If the cinetrix was asked to write an essay on how she spent her winter vacation, she might have to make like some precocious Montessori student/Brown undergrad and silkscreen a tour tee chronicling all the roofs under which she spent at least one night instead. We're talking nine over the course of 18 days, people.
Worse still, to her chagrin the cinetrix realized she spent the longest consecutive stretch of the tour at the annual lit geek confab in DC. [Yeah, we saw Gayatri Spivak eating French fries*--jealous?] The upside, as always, was drinking with old friends and new and trolling the book exhibit. Not only did I reconnect with a fellow former punk rock aerobicizer amid the scholarly tomes, I scored, courtesy of the Penguin people, passes to see Michael Winterbottom's latest: Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story. That's right, distributor Picturehouse felt a random buncha English profs was the advance audience to see its adaptation of Laurence Sterne's unfilmable, po-mo before there was even a mo novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.
The gamble paid off. A respectably crowd of people passed up cash bars and awkward schmoozing and braved the Metro four stops to a mall. [It will surprise no one to learn that it is easy to spot academics in a mall.] The screen was vast and the seats were comfy. The house fell blissfully dark and a million coproduction ["coooooooproduction"?] credits scrolled across the screen, so many it was funny.
But I am getting ahead of myself. I suppose before I actually deal with the film, I should cop to never reading the book, although I mean to now. As a callow youth, the cinetrix had a hard time taking any literature courses before the 20th C, unless they dealt exclusively with Milton or Shakespeare. How I missed Sterne again in grad school is anyone's guess.
Anyhow, where were we? Tristram is not yet born and the film's about to begin. As you may already know, the excellent, vain Steve Coogan plays Tristram Shandy, also Shandy's father, and, well, "Steve Coogan." Director Winterbottom cleverly deploys "Steve," complete with reel- and real-life baggage, in a film within the film. Well, it's not much of a film, actually. More of a making-of, really. Characters get dropped and added, depending on the financing. The battle scene looks like shit, and someone's had the bright idea of having Steve deliver his dialogue while suspended upside down, naked, in an enormous womb [which can be glimpsed here]. To top things off, Nino Rota's circus soundtrack for Otto e Mezzo slips in whenever the chaos ratchets up a notch.
Jockeying with Steve and "Steve" for a starring role in this cinematic Tristrapaedia is Rob Brydon, as, of course, "Rob Brydon" but also as Uncle Toby of the damaged goods. Whose boots are taller, whose teeth are whiter, whose Pacino is better--these two will squabble over anything. Off screen, they vie for the favors of two Jennies, naturally--earnest cineaste PA Jennie [the gorgeous Naomie Harris] and the yummy mummy of Steve's child, girlfriend Jenny [the equally delectable Kelly Macdonald]--while Shirley Henderson/Susannah cracks wise on and off the set. The Widow Wadman shows up in the person of Gillian Anderson, there are split screens and sex scenes and Stephen Fry, and even--Alas, poor Yorick!--the black page. Got it so far?
But to deliver a summary or an assessment of the film seems beside the point. Hell, everything about the book and the film is precisely beside the point. The official site has the right idea: imagine toggling back and forth between several open browser windows, a QuickTime movie, and whatever you're supposed to be working on while listening to iTunes, talking on your cell, and flirting with a cube mate, and you'll have a sense of how the movie works. A Cock and Bull Story is wild, wooly, clock-winding nonsense of the highest order, and perhaps the first film that will ever profit from being watched on DVD rather in the theatre--just imagine all the digressive extras!
*To be sung to the tune of "I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus."
