Last year, Ireland's national broadcaster (RTE), the Irish Film Board, Channel 4 and the Gate Theatre (soi-disant keepers of the Beckett flame) commissioned films of all Samuel Beckett's stage plays from the likes of Anthony Minghella, Neil Jordan and Patricia Rozema. The results were first aired in a festival at the Irish Film Centre in early February of this year, with their television premiere on RTE a month later.
These films are the Irish equivalent of Merchant Ivory, a reverant mummification of a 'great' literary figure, with more thought given to the concept than the translation of works from one medium to another. This translation is especially difficult in Beckett, which often favour static tableaux and patterns over plot and character.
Mamet is pre-eminent in culpability here, not only 'retaining' the play's stageboundness (sic?) over cinematic readjustment; not only by muffling John Gielgud's final performance by emasculating a powerful and poignant role; but by excising all political references in Beckett's one overtly political play, written in 1981 as a gesture of support for the jailed Czech dissident and playwright, Vaclev Havel.
