Tristram Shandy - A Cock and Bull Story
by Michael Winterbottom
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Actor: Jeremy Northam, Patrick Wildgust, Rob Brydon, Stephen Fry, Steve CooganDirector: Michael Winterbottom
Brand: HBO Home Video
Producer: Andrew Eaton
Producer: Anita Overland
Producer: David M. Thompson
Producer: Henry Normal
Producer: Jeff Abberley
Writer: Frank Cottrell Boyce
Writer: Laurence Sterne
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 94 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-07-11
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Model: 93283
Studio: HBO Home Video
DVD Reviews of Tristram Shandy - A Cock and Bull Story
DVD Review: postmodern cinema: identity as commodity
Summary: 3 Stars
Tristram Shandy, the film, follows in a long line of films about films: Fellini's 8 1/2, Godard's Contempt, Truffaut's Day for Night, Wender's State of Things. Each of these films explores the possibility of artistic expression in a crass era when all value is compromised/determined by market pressure. Tristram Shandy, the film, is making comments about the impossibility of making an art film in a crassly commercial era when hype is valued over substance and star power and ego trump talent and integrity. Winterbottom cleverly mingles postmodern literary and cinematic techniques and concocts a postmodern blend of literature and film. The sheer ambition of the premise seems to forebode either a clever postmodern hybrid or a disaster and the film is ultimately both. Winterbottom is not only saying that the very nature of the film industry in an era of crass commercialization (and Sterne would have envisoned his own 18th cent. world to be as crassly commercial as our own) is not commensurate to art but that the market pressures of the film industry/modern world tend to make people view not only their creations but themselves as industry products or commodities.
If you are looking for something as funny as Tom Jones or Spinal Tap you might be frustrated because this film actually is a much more cerebral kind of comedy. This is one of those films where you have to think the whole time you are watching. Thats not to say that this film does not have some slapstick and vaudevillian moments because it does but that humor is contained within a much more complex film that is after much more sophisticated affects. The most immediate target is the film industry (not just Hollywood but apparently every kind of cinema, mainstream and independent) and the infantile megalomonaics who produce, direct and star in film projects which strictly speaking are all, in one way or another, either designed to make money or are just vanity projects designed to make all the megalomaniacs involved feel good about themselves. Pretty much everyone gets skewered in this film; even the young assistant/ Fassbinder fan just sounds pretensious. The question that the film seems to be asking is whether there is any such thing as art or identity that is not simply a veiled form of self-interest/self-absorption/self-promotion. Thus the film is much more cynical than the novel Tristram Shandy even though both are interested in parodying the human comedy.
Whether you think the film is an example of postmodernism or a parody of postmodernism it really doesn't matter because they both amount to the same thing (Tristram Shandy IS parody; postmodernism IS parody; you can't really parody a parody) . Ultimately very little of the book is used and the project of filming a novel as complex as Tristram Shandy is abandoned (not only because the novel is "unfilmable", but also because the cast and crew lose interest in the novel, or, never had that much interest in it in the first place-- or that is the running joke of the film anyway); what is not abandoned is the novel's self-consciousness,its fondness for digression, and its deconstruction of every certainty on which to build an artistic vision. The film version of Tristram Shandy makes a lot of the same points that Fellini, and Godard, and Truffaut and Wenders make but what is new is that it makes these points in a comedic way so even while the film is lampooning commercial art and identity its easy to just surrender to the entire enterprise's mirthful spirit and laugh away the fact that the film is not just parodying the film industry but life in the postmodern world (which can only be a kind of parody of life).
In the postmodern history virtually vanishes as the past and the present can no longer be kept separate and distinct (the historian may look into the past but all he/she sees is a version of him/herself); art and reality cannot be kept apart and so whether art mimics life or life mimics art can never really be determined (nor can it really be determined to what extent market pressures affect our perceptions and defintions of art and life, nature and reality), and no one voice or director's vision can maintain any kind of order over the chaos of the myriad voices and visions of its diverse cast and crew. Also in the postmodern the sanctity of high art is compromised by its affiliation and reliance on low art. The two categories, high and low, have never been as far apart as the highbrows would have you think. Samuel Beckett was a huge Laurel and Hardy fan, Woody Allen a Marx Brothers fan; both of these postmodernists despair over the lack of meaning in the modern world though neither ever altogether cease believing in art as a way of coping with and/or managing the anxiety and distress of trying to function in such a world. Postmodernism might not pretend to make sense of anything or even offer the hope that things can make sense but it does, on occasion, invite us to laugh at the absurdity of our predicament and thus relieve some of the tension/ambivalence/irresolvedness we feel about our lives.
There are certainly plenty of ideas at work in Tristram Shandy, but, as with all films, the real appeal lies with its "stars" and how well they bring these ideas to life (or how well they market the ideas and themselves). If you don't know who Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are its because they are British television personalities. The two work well together and when they are improvising things do get hysterical. We get a taste of this when these two are sharing scenes at the films opening and closing. One problem is that there are not very many scenes inbetween when these two are together and so many people feel that the high points of the film are the beginning and the end. This film is my first introduction to Coogan and Brydon and they are very funny in a self-deprecating and deadpan way. Coogan is a very clever guy who likes to play at being profoundly superficial. There is some comedic cleverness when watching Coogan do a mock interview as himself. He enjoys crafting personas and mocking them. But as an actor known primarily for one particular role (Andy Partridge) Steve Coogan always seems to be insecure about whether he is ever given credit for actually being Steve Coogan or whether everyone just thinks that Steve Coogan is just another fiction--a variation or derivation of his character Andy Partridge. He insists that somewhere within all of the role playing is the real Steve Coogan who is more than just an actor, but this seems to be something that he is highly defensive and insecure about and this makes for some very funny existential-postmodern comedy. Identity crisis and self-reflexivity seem to be this actor's forte and so he is the perfect actor for this postmodern film within a film. Possibly this film works better for British audiences who are more familiar with Steve Coogan's television personality but I think you can pick up on the jokes even without knowledge of who Andy Partridge is. Coogan and Brydon are parodying the art making process and they are parodying themselves as they do so. There is an infinite regression of parody with no stable or fixed center because we never know amid all of Coogan's identity shifts whether any of them represent a stable or fixed identity. And this is where the film most resembles the novel for in the novel it is debated whether there is anything like a "self" or "identity" at all, or if life is just a series of socially (and market) coerced performances.
Whether you think the film succeeds or not depends on what you are asking the film to be. I think some people see the film as a simple satire on some foolish actors; others sense that the film is trying to be more ambitious than that. I think the film can be enjoyed as simply a screwball comedy with a postmodern sensibility but it can also be viewed as a very clever look at life/art in the postmodern era.
Description of Tristram Shandy - A Cock and Bull Story
TRISTRAM SHANDY:COCK AND BULL STORY - DVD MovieMichael Winterbottom is no stranger to literary adaptation. Both Jude and The Claim were drawn from works by Thomas Hardy. Nor is the versatile filmmaker a stranger to the post-modern romp, like 24 Hour Party People. In that paean to Manchester?s music scene, Steve Coogan was Factory honcho Tony Wilson. In Winterbottom's take on Laurence Sterne's digressive The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, the prolific helmer combines literature with lunacy and brings Coogan back as the titular character--and then some. Coogan doesn?t just portray the 18th century squire, but his father Walter and insecure actor "Steve Coogan." It's a film about the making of a film, effortlessly shifting between Tristram?s tumultuous birth and his frustrated adulthood--bogged down in the writing of his life story--and between fiction and (what appears to be) fact. There are no end to the worries on and off the set: Coogan worries his heels aren't high enough, Rob Brydon worries his teeth are too yellow, and Coogan's girlfriend (Kelly Macdonald) worries she isn't seeing enough of him. It may sound like Spike Jonze?s Adaptation, but in spirit, it more closely resembles Tony Richardson?s Tom Jones. Coogan and his co-stars, particularly Naomie Harris as the ultimate film nut, Gillian Anderson as the American brought in to boost the project's profile, and Brydon as Tristram?s Uncle Toby are as game for the challenge as their fearless leader. Consequently, Tristram Shandy isn?t just one of Winterbottom?s best films--it's one of the year?s best. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
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