Play

Three characters sit trapped in urns in a purgatorial limbo, forever condemned to replay the sordid details of their bitter, triangular love affair. Of all the plays in the 'Beckett on Film' project, Minghella's aroused the most negative feelings when it premiered in Dublin, where purists accused the director of betraying the author's intentions by adding lots of other urn-people and by generally privileging style over content. Certainly the cinematic apparatus is heavily foregrounded (whirring noises accompany camera moves, frenetic cutting), but these experiments seem apt in the light of Beckett's own preoccupations with form. A bold if not entirely successful attempt to reinvent the play for a different medium.