Endgame (2000)

The Age of Commercialism

Absolutely Fantastic

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Connor McPherson makes a masterful film about four people at the end of the world dealing with their lives. Two are reduced to legless existence in garbage cans, on is blind and immobile sitting in the center of a great empty room, and one is unable to sit down and is in constant motion waiting for his next task. Its a darkly bleak film that transcends it's limiting stage origins thanks to being more than just a camera filming a play. To be certain the film never leaves the room that is where it all takes place but at the same time you never really notice since it moves around the room changing perspective, and focus to make a film that is very much a living breathing thing. I'm very impressed with McPherson as a filmmaker since he'd done something that very few people who've tried to film a Samuel Beckett play has done, namely make it work on film on its own terms. Its a masterpiece. (I would also be remiss if I didn't mention Michael Gambon and David Thewlis as Clov and Hamm who manage to make acting look easy.)

I just want to add that all four members of the cast are brilliant here, and Thewlis & Gambon play off each other beautifully. Gambon catches the right note of ham (pun intended), and Thewlis finds his small spaces between, as his part requires.Although I would've liked to have seen the two windows facing back, more as two eyes, I can accept Conor McPherson's choices. Perhaps the space could've been a bit more confined, placing the trashcans closer to Hamm, but that, too, is personal taste.Certainly the steps down to the kitchen were genius, making Clov hobble up them torturously, and re-inforcing how dependent Hamm is on Clov.

Beckett said that his plays were about small men in large landscapes ( well Godot, anyway) and the trouble with this production is that the dreaded close-up obscures the rhythm and the dimension of the interplay between all characters. McPherson's direction is utterly wrong, showy, youthful, and consequently misplaced in a piece that possesses the echoes and regrets and pain of King Lear.Adapting to different media is of course desirable but the challenge of Endgame is the static, 'voiced only' nature of the text (that's why the parents are in the bins, Beckett couldn't manipulate them on and off stage, so he stuck them in bins), and the movement of the camera distracts from the essence of the play.It's a great shame as the play is the best and personal favorite of the writer himself.

One of the best from the series The Complete Beckett. Gambon is dreadful and brilliant. I found myself utterly riveted. As the TV ads here said when the full series was shown recently, many will find Beckett pointless. A fortunate few will find him brilliant. Thank heavens this series was made.