and
TRISTRAM SHANDY: A COCK AND BULL STORY
***1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Garrison Keillor, Virginia Madsen, Maya Rudolph, Kevin Kline, Meryl Streep, Lindsay Lohan, L.Q. Jones, Tommy Lee Jones, John C. Reilly, Woody Harrellson, and Lily Tomlin
Directed by Robert Altman & written by Garrison Keillor
2006
105 PG13
Starring Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Shirley Henderson, Kelly McDonald, Naomie Harris, and Jeremy Northam
Directed by Michael Winterbottom & written by Frank Contrell Boyce, from the novel by Laurence Sterne
2005 (US release 2006)
94 min R
“A Prairie Home Companion” is a fictionalized version of Garrison Keillor’s long-running NPR radio show, set during the show’s fictionalized final performance before the theater is to be bought and torn down. An angel (Virginia Madsen) stalks the theater, Keillor plays himself during the last show, while Lily Tomlin, Meryl Streep, Woody Harrelson, and John C. Reilly play semi-washed up folk / country singers. Kevin Kline is the bumbling detective-turned-security guard who talks like it’s 1944 and he’s Fred MacMurray. Yes, I listen to the show religiously – for its low-key atmosphere – to hear liberalism mixed with Christianity instead of being at odds – for the novelty of its throwback-to-radio’s-glory-days approach.
As for “Tristram Shandy,” I’ll let the IMDb summary do the honors: “Two actors [Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon], as their make up is applied, talk about the size of their parts. Then into the film: Laurence Sterne’s unfilmable novel, Tristram Shandy, an autobiography wherein the narrator, interrupted constantly, takes the entire story to be born. The film tracks between “Shandy” and behind the scenes. Size matters: parts, egos, shoes, noses. The lead’s girlfriend, with their infant son, is up from London for the night, wanting sex; interruptions are constant. Scenes are shot, re-shot, and discarded. The purpose of the project is elusive. Fathers and sons; men and women; cocks and bulls. Life is amorphous, too full and too rich to be captured in one narrative.” Not a million miles away from Al Pacino’s wonderful unavailable-on-DVD “Looking for Richard.”
What does the latest glut of non-fiction novels and memoirs and “Angela’s Ashes” and “Adaptation” and stupefying complaints of “historical inaccuracy” say? We can’t take anything seriously unless it’s revelatory, unless it’s somebody’s dirty laundry – we’re too “hip” for fiction. (Unless the fiction is especially outlandish, what with the rise in “Harry Potters” and what-not.) On LiveJournal, the fiction blogs remain largely unread but everyone eats up uncomfortable life stories and embarrassing confessions.
“PHC” is a charming, unforced little trifle about, um, death. Appropriately, it’s the late Robert Altman’s final film. Its greatest asset is that it’s a trifle, a lark, with some good dirty jokes thrown in and fun throwaway physical comedy from Kline. Yet a dark undercurrent flows throughout; the film is almost entirely at night, in a Fitzgerald theater of shadows, corners, and hidden places.
Sometimes Robert Altman’s refusal to stretch for poignancy is kind of the worst stretch for poignancy. Altman is, of course, one of the great untouchables of Film Snobs, for whom you’d loose all film snob credibility for criticizing. (Although I’ve always enjoyed and admired the technique of his films, I don’t think I’ve ever loved one. Maybe it’s because he has untrustworthy facial hair that makes him look a little cat-like..) So critics of the film have been more eager to blame Garrison Keillor, probably because in these stupid days of “either / or” Culture War nonsense the idea of a man who is a dyed-in-the-wool liberal and a dyed-in-the-wool Christian, it must be proved that he’s faking one of them.
While Altman’s players duck on and off stage, “Tristram Shandy’s” players move on and off camera. The novel is about the nature of fiction, and we like fiction because it creates the illusion of a life in which one thing leads to another leads to another. Like “Mission: Impossible.” But life and “Tristram Shandy” are a bunch of tangents, a bunch of things getting in the way. Director Winterbottom (“Code 46”) disobeys the convention that period pictures are supposed to be stuffy and perfectly lit – “Tristram” is even more hand-held than “The New World” and is lit as if by hard window lights, sharp shadows, and great skies.
With the powdered wigs and tall socks, the movie has to allude to “Barry Lyndon,” because what self-respecting self-aware powdered wig movie wouldn’t? Of course, “Barry Lyndon” never goes near a hand-held camera and its theme is “Tristram’s” opposite, about how social order deprives life of all randomness and humanity. “Tristram” is about the out-of-control bustle of life.
The bulk of the movie is Coogan’s pissing contest with Brydon. British comics are funny because they play comedy so much like drama: serious, brooding, so that everyone is oblivious to how funny he’s being. Jeremy Northam is a continual pleasure, here covering frustration and “to hell with all these losers!” under pleasantry and charm. Ian Hart, the guy with the face on the back of his head from “Harry Potter,” pops up. Michael Nyman (composer of “High Speed Music”) provides a fun original score
This is the thirty-seventh movie I’ve written in about three days, so I think I’m gonna burn out and trail off right about now.
Finished Sunday, December 17th, 2006
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