we saw tristram shandy: a cock and bull story last night, an adaptation of a novel i never heard of before i started reading about the film.
the novel was published between 1759 and 1767 in nine separate volumes. the book apparently has quite a following. you can read all nine books online or hypertext version of just the first two books if you're curious. the book is apparently considered to be an early example of the po-mo novel, written at a time before there was even a mo to po.
i kind of ripped that last line off the movie itself. which is a good way transition to a discussion of it rather than the book. because i never read the book i was kind of running out of stuff to say. you can always google up your own shandy goodies if you crave more.
so yeah, the film. lately filmmakers have been getting more ambiguous about what they adapt for the big screen. as far as i can tell the tristram shandy book is completely unadaptable. in fact, they tell you so several times during the film. so instead the film becomes a film about filming the unadaptable story. in some scenes you are in the story of tristram shady. in others you are at the set of the scenes as they are filming, and seeing the crew argue about what bits of the book they should keep in the film and when they should cut. the whole movie is really a series of digressions. and frankly it doesn't matter. it's just too much fun to watch the chaos roll out in front of you.
the point of the movie is about how life itself is unadaptable. how things are just too chaotic and complicated to cram into a linear plot. and that isn't my own personal interpretation. it's another thing they tell you during the movie. and i'm not really spoiling anything because there's nothing really to spoil. the film is entertaining just by watching it unfold. i can't say there's much of a plot to ruin by saying too much. and there's little you can say that the film didn't say itself at some point.
tristram shandy reminded me a little of adaptation, another chaotic attempt to adapt an unadaptable book in which the film is really about the act of adapting. but i think i liked tristram shandy better than adaptation. they go in pretty different directions even if they're trying to do the same thing. in fact, tristram really doesn't go in any direction, it just wraps around itself. i guess that's why i like it.
