EssenceStory Well Deserved Praise

ChampDavSlim The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Helllins It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

katia-9 Play by Samuel Beckett, this film is available on You Tube. Stars Alan Rickman, Kristin Scott Thomas, Juliet Stevenson

mcellis-1 This is a brilliant work, and for me the highlight of the Becket on Film Series. "Play" tells of the horror, the purgatory of broken human relationships. Yes it is banal, yes it is repetitive, but that is precisely the point. The menage a trois depicted has trapped each of the three characters in an endless hell, the same thoughts over and over, the same self-justifications, the same loss. No one can hear the others. Mingella brilliantly shows us in cinema what could never be shown on stage, that this pain goes on forever, to the end of life and even into death. In showing the three urns surrounded by hundreds of others, we see everyone else trapped hopelessly within the tyranny of their private griefs. The most challenging, the most arresting short film i have ever seen. Highly recommended.

dbborroughs One would think that three people sitting in urns, not moving, telling the same story twice would be dull and boring, but its not. Using cross cutting and cinema tricks to make what on stage is a very static, very dull and over rated piece of twaddle, Anthony Minghella had fashioned an interesting and quite stimulating piece of film. What the point of it all is or is not I will leave up to the viewer. The real achievement of this film is how it makes essentially a play where nothing physically happens into a movie with motion and movement and excitement (of a sort). Film students would be hard pressed to find a better example of what it means for the cinema to be in motion.

jruhym This film would do the micro machine man proud. I came across it on PBS in progress. I quickly switched on the cc on my TV to see if it could assist my understanding, but the captions could not keep up. It was even hard to tell if the characters were enunciating properly. The frantic pace and striking utterances go far to stir the emotions. It was so intriguing that I plan to read the script and see if I can rent the short somewhere. I also think CK will attempt to rip this play off for one of its commercials.