Beckett on Film

[Johann]

Krapp's Last Tape

DVD synopsis:
A 69-year old man reviews his life pondering the decisions he once made and asseses his predicament by listening to a tape recording of his 39-year old self. To the old Krapp the voice of the younger Krapp is that of a total stranger. Laughter emerges from a view of self-important pre-occupation with illusory ambitions and futile desires.

I really enjoyed this 58-minute film by the great Atom Egoyan. It's a one-man show, with the legendary John Hurt playing the crusty Krapp.

It begins with him sitting at his desk staring straight ahead, with rain pattering outside.
He eventually gets up and fishes for a banana in one of his desk drawers. He peels it and lets the peels drop to the floor. Then he puts the schlong-like banana in his maw, stroking it and letting it hang there for a moment before eating it. Odd, yes?
Then he fishes for another banana, which he finds, meanwhile slipping & falling on the peels he just dropped. He repeats his technique for eating banana: mark 2 .

He draws his blind and then digs out old reels of tape that he recorded years ago. For the better part of the film we hear his recorded voice of 30 years ago while watching and listening to his various reactions to his young voice. John Hurt has a magnificent voice and an amazing ability to get deep into character. Krapp is a drinker, an emotional man, seemingly at some vexing crossroads in his life, where you see that he still has a fire burning in him despite his jaded worldview. He still has passion, and that is why I think he's crying by the last shot.
Very slow, very contemplative, (as Beckett is the embodiment of contemplation) but very compelling. Compelling because the camera shots are simple and effective,compelling because the words powerful, and compelling because Hurt's masterful performance is remarkable. Short and awesome.

[Johann]

Catastrophe

David Mamet directed the last film John Gielgud ever appeared in, this 5 minute 22 second work about power and manipulation.

I loved it, but I'm not quite sure if I got it.
You have Harold Pinter (playwright in his own right) as some Lord of Theatre who with his alert, attentive sexy female British assistant swirl around Gielgud, who is standing on a black box on stage, mute. (his last role- mute!)
Pinter barks out all kinds of things that she takes note of in order to make the play they will put on a smashing anal retentive success.

The last shots with the spotlight on Gielgud's elderly head and glaring eyes was haunting.
I'm gonna have nightmares tonight...

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by Johann
Krapp's Last Tape
I really enjoyed this 58-minute film by the great Atom Egoyan.
What an interesting challenge for Egoyan. How does he film this play which had formative influence* on him, written by a legend, and starring a great actor who's performed it a hundred times on stage in Dublin?

*"Krapp's Last Tape had a huge effect on me as a teenager. It changed my whole view about how people react to technology, and how technology affects how we react to each other and to memory – how the way we record our past affects how we live in the present." (Egoyan)

Egoyan's direction is brilliant, adding another layer of meaning, another dimension, without being intrusive. There are three cuts in the hour-long film, so discreet as to be nearly imperceptible. During the first few minutes, which you describe so well, the camera follows Krapp about the den but Egoyan stops following when Krapp slips and falls on the peels. I took it as a gesture of respect towards the protagonist, a way of letting him keep his dignity.
Egoyan uses a number of very elegant slow pans and zooms. I loved the scene in which the camera zooms in as if wanting hear more clearly what Krapp is listening to. Then Krapp becomes perturbed by something he taped 30 years ago and brusquely stops the tape. As if embarrased, the camera stops and starts to zoom out methodically.

For the better part of the film we hear his recorded voice of 30 years ago while watching and listening to his various reactions to his young voice.

Right. There are two performances here. Hurt is can be said to be playing another character in the recording. One he describes as "that stupid bastard I took myself for 30 years ago". Krapp's 39th year clearly has special significance. It was the year of "Farewell to Love", "Mother at rest at last" and the year he believed to be "intellectually, I have every reason to suspect, at the crest of the wave, or thereabouts". Now, he has to consult the dictionary to know the meaning of a word (viduity) he used then, and he can't find anything to say to mark his 69th year.

[Johann]

If there were no credits I'd never know that this was an Egoyan film.

"without being intrusive"- great description.
The camera work is like a pensive silent person, observing Krapp. It's like the camera is conscious, an unmoved mover, almost like God in a way, you know?

The three cuts are probably direct tribute to Beckett, who was a master at "the sparse touch"- the play is basic but not simple.
The soul and the ego and the mind are all working overtime...

Have you seen the other films in this series?
I've seen 7 others and I find it difficult to find a way to write reviews.
Some are very short (one is only 54 seconds) but they are all very fascinating to me. There is one that is very Kubrickian and Orwellian- the one where the dialogue is repeated over and over. Can't remember the title- gotta dig out the notes...

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by Johann
The camera work is like a pensive silent person, observing Krapp. It's like the camera is conscious, an unmoved mover, almost like God in a way, you know?
Exactly.

Have you seen the other films in this series?
I've seen 7 others and I find it difficult to find a way to write reviews.
I haven't yet but will watch all those on the same disc as Krapp's Last Tape. Perhaps I'll make some comments afterwards. I'd be very interested in anything you have to say about these films.

[Johann]

I'll give it a go.
I think it would be a nice thread of reviews, even if nobody reads them.

There's 19 in total, and the Ottawa U media resources lab is open all summer (but only until 8pm). I go there every day I'm off- makes me feel like I'm doing something scholarly. Ha ha.

Herzog posts are still coming. I'm slow, but I write whenever I get a chance.

[oscar jubis]

I hope my expressing interest doesn't put pressure on you. I know how busy you must be. I'm appreciative of anything you find time to dish out, on Herzog, Beckett, or whatever. I have for weeks hoped to post on your Bohemian Gothic thread about some Czech New Wave flicks I've seen recently. But time is also an issue for me.

[Johann]

No pressure.
I never feel pressure here (except from Chris, what with his high artistic standards and me being such a recalcitrant student :)

I'm tied up with work a lot and it sux, that's all.
Time is the ultimate test of one's management skills. Master time and you master life.

[Johann]

Waiting For Godot

I'm kind of an existentialist, and this play is one of the few I've read over and over.
This 2-hour work by Michael Lindsay Hogg is a great filmic record of Beckett's most well known play.
If you don't have any artistic antennae or get bored easily, go rent something else. I'm not being snobby either- you gotta dig deep within yourself to follow the trajectory that Beckett is on with this one.

There is no plot. There is no "arc". There is no beginning. There is no end. There's not even a middle. There is no climax.
It's been called a "dramatic vacuum" where nothing happens and nothing ever is revealed.

I know what they mean, but there's a lot happening here. A LOT.

It's a philosophical ax to me. Beckett seems to be saying that nothing has any history, that there is no point from which you can base expectations or plant seeds for the future.
What happens is always happening NOW.
Not tomorrow, not yesterday, not next week, but NOW. Always now. Always waiting. For something that doesn't come. And if something does come that might line up with your expectations, it will change in some way.
Is life all about dealing with what may be, with what might transpire, with what you hope will alter your life beyond measure?

Heavy stuff or philosophical fluff?

This play is labelled as "absurdist" and it is.
There's some slapstick, pratfalls, comedy, and rapid-fire line delivery, a la "Who's On First", and it can easily lose a none-too-attentive viewer.
I can see some weak attention spanned people getting mighty bored mighty quick.

The two characters who are waiting for Godot, DiDi and GoGo (otherwise known as Vladimir and Estragon) are played by two fine Irish actors and they are great to watch (for me at least)- great voices, great line delivery, and they really milk each of their roles for all they're worth.

We never find out who exactly Godot is, aside from the fact that he's got a white beard, "does nothing" and beats his boy goat minder who lives in a hay loft with his brother who minds the sheep.

Why in the hell he's meeting with these two tramps near a barren tree by the side of the road is a total mystery.
(Monoliths and Tycho, anyone?)

The arrival of Pozzo and "Lucky", his mute "hog-pig" slave who's a real man with a giant length of rope around his neck and carries various items for his boss, is very bizarre and it just gets more and more crazy and unfathomable as the play goes on. You gotta fight to hang onto a narrative thread.

The bowler hat seems to be the major prop, and it is used in several key scenes, most notably the scene where Lucky is ordered to think by Pozzo. Marvel at that 3 minute speech! It comes around about the 45-minute mark, and that actor shows how to deliver a monologue. He sends DiDi and GoGo insane, and your head will do a spin too at the sheer volume of words he rattles off, with fire and brimstone fury, until Pozzo tells Vlad to take the damn hat off his head.

This play is a challenge to anyone to fully grasp. It is VERY existentialist and very timeless. It's in two acts, and like I said, it is just "events occuring now"- there is no plot, there is no resolution, right to the end.
It could frustrate the hell out of anybody.

I've always liked the play ever since I read that Jim Morrison re-wrote it "as a western" when he was at FSU. God, what I wouldn't give to see how he changed it.

You gotta find your own meaning to this one.

[Johann]

Not I


The negation of self.

Neil Jordan fashioned a brilliant film of the play that was inspired by a painting by Caravaggio of John the Baptist's head that Beckett saw when he was in Malta. The special features reveal that it originally was a 2-part play with the suspended mouth and an auditor who recieves the torrent of words, silently.

And a torrent they are indeed, delivered in an urgent fever by Julianne Moore, and you should be both intrigued and impressed. Neil has cameras locked on her mouth, from different angles, and it pays off quite nicely. (Julianne has beautiful lips and great teeth!)

It opens with the sounds of the outdoors, birds twittering, etc.
Then we see Julianne take a seat at a "throne" of some type. For the next 13 minutes or so it's just those luscious lips, edited masterfully. Her dialogue is so rapid that it's hard to get a handle on the exact motivation for her speech.
Some words I caught:

God is love. Tender mercies. Just the mouth. Back in the field. Try somewhere else. Prayer unanswered. What? Sudden flash. Like maddened. Who? No! She! Ha. Before it's time. How she survived. Tell how it was. How it had been. Something else. What? sudden flash

You see? Try to appropriate that.
Your head will spin.
But her lips are luscious...worth watching for that alone. Neil Jordan says:

There is an impenetrability to it, such dense texture. Commercial cinema never goes here. Brilliant ideas. The only bad thing about Beckett is the commentators. The most irritating thing about his whole work, his whole canon, is those who seem to love him. They can be such tiresome bores. They all seem to feel they have a key, to a body of work that is understood by only them or two other people. That strange reverence...

[Johann]

Rough For Theatre I

This film is stark. Apocalyptic-Stark.
It's shot in beautiful, very crisp black & white and it stars two aged actors.
It proves how bleak Beckett's vision of mankind is. I wonder what Kubrick thought of Samuel Beckett...

One old man is crippled, in a wheelchair/shopping cart, and the other is a blind fiddler. It's the end of the world, and these two are the last living human beings.

The director (Kieron J. Walsh) says that you would think that the two last living people would somehow find a way to work together to begin life anew.
But no, they fuck it up. They fight. They needle each other until someone can't take it anymore...
Walsh says that that's what humans do: we fuck things up, we start wars (Iraq), we never learn, we KNOW what is for the better but we don't do it! we suck!

The cripple asks the blind man at one point:
What does my soul look like?

These Beckett films are tough nuts to crack, man. You gotta do some work to figure out the
subtext. It's there (I think! I hope!) and it's damn obscure.

If you want it spelled out with this series you'll be cryin' in your pretzels.

[Johann]

Ohio Impromptu


Written in English in 1980 and first performed in May 1981 at Ohio State University, this is a haunting, wierd film.
Jeremy Irons is in another dual role, as "reader" and "listener".

DVD sleeve quote: "The reader, it emerges, is a mysterious messenger, from someone now dead and once loved the by the listener. The book the reader reads from tells the story of the listener who mounts right up until the last moment when the story is told for the last time, THERE IS NOTHING LEFT TO TELL.

Irons has long white & grey hair, a ghastly pallor, and I was quite numb watching it. If it has such significance to the listener, how can it have significance to the viewer.
It's about memory and loss, intertwined- great! But what am I supposed to do with this film? 10 minutes of creeptastic memory recall agony, banging knuckles on a table, and I'm supposed to enjoy?

Watch it yourself and try to formulate an opinion. All I could do is think about scenes from Dead Ringers

[oscar jubis]

I'm enjoying these posts tremendously. You are quite brave to tackle Beckett. In doing so, I found this resource quite valuable: Wikipedia's Beckett (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Beckett)
Scroll down to the bottom of page and click on the play you want to explore. Each page offers a description of the play as typically staged (which helps to compare and contrast with the approach used by the film directors) and a number of different interpretations of each play.

[Johann]

I just read the box set reviews on Amazon.com and some guy said pretty much the same thing I said about "Ohio Impromptu"- if you've seen Dead Ringers you can't help but think of scenes of Irons as the brothers.

I'll write something about all 19 films.
But it's difficult.
Don't believe me? Watch the set and try to write something that a reader will understand about each film. They are each so different, and so stamped with their director's "vision" of Beckett that it's hard to come up with words for what is presented- especially the ones that don't connect with the viewer. I'm really wrestling with "Happy Days"...

That's what the Beckett on Film DVD set is for:
working on your movie-reviewing chops!
Dig it, daddy-O?

[Johann]

That Time


DVD synopsis:
This piece intercuts three monologues from three separate periods of time in the experience of one character, the Listener. He is bombarded with three voices representing three different times in his past. Time and visions of nothingness burden each voice and at the end the isolated head smiles at the prospect of happiness.


Quite the synopsis, huh?
All this film is is one guy, with savage, frizzy, headhunter hair who listens to 3 voices, all working overtime to control his conscience.
The director (Charles Garrad) explains on the special features that the reward with this type of theatre is the LANGUAGE. Beckett's language is like no one else's. Garrad says there's never a punchline, and that's why it's so refreshing, so great. He points out that life itself is gloom with punchlines. It's nice not to hear one from time to time.

It opens with heavy breathing, and I must say that the image, though simple, is extremely effective. But the director's right: it's all about the words. Which are quite often poetry.

The special features also reveal that Patrick Magee (star of 2 Kubrick films) played the Listener onstage, London,. May 1976.
Niall Buggy plays him in this 20 minute 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