Five years since the release of his last film, the Hatton Garden heist movie King of Thieves, director James Marsh returns with this autobiographical drama about Irish playwright Samuel Beckett. Gabriel Byrne stars as the writer and the film ambitiously documents his life from his childhood to his death in 1989.
Generally, biopics work better when concentrating on a single event or a period of a person’s life, and that is the case here. Despite excellent performances from Byrne, Aidan Gillen as James Joyce and Maxine Peake as Beckett’s mistress, the story is inevitably episodic.
It is quite diverting at times, but it feels like Beckett’s life, spent mostly in Paris, just was not dramatic enough to really sustain a film. For example, he joined the resistance in the war, and that possibly could have made a movie in itself, but it appears that, apart from a tense late night flee after one of his group talks to the Nazis, not a lot happened to him in the conflict.
Handsomely shot in black and white and well played, but not exactly essential viewing.
Rating: 6 out of 10