This 18th C. Adaptation pits Fellini against Monty Python and treats Laurence Sterne’s unedited masterpiece as it should rightfully be treated: as though no one has ever read the book in its entirety, preferring the idea itself over an actual telling. The film already has something of a folklore: it was shot in five days, with no money; that it wasn’t actually scripted, but improvised, mainly by Coogan, but everyone went along for the ride, necessitating a “Donald Kaufman-esque” invention to cover their tracks. There will undoubtedly be more as this film reaches larger audiences, but for now, smaller myths should do.
What I thought. As someone who was tortured by an honor’s English capstone project on the postmodern aspects of this novel, that thesis doesn’t really hold water with me. Post-modern to me isn’t a catch all term for all the self-reflective and comical and cripplingly introspective vantages in literature. Nor is it a shorthand for unedited talent that unravels in a circuitous pattern, revealing almost nothing; if it were you’d be led to believe that post-modernity was founded on insecurity alone. It’s not like Oulipo patented the term “meta” after all?
As was evident in Gilliam’s failed attempt at The Man of La Mancha, it’s easy to achieve the same affect under documentary circumstances. Life is often absurd; it’s just a question of seeing it that way, rather than one crushing tragedy after the next. It’s what separates Twain from Norris, Wharton from Chopin and Shakespeare from Webster (well, almost).
In most respects it’s simply acknowledging the encumbrances in life that makes a work “post-modern”. Can you imagine how differently we’d treat Jane Austen had she done as much? It makes it unfortunate that post-modernity is almost entirely the province of faux-ho leisure class types slumming it on grant money and inheritances.
Destroyer — “Painter in Your Pocket”