Endgame (2000) (TV)

User Rating:

7.4/10   

Director:

Conor McPherson

Writer:

Samuel Beckett (play)

Release Date:

21 July 2003 (Sweden)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama

Plot:

Hamm and his parents, Nagg and Nell, live neccessarily sedentary lives while Clov cannot stop moving and gets them things...

Plot Keywords:

Landlord | Based On Play

Cast

Michael Gambon	...	Hamm
David Thewlis	...	Clov
Jean Anderson	...	Nell
Charles Simon	...	Nagg

Runtime:

84 min

Country:

UK | Ireland

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Filming Locations:

Ardmore Studios - Herbert Road, Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland

Company:

Blue Angels Films

Quotes:

[first lines]
Clov: Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished. Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there's a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap. I can't be punished any more. I'll go now to my kitchen, ten feet by ten feet by ten feet, and wait for him to whistle me. Nice dimensions, nice proportions, I'll lean on the table, and look at the wall, and wait for him to whistle me.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Check the Gate: Putting Beckett on Film (2003) (V)

Beckett straight.

'Endgame' is often considered Beckett's masterpiece, arguably the greatest play of the 20th century. The musicality, companionship and lightness underpinning 'Waiting for Godot''s despair is replaced by claustrophobia; just as Vladimir and Estragon, kept alive by hope, are taken over by Hamm and Clov, bitter, maimed master and servant, waiting not for Godot, just the end.

The play's apocalyptic comedy, complete with parents kept in dustbins, is a chessgame about death; mental disintegration in a meaningless universe; an allegory for the theatre. There are never any escapes in Beckett's hells, just the knowledge that the grim winding down of a life will be deferred for tomorrow night's performance.

For me, the play is also an hilarious parody of the Anglo-Irish Big House story, with Hamm the cruel landlord, withering solitary as the Famine lashes outside, littered with the corpses he refused to help, always witholding that saving kind word, as we all do.

Director MacPherson is himself an acclaimed playwright, and surely sensitive to Beckett as theatre, not just the words which enthrall other filmmakers of his work. He shoots his film in the obtrusively unobtrusive style of a BBC schools educational video, with minimal cinematic flourish.