April 13 is Samuel Beckett’s 100th birthday. I did not know this until I heard a segment on NPR this morning. Then I did a bit of searching around and discovered that Sundance Channel is doing a “Beckett on Film” series, only to be slightly enraged to discover that the series is mostly over: they’re running each title exactly once, and ran most of them last Thursday, the week before the centennial.
But if anyone’s interested, Sundance will be showing Beckett films every thursdya this month: a few more titles on the 13th, the 20th, and the 27th. To see the nine titles they showed last Thursday, however, you’re gonna have to wait another 100 years. (Or buy the DVD collection for $149: http://www.beckettonfilm.com/)
I can’t specifically recommend any of these films, because they’re not showing the handful that I’ve actually seen; these will all be (would all have been) new experiences for me.
Beckett, of course, is not for everyone; a lot of people get bogged down in the impression that his view of life is a slog through deep shit without seeing that, for Beckett, it’s not the slog but the destination that matters. Dark as his stuff is, it renders the light at the end of the journey all the brighter. For me, Beckett acknowledges and engages my “dark” side without indulging it. The oft-noted contradiction in his world view can be described, I think, as optimism through pessimism.
Anyway, for those who are interested, some of these films should be, um, interesting.
Funny. I was just toying with the idea of starting up a Beckett appreciation thread. The Beckett on Film collection is sorely tempting; I may have to go ahead and order that.
Wow. I can’t believe I didn’t hear about this; I wrote my Master’s thesis on Beckett’s short plays.
Well, crap; looks like my three favorites all aired last Thursday: What Where, Ohio Impromptu, and Act Without Words. At least Endgame and Krapp’s Last Tape are still ahead. Oooh, and Play, starring Kristin Scott Thomas, Alan Rickman, and Juliet Stevenson. Sweet.
I note with surprise that the “Beckett on Film” DVD set doesn’t include his one film, Film, starring Buster Keaton. (I’ve already got the DVD, though. This makes approximately three people in the entire world insanely jealous of me.)
I’ve been thinking about what lissener mentioned in the OP, about Beckett’s eternal optimism in the face of dreariness, and while I do see the appeal of that, what’s always attracted me is that the man had a singular mastery of the language. That’s what makes reading Beckett fun–that you know you’ll see some perfect turn of phrase that you’d never in a million years have dreamt of.
The DVD also has an hourlong documentary about Luis Bunuel, which seems fairly interesting, but the picture and sound are of such abrasively poor quality that I haven’t gotten more than about five minutes into it. (Film looks fine; it’s just the documentary that looks awful.)
Browsing around Amazon, I found that they do have the Beckett on Film collection for a bit cheaper than the previously-linked website. That’s nice, but better is my discovery that Grove Press has recently (i.e., last week) put out a four volume collection that seems to cover all of Beckett’s known works (novels I, novels II, dramatic works and poetry/short stories/criticism). I’ve undoubtedly got the vast majority of the material already, but at $60 for the whole set, it’s sorely tempting.
And if you’ve got a minute, Ike, can I get your input over here?