Review of A Cock and Bull Story (2005) by Gareth B — 08 Feb 2008

There are many, many movies about making movies. There are tons of books about writing books. I suspect archaeologists might one day find cave paintings about painting on a cave. But particularly in the last decade, metafiction has bloomed into a kind of cottage industry, and films that dissect film-making seem ever more common. Tristram Shandy is one of the best.

Ostensibly based on the 1759 novel by Laurence Sterne, the movie never actually gets around to telling that story, abandoning it quickly to tell the story of the lead actor, Steve Coogan (playing himself alongside other actors playing themselves and actors playing directors) as he winds in and out of the fictional world of the novel, the movie based on it, and his own life. The film plays with the question of why we make and go to movies in the first place. Highly recommended.