Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story

TRISTRAM SHANDY: A COCK AND BULL STORY (Michael Winterbottom, 2005)

Laurence Sterne’s 18th century novel THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY, GENTLEMAN has been considered impossible to adapt into a film. This belief is even acknowledged in director Michael Winterbottom’s TRISTRAM SHANDY: A COCK AND BULL STORY, his and screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce’s adaptation of the supposedly unfilmable.

Steve Coogan stars as Tristram, but who and what the character is matters not a whit. In actuality Coogan's playing himself. The film quickly abandons a literal adaptation in favor of capturing the spirit of the book through documenting the invented behind-the-scenes activity on the disorganized production.

TRISTRAM SHANDY gives every indication that Sterne’s novel is a postmodern work. Winterbottom does an excellent job taking what is in essence a plotless film circling around itself and turning it into one of the funniest movies of the year. The versatile director playfully experiments in the making of this period piece.

TRISTRAM SHANDY parallels the Ricky Gervais series EXTRAS, although the film provides a comprehensive view of film production whereas the TV show concentrates on background artists. The backbiting, fraternizing, and rampant insecurity among the cast and crew are an easier hook into the film, but what Winterbottom has done beautifully is distill Sterne's comic experimentation with the rules and shape of the written narrative and translate it into a lark on filmmaking form and technique.

While the film has a book as its source, a better title might be STEVE COOGAN: A COCK AND BULL STORY. The British comedian fools around with and deconstructs his image. Coogan plays himself as an insecure nitwit to hilarious effect. He frets that a co-star’s shoes make him taller than him and suffers the indignity of playing Tristram as a baby in his mother’s womb. Coogan played with the blurry line of who he is and his screen identity in Jim Jarmusch’s COFFEE AND CIGARETTES, but in TRISTRAM SHANDY he takes it to another level.

Grade: A-