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Beckett on Film DVD Set Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 6 Reviews)

A real score for Beckett aficionados
Not to gush, but many of the versions in this set far surpass my expectations of film adaptations of theatre. For instance, "Endgame" is brilliantly realized, with finely nuanced acting. Top talent on both sides of the camera, often visually arresting works. Really great stuff for any Beckett or experimental theatre enthusiast. Pricey, but worth it.

For the starved
Those of us living in the heartland - Iowa, in my case - have little access to live productions of Beckett's work. This DVD set provides my only window into the performance of several of these plays. Until I purchased this set I had never SEEN Endgame, though I had read the work dozens of times. The same is true of several other plays. This set provides ACCESS, and I am eternally grateful to the producers, directors, actors, and crew for granting me a glimpse into a world otherwise beyond me immediate apprehension. Nit-pick if you must, but we living in the desert cannot but rejoice at this cool drink. "We're getting on"!

The Artist of the Century
Curious that DVD Basen, the wonderful Danish web-compendium of dvd reviews from all over the world, has yet to register a word on BECKETT ON FILM, by any measure the dvd release of the year. These film renditions of Samuel Beckett's nineteen works for the stage (which is not the same as his "complete dramatic works," which would include radio plays and scripts for television), are, for the most part, thrillingly successful. The plays fall into two types. WAITING FOR GODOT, ENDGAME, KRAPP'S LAST TAPE, and HAPPY DAYS, however revolutionary in their time, still more or less conform to the conventional understanding of what a play is, ie: they contain recognizable characters and the shortest is an hour long. Despite the filmmakers' protests to make true movies of these plays, as opposed to "filmed plays," each of their single-locale settings make the theatrical origins of each work inescapable. Having said that, they are the best "filmed plays" this viewer has ever seen. Most of the remaining plays, particularly the late plays, are very short (under 15 minutes), and as Alan Rickman remarks, seem more like installations or "performance art," then full-fledged plays. What makes these works among the greatest plays ever written is precisely their inability to be transfered to another medium. With one exception, each of these little films, even the most brilliant of them (I'm thinking of the mind-blowing PLAY), must somehow compromise itself as a play in order to make the transition to film. The exception is OHIO IMPROMPTU. The intensity of this two character, ten minute piece perhaps reaches the full measure of its power as a film. Beckett's stage directions specify that its two actors be as alike as possible. On film, they can be exactly alike, by virtue of being played by the same actor, namely Jeremy Irons, who has famously played twins before. Despite the actor's disavowal, the characters of Reader and Listener can't help but conjure the image of DEAD RINGERS' Elliot commiserating with his twin brother Beverly aeons from hence in their own personal purgatory. Irons' performance is impeccable and affecting, although the Beckett purist might wish there were a little less of it. The performances throughout the plays are deliriously good, with the sad exception of the beautiful FOOTFALLS, which suffers from an overly mannered delivery on the part of its two actresess. One can only feel sorry for the director saddled with the relentlessly uncinematic THAT TIME. But BECKETT ON FILM is mostly a box of treasure, and a gift to the world.

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