User reviews

Not exactly what I was expecting from the final performance of John Gielgud, but nonetheless a captivating short film with Harold Pinter at his dominating best.

At first, it's difficult to know what this is really all about, but a few key glances from Gielgud let the viewer in on the secret of this apparent voyeuristic fantasy. Not for everyone I'll admit, but worth a look when it appears in the TV schedul

It's quite an achievement to take a five minute play and completely miss the point, but that's what David Mamet seems to have done. Beckett's play is about a director and his assistants trying to create a stage image of abject despair. They take an actor, the Protagonist, who remains silent throughout, and adjust him and tweak him until his clothing and posture project the required image of pitiful dejectedness. Then they shine a light on him and admire their handiwork, and the applause of a vast audience echoes through the theatre. But instead of staying in his abject position, the Protagonist rebels: he lifts his head and stares the audience in the eye. The applause falters and dies. End of play.

It's probably the most optimistic play Beckett wrote and symbolises the indomitability of the human spirit in the face of totalitarianism (it was written for the imprisoned Czech playwright Vaclav Havel).

Anyway, Mamet spoils it by trying to make it naturalistic. First, he films it in a real place, which looks like a tiny theatre in a village hall, with dinky wooden chairs and a parquet floor. This means that Harold Pinter, as the Director, looks like a local amateur dramatics honcho rather than a symbol of totalitarian oppression. Secondly, Mamet ignores Beckett's stage direction about the applause of a vast audience, and instead gives us only the Director's Assistant clapping; this removes the film even further from its satire on totalitarianism. Finally, Mamet obscures John Gielgud's poignant performance as the Protagonist: we don't see him raise his head, and only see his face for a couple of seconds (whereas Beckett asks for a long pause), so the play's most powerful moment is muffled.

All I have to say, Mr Mamet, is, IT'S MEANT TO BE SYMBOLIC!! Hello...?

Last year, Ireland's national broadcaster (RTE), the Irish Film Board, Channel 4 and the Gate Theatre (soi-disant keepers of the Beckett flame) commissioned films of all Samuel Beckett's stage plays from the likes of Anthony Minghella, Neil Jordan and Patricia Rozema. The results were first aired in a festival at the Irish Film Centre in early February of this year, with their television premiere on RTE a month later.

These films are the Irish equivalent of Merchant Ivory, a reverant mummification of a 'great' literary figure, with more thought given to the concept than the translation of works from one medium to another. This translation is especially difficult in Beckett, which often favour static tableaux and patterns over plot and character.

Mamet is pre-eminent in culpability here, not only 'retaining' the play's stageboundness (sic?) over cinematic readjustment; not only by muffling John Gielgud's final performance by emasculating a powerful and poignant role; but by excising all political references in Beckett's one overtly political play, written in 1981 as a gesture of support for the jailed Czech dissident and playwright, Vaclev Havel.