Ohio Impromptu

In an adaptation of Samuel Beckett's play/poem two old men with long gray hair sit at a table in a dark room. They are identical in dress and appearance. One man reads from a book while the other sits listening without saying a word. Occasionally the listener raps his knuckles on the table to interrupt the reader and to signal a line to be repeated, but other than that the reader is uninterrupted until the reason for the situation is revealed.

I'm not a great mind and I'm not into theater of literature so I approach this very much as someone who is used to things being quite clear in films and TV – occasionally I see things that require much thought to get the meaning out, but generally not. This is very different as we only have the words of the reader to follow – all else is black and about looks and gestures. This may prove challenging to many audiences as it seems meaningless and going nowhere. However stick with it – it's only 10 minutes long.

To me the story is about grief, the two men are indeed one and perhaps the reader signifies the thought process of the listener. Certainly the passage being read seems to be in the past, memories of a love lost, most likely through death. The reader tells of a longing to stay in the past and reveals the power of memories and the reason for them. However he also wants to move on at some point – when the point in the book where the reader reads that someday the story will end and the reader will not return, it is like the listener is hearing this for the first time (despite the regular silent visits). When the reader becomes one with the listener and their connection is revealed, the darkness is lifted and the room is clearly seen in colour.

The principle being that grief is healthy for a while but then it must end and the light can return to our lives – it isn't possible or healthy to stay in the past forever. I only think this after a bit of thought – and I may be way off the mark, however that's what I enjoyed about this – it made me think and it stayed with me for quite a while. Most films leave your mind after you leave the cinema or whatever so it is refreshing to have this stay for a bit and test the brain.

Irons is great in both roles – more demanding than they sound, and the direction is faultless if stagy. Overall a involving and thought provoking short – I invite all the multiplex generation to try and catch this if they can…..it may open doors.

Made as part of a project to record 19 of Samuel Beckett's theater pieces on film its also an effort to make the film as something more than simply a filmed record of a stage play. The plot, if you could call it that is simple : A reader reads from a book to a listener who is the same person. What on stage would required twins or two near twins in build and dress, is done here with movie magic and acting magic by Irons. The meaning of it all is up the viewer, personally, like most Beckett's work, I find it devoid of any meaning or purpose, but here in the hands of a master film maker we have a film of great visceral power that becomes something other than Beckett's over blown text.

It is a surprise when reading some of Beckett's late plays as texts to find, not only how devastatingly moving they are in their depictions of loss, solitude, paralysis etc., but how the suffusion of nostalgia makes them almost sentimental. this is only as text - on stage these words are put through a formal grinder, mechanised, deconstructed; words with specific meanings turned into mere physical constructs hurled at the audience. So the wail at a lifetime of emotional repression in 'Not I' becomes an elevated mouth chattering machine-like; or the poignant recollections of 'That time' become a broken fugue of megaphoned voices terrorising an old man with comical mad-scientist hair.

Of all these works, 'Ohio Impromptu' veers closest to sentiment. It is a simple, gorgeous work, about a Reader telling the story of a grief-stricken man to that mourner, which formal self-reflexivity, amusing costume and self-parodic solemnity cannot shake, speaking not only to those who have loved and lost, but also to those who are too selfish to truly love, and can only give of themselves when it is too late.

One of the curious things about this Beckett on Film project is the re-literalising of the playwright's metaphors. On an obvious level, this leaves the text redundant; on another, it overprivileges it, when it is only one part of a theatrical whole of space, lighting, performance, silence etc.

So, for the viewer at the back of the class, the Reader and Listener are played by the same actor, Jeremy Irons. The continually roving camera undermines the Beckettian idea of inertia through solitude and grief, resulting in the film's one success, the white blaze of the table as it slowly protudes into view.