A Cock and Bull Story: Tristram Shandy

THU May 20 3:00 pm Konvikt / film hall / free admission

A COCK AND BULL STORY: TRISTRAM SHANDY
United Kingdom 2005

director Michael Winterbottom
screenplay Martin Hardy
director of photography Marcel Zyskind
editor Peter Christelis
music Edward Nogria, Michael Nyman, Nino Rota, Johann Sebastian Bach
cast Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Keeley Hawesová, Shirley Hendersonová, Raymond Waring,
Mark Tandy, Mary Healeyová, Stephen Fry


The inspiration behind this unorthodox film is the novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, written by the English clergyman Laurence Sterne in the years 1759–1767. The rambling novel is an English literary classic usually considered unfilmable, but Winterbottom has transformed it into a remarkably imaginative spectacle. When Tristram Shandy starts to relate his life story we find ourselves in the 18th century, but in the dramatic moment of the hero's birth we realise that we are present at the shooting of a film. The wife and six-month-old baby of Steve Coogan, the actor playing Shandy, turns up on the set, he is persecuted by a reporter, his agent appears... “In the book so much space is devoted to the actual process of writing that this was the only way to reflect it...,” says the director, whose film is also a tribute to his own favourite director, R. W. Fassbinder.


There is a number of different apprehensions of Tristram Shandy: one possible way of treating it may well be an absurd comedy starring the British comedian Coogan who plays himself, Tristram Shandy and Tristram's father. Or as a film on film. As a documentary. As docufiction. Or simply as a quip since the film itself is convincingly posed as a funny joke. As all the above at once and furthermore, as a summary of the creative approach of the 46-year-old director. (...) But Winterbottom offers much more in his tug o' war between documentary and fiction, realism and stylization, narrative and lack of plot, history and myth. Tristram Shandy is an unstrained and relaxed pondering over the incontrollable complexity of human life delivered with the bonus of British humour.