Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story

The New York Sun, January 27, 2006

There were some who thought Michael Winterbottom's last movie, "9 Songs" (2004) - a dreary, pointless exercise involving a British glaciologist, an American student, and very explicit (and very real) sex scenes - should not be made. They were right. There were others who thought his latest effort, "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story," could not be made. They were wrong.

Mr. Winterbottom's new film is based, sort of, on "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy" (1759-67), nine bewildering, bawdy, discursive, and chaotic volumes written over eight years by Laurence Sterne, a middle-aged Yorkshire vicar who wrote, he said, "not to be fed, but to be famous." He succeeded. The early volumes were bestsellers, blessed with high society approval ("from morning to night my Lodgings ... are full of the greatest Company ... Tristram is the Fashion.") and critical praise remarkable in a book so confused and confusing that, by comparison, "Ulysses" reads like "Dick and Jane." It was, as a character in Mr. Winterbottom's multilayered, clever, and delightful movie (a film about trying to film Sterne's notoriously unfilmable novel) explains, "postmodern before there was even a modern."

If the book is difficult to read, it's even more of a challenge to describe. If asked, Sterne, whose work is filled with typographical jokes, asterisks, dashes, squiggles, and harum-scarum punctuation, might have proffered a blank page. One of the first unfortunates (a luckless writer for the London Critical Review) to be given the job of commenting upon it simply abandoned the task: "This is a humorous performance, of which we are unable to convey any distinct ideas to our readers." Unfortunately, that's not an approach that would satisfy the difficult and demanding editors of The New York Sun, so I will just have to do my best.

A good way to start is to think of "Tristram Shandy" as the equivalent of the eccentric and beguiling chambers of curiosities that preceded today's earnest, orderly, and disciplined museums.To open one of its chapters is to peer into a collection of randomly assembled facts, falsehoods, anecdotes, histories,tales,fables,yarns,observations,and digressions that have little or no obvious connection to each other or to the book's underlying narrative, such as it is. And as for the nature of the reminiscences byTristram that are supposed to provide the novel's structure, if I tell you that young master Shandy is not even born until the third volume, well, you see the problem with which Mr. Winterbottom was confronted.

He could, I imagine, have tried cobbling together a few choice bits and pieces from the book in a way that told a vaguely coherent story, but that would have made a nonsense of Sterne's nonsense. Or he could, maybe, have dispensed with narrative altogether and simply assembled a series of period tableaux in the flamboyant but interminable style of a Terry Gilliam. Mercifully, he did neither.The approach Mr. Winterbottom actually took not only pays tribute to the fact that the original "Tristram Shandy" was in some ways a book about writing a book, but also offers audiences both the anarchy and the feel of Sterne's work, as well as the order and the comfort of a reasonably conventional plot line; something, of course, that Sterne neglected to provide.

As the movie progresses, we are tantalizingly shown (far too few) beautifully shot extracts from the "Tristram Shandy" film that is busily being made in the depths of the English countryside. These include Tristram's accidental circumcision (by a window, since you ask), muddled conception, and chaotic birth. Fans of the novel will be glad to know that Uncle Toby (a wonderful and oddly moving performance by British comedian Rob Brydon), his elaborate scale model reproduction of the siege of Namur, his embarrassing war wound, and his possible seduction (by a widow, since you ask) are also all thrown into Mr. Winterbottom's wild mix. In a nice, typically sly touch, the music that accompanies a number of these scenes is drawn from "The Draughtman's Contract" (1982), evoking memories of Peter Greenaway's dark, gorgeous antiquarian frolic while reminding us yet again that we are watching a performance within a performance.

In an industry as pleased, and fascinated, with itself as the movie business, a film about a film could easily sink into the self-importance, sentimentality, and self-indulgence of those little tributes you sometimes see on Oscar night. But Mr. Winterbottom avoids the temptation.The picture he paints is acerbic, affectionate, and funny, with a good-natured sense of the absurd that nicely reflects the antic spirit and ramshackle creativity of those original nine volumes. The project is riddled with problems: It is bedeviled by money worries (as was Mr. Winterbottom's "Tristram Shandy" in real life), has a big American star (a luminous Gillian Anderson, playing herself) flown in only to have her scene cut out, the army of reenactors recruited to fight over Namur runs amok in a war nerd Walpurgisnacht, and, above all, the actors bicker, preen, booze, grumble, and flirt.

Out of a strong cast, two, in particular, stand out. Mr. Brydon not only plays Uncle Toby, but also "Rob Brydon," a fictionalized version of himself. In the same way another well-known British comedian, Steve Coogan, plays Tristram, Tristram's father, and, naturally, "Steve Coogan," a delirious blend of role, reality, fact, and fiction that Sterne would have relished. This "Coogan," a masterpiece of self-parody, shares the real Mr. Coogan's resume, talents, and tendency to tabloid scandal. Despite the presence of his girlfriend (Kelly Macdonald), baby, and an ominously circling journalist (Kieran O'Brien) with a tale of lap dancers to tell, he is closing in on his sexy production assistant, Jennie (Naomie Harris). She's a distressingly obsessive cineaste (it says something for the cheery cynicism of this film that an enthusiasm for cinema is reduced to a joke) but so attractive that "Coogan" contemplates bluffing his way through the meaning of Fassbinder if that's what it takes.

But the relationship that matters most to him is his with star billing. Is he the lead, or is "Brydon"? The two exchange jibes, banter, insults, and insecurities in a ridiculous, marvelously played comic rivalry that lies at the heart of this film and which, incidentally, generates the finest exchange about teeth - a tricky topic in Britain - since the first "Austin Powers." In the end, it's "Brydon" who gets to play opposite Ms. Anderson, and and, yes, he steals the movie too.

But with a film this good, who's keeping score?