly Macdonald, Stephen Fry, Ian Hart, Gillian Anderson
Synopsis:
Tristram Shandy presents the story of his life, commencing with his birth, but soon gets sidetracked into discussing his Uncle Toby and the forceps used by the doctor at his delivery. We then step back and view a film crew realizing a script based on Sterne's book, complete with behind-the-scenes griping and flirting from its star, Steve Coogan.
Review:
A perfect solution to filming the unfilmable; it keeps up the choppy, digressive, satiric tone of the novel for a time, but could not hope to continue like that for the whole running time: the film would be exhausting and too long. So turning the camera around is the obvious correlative for the self-reflexive pranks of the book. Shandy does not succeed in telling of his life and opinions; Coogan does not finish his film, at least as far as we are concerned. The tricksy approach by Winterbottom (writing in Widow Wadman because Gillian Anderson will play her and it gets them a battle scene) extends to the music, which includes Handel's Saraband (Barry Lyndon, another eighteenth century adaptation), Fellini's 8½ (another film about making a film in which the creator's own life is brought into the frame) and The Draughtsman's Contract (a film about self-reflexivity itself).
Country: GB
Technical: col/scope 94m
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Cast: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Keeley Hawes, Shirley Henderson, Dylan Moran, Jeremy Northam, Kelly Macdonald, Stephen Fry, Ian Hart, Gillian Anderson
Synopsis:
Tristram Shandy presents the story of his life, commencing with his birth, but soon gets sidetracked into discussing his Uncle Toby and the forceps used by the doctor at his delivery. We then step back and view a film crew realizing a script based on Sterne's book, complete with behind-the-scenes griping and flirting from its star, Steve Coogan.
Review:
A perfect solution to filming the unfilmable; it keeps up the choppy, digressive, satiric tone of the novel for a time, but could not hope to continue like that for the whole running time: the film would be exhausting and too long. So turning the camera around is the obvious correlative for the self-reflexive pranks of the book. Shandy does not succeed in telling of his life and opinions; Coogan does not finish his film, at least as far as we are concerned. The tricksy approach by Winterbottom (writing in Widow Wadman because Gillian Anderson will play her and it gets them a battle scene) extends to the music, which includes Handel's Saraband (Barry Lyndon, another eighteenth century adaptation), Fellini's 8½ (another film about making a film in which the creator's own life is brought into the frame) and The Draughtsman's Contract (a film about self-reflexivity itself).