“Post-Modern before there was any modernism to be post about”

I had heard bad things about Tristram Shandy: a cock and bull story (2006), which is why I was only recently compelled to watch it after seeing, director, Michael Winterbottom’s follow up series The Trip (2010) on BBC 2. Actually, to say The Trip is a follow up is slightly misleading, but the film and the TV series are both cut from the same post-modern clothe. The key word that describes Tristram Shandy is Metatextual, a word only used by wanky ex-students like myself who can’t quite get over leaving academia. Basically Winterbottom has approached the problem of filming an un-filmable book (The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Stern) by not filming it at all, but by exploring its central themes via a mockumentary about the attempt to film the aforementioned book. Confused?

Some people would argue that this level of ‘clever clever’ indulgence doesn’t really make an interesting film, and that it’s only those in the know who enjoy the in-jokes, but I personally think that’s cock and bullshit. For a start this a serious insult to the intelligence of the average viewer, and yes it probably did go over the heads of its American audience, but that’s mainly because Steve Coogan hasn’t been the tabloid hit over there he has here.

Speaking of Coogan, he gives an absolutely star performance here, confirming his own claim in The Trip, that he is the modern Peter Sellers. His onscreen chemistry with Rob Brydon is one of the most enjoyable elements of the film; with Winterbottom allowing the pair to improvise some classic banter which feeds into the Coogan/Brydon myth (both claim that they aren’t actually that close friends in real life, whatever that is).

I do have to admit that the film is a little up its own arse. The scene where Coogan is being interviewed, as himself, by the late Tony Wilson, who Coogan portrayed in Winterbottom’s Twenty-Four Hour Party People (2002), for a non-existent DVD extra that is announced by a voice-over, in particular makes me think that Winterbottom is being a little too smug. Also the cameo by Gillian Anderson as herself feels a little forced, though the scene where she grills Dylan Moran about his drinking made me giggle.

All in all Tristram Shandy does suffer from a few moments of art-college over indulgence, but it is probably one of the cleverest movie ideas of the last decade, and surely the only way you could film the nine volume novel. Coogans willingness to play himself as a cheating, vain, paranoid prima-donna is admirable, and the rest of the cast create a hilarious realism that is comparable to (though not as good as) Spinal Tap. Perhaps this film is just aimed at smart arses like me, but I think in the wake of The Trips success it’s a film that needs re-evaluating.