A Cock and Bull Story
A Cock & Bull Story is not an adaptation of Tristram Shandy, in much the same way that Adaptation was not an adaptation of The Orchid Thief. This is worth stressing, because they're calling the film Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story in the US. Presumably that's because nobody in America knows what "A cock and bull story" means, but it might give the impression that it's actually a film version of the novel. And it isn't.
Tristram Shandy is a notoriously unfilmable novel published in nine infurating volumes between 1759 and 1767. Basically, the title character attempts to relate his autobiography, but keeps getting caught up in digressions and never gets round to it. For nine volumes. Although it's now seen as dazzlingly ahead of its time, it was actually very popular in its day, because it's also funny. Of course, readers at the time had the advantage that they too were from the mid-eighteenth century, and didn't have to wade through historical prose to get to the nob gags.
Regardless, the point is that Tristram Shandy is the classic unadapatable novel. A central point of the book is that Tristram just can't find a way of hammering his life into any kind of proper structure, and ends up jumping all over the place in crazily non-linear fashion. The plot is, intentionally, too complicated to properly cover in nine volumes of prose. A ninety minute film, then, ought to be doubly screwed, because even the novel itself is still far too convoluted to reduce to a coherent narrative. And, indeed, in amongst all the flashbacks and flash forwards, we only really get as far as the title character's birth.
After an opening twenty minutes of relatively straight adaptation, the film departs from the book entirely. The rest of the running time is a film about the making of the film. Steve Coogan plays himself playing Tristram Shandy, while Rob Brydon plays himself playing Tristram's uncle Toby. The whole thing swiftly implodes into postmodern chaos when director Michael Winterbottom brings us a scene where Coogan, playing himself, gives a publicity interview to Tony Wilson, playing himself here, but whom Coogan previously played in 24 Hour Party People, also directed by Michael Winterbottom. Then the scene is cut off by a voiceover informing us that the whole interview, along with other exciting extended scenes, will be on the DVD.
There is, however, a plot of sorts. Coogan is fed up with the fact that everyone still associates him with Alan Partridge, years after he stopped doing the character. He's making the film as an obvious bid for credibility, but hasn't actually read the book. Consequently, he's deeply alarmed and threatened to find out that all the most film-friendly bits of the story are about Uncle Toby, and as the script continues to go through rewrites, Rob Brydon is pushing him out of his own star vehicle. Not only that, to raise the money for Rob's battle scene, they end up bringing in a "real star" - and it turns out Coogan is further down the pecking order than Gillian Anderson.
All this is intermittently very funny. Coogan's passive-aggressive paranoia is nicely pitched, and Mark Williams has a great cameo as the man from the historical re-enactment society who gets unduly worked up about minor costume details. Brydon is wonderful as Coogan's infuriatingly charming nemesis, and has a gloriously awful love scene with Anderson (which he plays in the style of Roger Moore). On the other hand, it seems to lose track of the book entirely, and frequently ends up wheeling out a minor character to expound on the significance of scenes which should or should not be included.
Critics love this film. This is understandable. Not only is it different, and arguably experimental, but it's about films. It's exactly the sort of thing film critics love. The breathless adulation of Mark Kermode and his ilk has to be read in that context. It's good, but it's not fantastic. And Adaptation did much the same thing rather more effectively, by remembering to include an ending, even if it was a deliberately awful one.
Tristram Shandy is a notoriously unfilmable novel published in nine infurating volumes between 1759 and 1767. Basically, the title character attempts to relate his autobiography, but keeps getting caught up in digressions and never gets round to it. For nine volumes. Although it's now seen as dazzlingly ahead of its time, it was actually very popular in its day, because it's also funny. Of course, readers at the time had the advantage that they too were from the mid-eighteenth century, and didn't have to wade through historical prose to get to the nob gags.
Regardless, the point is that Tristram Shandy is the classic unadapatable novel. A central point of the book is that Tristram just can't find a way of hammering his life into any kind of proper structure, and ends up jumping all over the place in crazily non-linear fashion. The plot is, intentionally, too complicated to properly cover in nine volumes of prose. A ninety minute film, then, ought to be doubly screwed, because even the novel itself is still far too convoluted to reduce to a coherent narrative. And, indeed, in amongst all the flashbacks and flash forwards, we only really get as far as the title character's birth.
After an opening twenty minutes of relatively straight adaptation, the film departs from the book entirely. The rest of the running time is a film about the making of the film. Steve Coogan plays himself playing Tristram Shandy, while Rob Brydon plays himself playing Tristram's uncle Toby. The whole thing swiftly implodes into postmodern chaos when director Michael Winterbottom brings us a scene where Coogan, playing himself, gives a publicity interview to Tony Wilson, playing himself here, but whom Coogan previously played in 24 Hour Party People, also directed by Michael Winterbottom. Then the scene is cut off by a voiceover informing us that the whole interview, along with other exciting extended scenes, will be on the DVD.
There is, however, a plot of sorts. Coogan is fed up with the fact that everyone still associates him with Alan Partridge, years after he stopped doing the character. He's making the film as an obvious bid for credibility, but hasn't actually read the book. Consequently, he's deeply alarmed and threatened to find out that all the most film-friendly bits of the story are about Uncle Toby, and as the script continues to go through rewrites, Rob Brydon is pushing him out of his own star vehicle. Not only that, to raise the money for Rob's battle scene, they end up bringing in a "real star" - and it turns out Coogan is further down the pecking order than Gillian Anderson.
All this is intermittently very funny. Coogan's passive-aggressive paranoia is nicely pitched, and Mark Williams has a great cameo as the man from the historical re-enactment society who gets unduly worked up about minor costume details. Brydon is wonderful as Coogan's infuriatingly charming nemesis, and has a gloriously awful love scene with Anderson (which he plays in the style of Roger Moore). On the other hand, it seems to lose track of the book entirely, and frequently ends up wheeling out a minor character to expound on the significance of scenes which should or should not be included.
Critics love this film. This is understandable. Not only is it different, and arguably experimental, but it's about films. It's exactly the sort of thing film critics love. The breathless adulation of Mark Kermode and his ilk has to be read in that context. It's good, but it's not fantastic. And Adaptation did much the same thing rather more effectively, by remembering to include an ending, even if it was a deliberately awful one.
posted by Paul O'Brien at 10:29 pm
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