Beckett on Film

[Johann]

What Where


DVD synopsis: Four characters- three of which are played by Gary Lewis- appear at intervals, repeating the same questions and actions. Interrogation and torture are the main features of the action, leaving us with an image of a brutal and changeless world where each in his turn will be interrogator and interrogated.


This is the Kubrickian/Orwellian film.
Sheer brilliance by director Damien O'Donnell (I'm assuming he's Irish). This was Beckett's last piece written for the theatre (in French originally) performed in English in June, 1983 in New York City. This awesomely compelling short is a great tribute to Beckett and one of my faves from the set. Published in 1984, Beckett said of his last work:
I don't know what it means. Don't ask me what it means. It's an object.

The text is repeated over and over by the characters, of which 3 are indeed played by one man. One of the other two is dressed like Vallorum (Terence Stamp- Star Wars: Episode I) and acts like Big Brother.

Some of the dialogue:
We are the last 5. In the present. It is spring. Time passes. Not good. I switch off. I start again. First without words. I switch on. Good. I am alone. He didn't say anything. no. You gave him the works? Yes. And he didn't say anything. no. He wept? Yes. Screamed? yes. Begged for mercy? Yes. But didn't say it. no. It's a lie. He said it to ya. Confess he said it to ya.

Wild writer, that Beckett, huh?

One of the best in the set.

[Johann]

Come and Go

DVD Synopsis: Three women meet in a softly lit place calling to mind the witches in Shakespeare's MacBeth. Seated on a bench facing the audience they reminisce about old school days. Each woman leaves the stage briefly and in her absence the other two disclose an apalling secret about the third. The three hold hands at the end signalling a delicate solidarity in the face of adversity.



Another of my faves (probably top 3 of the set)
this is a gem. Haunting- DEEPLY DEEPLY Haunting.
3 elderly ladies (Rue, Vy, Flo) wearing similar except for color clothing (Green, Red, Purple) sit on a bench staring straight ahead. The dialogue is rationed (one of the special works in Beckett's canon: rarely performed, at only 121 words total), rationed so as to have the play go on in your head without any need for further info or words. Proof of Beckett's genius is this bizarro, strangely and profoundly moving film, an 8 minute marvel, filmed in December 2000 at Ardmore Studios Ireland.

In the commentary by director John Crowley, he explains why I love this set of films. As you see more and more of them it becomes clear what a singular genius Samuel Beckett is.
There is a unity of authorhip to these films even with 19 separate people interpreting.

[Johann]

Happy Days

DVD Synopsis:
Considered Beckett's most cheerful piece, Happy Days features a middle-aged couple with the woman ("Winnie") increasingly buried in a mound of sand. Winnie is the opposite of all those chronic complainers on whom Beckett elsewhere lavishes so much sympathy. Oblivious to her encroaching end, Winnie is willing to proclaim the vacuum of her life "another happy day".


This one was torture.
Hard for me to sit through.
But sit through it I did, all 80 minutes of it.
Originally a "female solo" play, this is a warped one. But I still think about it sometimes, so I don't know...

It opens with a school bell ringing, waking up Winnie, a mature lady who I just wished would've done the role topless- it would have been so compelling! Imagine this role with Winnie topless- see? Much better film.

It bored the hell out of me.
Torture. Sheer torture. But the images were fine, and the shots were excellent. Director Patricia Rozema made a great film, I just can't imagine ever watching it again.
I got the point with one viewing.

[Johann]

Act Without Words I

DVD Synopsis:
One of Beckett's most powerful plays is in fact a mime. A man sits in a desert and struggles to reach a flask of water and other objects symbolizing relief or escape, which remain stubbornly out of reach. Yet despite his continual disappointment, he does not give up. The man learns through frustrating repetitive experience that there's "nothing to be done".


Another weaker film in the box, this 16-minute "mime" bored me. I thought the actor was over-acting. But Beckett's message is quite clear by the end. Written in 1956, first performed in English in 1957, London- originally written in French. Filmed in April 2000 on what looks like a SNL skit set.

[Johann]

Footfalls


DVD Synopsis:
The play- in four scenes- dramatises a slow fade to impalpability. Pacing repetitively, a daughter (May) tends to her sick mother. The burden of caring, the love that sustains that burden, and what love costs is captured in May's footfalls.

This one is a contender for my fave of the set too.


Rich Gothic Poetry is what it is.
Haunting is a word that comes immediately to mind, this film will linger in your psyche.
The synopsis doesn't really do it justice.
Susan Fitzgerald gives a performance you'll not soon forget. Her face is so perfect for how they lit this dark dark hevay heavy film. She is a wonderful actress. What can I say, Footfalls is almost impossible to describe. Watch and be moved in a very profound way.

Directed by Walter Asmus, 28 minutes.

[Johann]

Rough For Theatre II

DVD Synopsis:
This piece features three characters, two men A and B who try to assess the life of C who is standing motionless, back to the audience and ready to jump out the window. Here, Beckett indicts written language as inadequate to the task of describing or valuing human experience in meaningful terms.



Another fave, this is beautiful, gorgeous filmmaking and you gotta think that even Beckett himself must like this one.

Poetry. Crisp, perfectly lit black and white contrasts, a sky scape that represents "nuclear combustion", awesome dialogues, what better Beckett film?
I love it- just some snippets from it:


I picked up the wrinkle in the band of hope

It's heavy going, but we're nearly home.
Let him jump. Our Lady of Sucker. FULL MOON>

[Johann]

Breath

DVD Synopsis:
the most compressed of Beckett's dramatic work, lasting less than a minute. On a set full of rubbish, a person cries out and breathes in again. Life is reduced to a brief interlude of dim light between two cries and two darknesses; symbolizing birth and death


Written in 1966 and first performed in New York, 1969 this *very* short film is haunting, disturbing.

It opens with someone breathing, with great difficulty. (voice: Keith Allen)

A large pile of refuse that includes old computer parts, hospital items like syringes, trays, carts, papers, empty prescription bottles, latex gloves, blue garbage bags, boxes.
The last image I caught before the fade to black was an ashtray, with used cigarette butts shaped to form a swastika in it.

An attack on tobacco? Breathing? Hospitals?

Given that the intro is almost 8 seconds before hearing or seeing anything, and that the fade to black actually comes at 45 seconds, this "film" is only 37 seconds long.

Damien Hirst: Director.
filmed in Ireland, February 2000

[Johann]

Just some random lines now from the pen of Samuel Beckett

A face appeared
The blue sky
As far as I could see; the wheat turning yellow
No looks. Gazing at the wheat.

All still

Not a soul abroad, no sound.

Like an axel free

Forgetting it all
This dust- this whole place suddenly full of dust
Come and gone.
Something like that.

The stone and the son
Not a wire to be seen
that time you went back
someone's folly
Not a living soul in the place
Not a sound to be heard
Not a sound, not a word
The dead rat looked like
Only one thought in your head
Not knowing who you are from Adam
Always stuck still
gave it up
The child and the stone
Forgetting it all
The library

Just a murmur

Just the leaves and ears

Till you hoisted your head



Prince or Princess of theBLOOD

[Johann]

Play

DVD Synopsis: Three urns stand on the stage. From each, a head protrudes-a man and two women. The film tells the story of a love triangle. Each head held fast in it's urn is provoked into speech by an inquistitorial camera. The musicality of the play is a measure of the camera's dehumanisation of the characters in the urns.


This film might be called by some the best of the whole set, simply because of how awesomely cinematic Anthony Minghella made it.

It annoyed me slightly, primarily because the line delivery is so damn fast you can't catch what is being said. The actors speed thru the text at a rate that you can't even get a fix on one line.

Alan Rickman is head 1, the "man", done up in heavy makeup and prosthetics. Kristen Scott-Thomas plays head 2, the "wife", and Juliet Stephenson is head 3, the "mistress", and both also have heavy makeup and prosthetics.

The visuals are quite amazing for this 15 minute film of Beckett's 1962 play, first performed in German as "Spiel".
The visuals are actually high quality special effects, with Minghella creating a vast, barren, apocalyptic sea of human-sized urns with heads poking out of them, each dotting some great big valley of death.

This one was shot at Pinewood Studios, and it shows. It's got the highest production design of all 19 films.
The angst and psychosis of each "head" is on full display, with each line each head saying setting the other off. A love triangle? Try a love trap of death! Each character has got major issues. The way each head talks and stares and gives off creepy vibes is very chilling, like those people you see every now and then on the street, staring while talking to themselves, trapped in their own minds, trapped by their life experience.

This is a great one.
Anthony Minghella knows Beckett.
This film is very striking and very disturbing.
Check out those insane camera zooms onto each head's head!

[Johann]

A Piece of Monologue


DVD Synopsis:
The play- a piece of staged monologue in which the speaker tells a fragment of a story about birth and death- dramatises a successive loss of company: the story opens a window on the past, a window begrimed by the accumulation of years and the speaker's eyes turn to the viewing of the inner dark.

This one was a mini-masterpiece.

The lighting, the monologue, the whole performance by Stephen Brennan, the tone- it was the zenith of what Samuel Beckett is.
Haunting, extremely compelling. I loved it.
A great, approximately 20-minute work by director Robin Lefevre.

This performance is perfect acting, perfect line delivery with the perfect emotional weight. This character is expressing his relevatory memories, with all of their life-impacting and life-destroying implications. Riveting short film that basically stunned me as I sat in my seat.

Some words I caught: (and literally caught, on the fly):

Birth was the death of him
Stands facing wall
all day, all day and night
gropes to window
faint light in room
stand stock still staring out
nothing stirring
dwells thus
not enough will left
to move again
2 for chimney, 2 for wick
slowly the window
that first night
the room the spill the lamp
the gleam of brass gone
again and again
a cry
stifled by nasal
dark parts
once white
hair white to take fake light
nothing empty
dark night after night the same
looking West
light dying
soon none left to die
the milk-white globe
Pale globe alone in gloom
streaming umbrellas
bubbling black mud
gone
coffin on it's way

[Johann]

Act Without Words II

DVD Synopsis:
A brief mime showing two players, A and B, in two large sacks on the stage. A is "slow, awkward and absent" whereas B is "brisk, rapid, precise". What unites A and B is the equal absurdity of their lives in a vicious circle of never-ending useless activity


This one was top-shelf awesome.

The whole film is staged on a piece of celluloid, and it literally IS "Beckett on Film". Anthony Minghella used celluloid, film stock as a powerful addition to his short too I might add- probably my favorite parts of Play were the too-short cuts to slow-mo, ground-zero type holocausts of film stock- that is the zenith of cinematic manipulation and I love it whenever I see it- that's why I love Stan Brakhage so much. It's totally organic and timeless.
This "mime" is astoundingly well presented by Enda Hughes- a guy who I've never heard of but who should be a major filmmaker. He looks really young in the special features and
we aren't given any info on how he made this.
It's my kind of film. A film-film. The screen is basically a strip of celluloid, with two characters in burlap bags. A pool cue comes in from screen-left and "pokes" the character to get moving. He gets out of the bag, slow as molasses, farting around like a jackass.
Then the pool cue pokes character in Bag 2, he gets out like a spring chicken, putting on his clothes snappy, like a preening egomaniac. Then we see Beckett's point when the images morph. Perpective changes and the characters do not. Why? because they don't see the larger picture, whether they're doing what they do slowly or quickly.

Greatness- in the top 5 of the set, even without Beckett's amazing dialogue or poetry

[Johann]

Rockaby

DVD Synopsis:
An old woman (W) dressed in a black evening dress rocks herself in a rocking chair while listening to her own recorded voice. The story tells of W's seeking for another "a little like" herself, in the outside world.

Another really haunting film which the addenum states has close affinities to "Footfalls". It's like a lullaby, with an old, serious woman rocking in a rocking chair, darkly lit, in deep thought, delivering Beckett's unique language. written in 1980, this 14- minute short was filmed in June 2000, Ardmore studios Ireland

MORE
Till in the end end came
Close of a long day


The director Richard Eyre says Beckett is deeply deeply humane, that he cares about the future of people.

[Johann]

Endgame


DVD Synopsis: Endgame employs the imagery of chess, presented in the play through Clov and Hamm who are red, and Nagg and Nell who are white. The title articulates a powerful drama of waiting as reality and as a metaphor for infinity.


These synopsis' don't really give you a great idea of what you actually see with these films.
Sure, Endgame employs chess symbolism, but the dialogue is what matters here, the delivery/enunciation of words.
Those perfect, hewn words.

And when you have 2 monumental performances from Michael Gambon (as Hamm) and David Thewlis (as Clov) you have another contender for best film of the set.
ENDGAME is Beckett's favorite of his own stuff. It's certainly the most entertaining piece: I laughed more watching this than any other adaptation in the set. 4 characters only, on a very sparse set.
Hamm is seated the whole time, Clov always on the move, usually running errands for Hamm. Hamm's parents Nagg & Nell are crammed into 2 garbage cans in a corner. (Yes, you read right- 2 elderly actors almost steal the show from these veteran actors, delivering hilarious lines from Oscar the Grouch's digs)

The play seems very vacuuous, like time standing still, with egos just waiting, waiting, forever waiting. That's life. We wait. Then something happens. Then we wait some more. Something else happens, then we wait some more. That's the cycle of life.
(I was waiting for the Senators to show up to the games- they didn't)

Er, where was I?

Endgame. Genius play. Genius film, quite possibly the best of the collection.
See it and all the others and let me know what you think.
I'm curious. This set of films is extremely unique. Totally worth seeing, if only once.




IT FALLS
now cry in darkness
and now
moments for nothing
story ended
That's enough yes, truly
good.
Father?
good.
We're coming
And to end up with discard
with my compliments
SPEAK NO MORE