Atom Egoyan's Krapp's Last Tape was a struggle for me. The first shot moves slowly, taking too much time, allowing for an awkward silence. In short, it started out with a boring hesitancy that does not translate well onto the screen. It is never a good sign when you are watching something while your thoughts drift off and around to other topics. My thoughts reminded me of my other experiences with Samuel Beckett's fabulous play -- one that I had enjoyed very much on stage, and one that absolutely blew me away on the page. Three media with the same word-for-word literal adaptation of the text, and yet my experience was notably different for each one. The stage version I saw was an amateur theatre production -- tedious and poorly acted (a 20 year old simply does not do an aged man well), but with enough grace to resurrect the fascinating dilemma of an old man listening to his former retrospections, re-remembering them as he listens to himself remember them, often displeased with what he hears. The film seemed, at first, to present but yet another faint echo of the text's possibility. Though John Hurt is obviously a stellar actor, this opening sequence is flat and lifeless. I almost turned it off (and if Arsinee had been in the credits, I would have).

But I didn't. As the strength of the play developed towards its various non-narrative climaxes, the camera work actually became a useful member of the cast. Suddenly, it was like Egoyan woke up to the possibility of the text at the midway point of filming (apparently the entire series was produced with serious time constraints). The rest of the film is actually fabulous. The intensity, the isolation, the confusion, and the absurdity are all felt experiences, so long as you can last the opening out. Which leads me to think that in a kind of counter-intuitive way, the dull opening actually works -- creating a counter-force to the rush of the world, slowing down the pace until the viewer has given up all expectations. Once complete dispiritedness has settled in, the tiny, fragmented and deluded pleasures of the text seem like rapturous moments of joy, despair, and insight. What could be more appropriate for a Samuel Beckett text than a translation that can do all of that? Of course, Egoyan worked from an excellent script.

I still haven't made it down to his new cafe/theatre on Queen Street. I just checked out the schedule for the place, and with absolutely nothing listed on their calendar, it makes one wonder about its existential potential.