My Zinc Bed

I disagree that this film was a waste of time. This piece was glorious with so many depths and the most wonderful acting, how could anyone not come away from this piece without feeling challenged. I love Jonathan Pryce and he was at his usual best but I felt all three characters rose to the challenge and pulled you into there world. At the end I went to bed debating The whys and therefore of why they had all needed to meet and realised the cleverness of a torn mans need to know his loves real feelings. You realise that in all the sadness the alcohol is the true baddie and just want to watch on to see a happy ending for the forlorn poet. Uma Thurman is beautiful in her desperation and need to be loved and the ultimate love story in all this is truly sad but compelling. one for the greatest drama lists.

Packed in a tight 75 + minutes, 'My Zinc Bed' follows a pretty simple structure. The film is mostly a chambre piece that is told through a series of conversations between three people: a recovering alcoholic poet, a businessman and his trophy wife. The director tackles the themes of alcoholism and desire through complicated relationships between the three characters. The tension is mostly built through dialogue. Paddy Considine, Jonathan Pryce and Uma Thurman deliver excellent performances as they get under the skin of the characters. Had lesser actors been cast, this would have been a borefest. Even though I find 75 minutes to be too short a time for a film's duration, I liked that the writer stays focused on the main story and its principle characters. Due to the complex themes, 'My Zinc Bed' may not be everybody's cup of tea and it has been an interesting and involving watch.

"If you were cured, you would be cured of the desire, and who wants to be cured of desire?"

That one line from the movie, uttered by Jonathan Pryce, succinctly and brilliantly sums up why people with addictions keep falling of the wagon, and may make you wonder if it's possible that the addicted among us are in fact the ones who truly live and feel, to the point that it almost destroys them and those close to them.

It's a tight, compact little movie, with solid, believable performances, especially from Paddy Considine and Jonathan Pryce. Uma Thurman puts in a good performance but seems to struggle with her European accent in parts, and holding her own against Considine's effortlessly convincing portrayal, thereby subtracting slightly from the overall impact of her efforts.

Drugs and alcohol are the usual, but not the only addictions - Uma Thurman's character appears to be dependent on both alcohol and love. In spite of the slight inconsistencies of her performance, the weaknesses and struggles of her character spoke to me and left me in tears.

Watch this if you've ever wondered about people who just can't say "No".

I missed this when it was on BBC2 last year because I forgot to set the video, or rather I messed up setting the video and recorded something else instead. It took till recently to get the chance to see it again and so I did. The film is based on a play about addiction and sees recovering alcoholic and poet Paul Peplow interviewing millionaire businessman Victor Quinn. The interview is a flop but it leads Victor to employ Paul in a job that Paul quickly learns is unimportant and not something he is suited for. As with the interview, Victor continues to needle Paul about his addiction and his supposed cure. Later Paul meets Victor's wife Elsa, herself a former addict, and the two fall for one another behind the back of this powerful man.

Although I have not done a particularly good job of capturing it, this film did sound interesting to me and the cast especially seemed to offer much. At times the film appeared to be hitting this potential, with the tightly scripted and fast-paced dialogue that reminded me of David Mamet. Certainly the subject appeared to be of interest but yet somehow I found myself more interested in the occasionally pattern of speech rather than the characters or what was going on. In essence the subject of addiction and desire appears to be being discussed while also running it through the narrative but in reality it doesn't ever make it work as a discussion or a theme because it never feels real and never convinced me as a viewer to the point where I would have cared. We never really understand the motivations of the characters or the relationships between them – everything happens to fast or without any real reason, whether it is the probing/tempting of Paul by Vince or the sudden love between Paul and Elsa. This sort of atmosphere continues until the film reaches an end, which itself is quit unsatisfactory.

This is not to take anything away from the performances though because they are roundly good and it is only the material that lets them down. Considine, Pryce and even Thurman all play their parts well and they deal well with the pace of the dialogue. In each of them there is enough to suggest to me that they knew their characters and understood what was happening behind and beyond the words – however this is not something that they are able to bring to the screen and, as such, the film still struggles even though it has an impressive trio in what is essentially a three-hander.

It is a shame because the quality appears to be there and the potential is certainly there but the film cannot make it work. Maybe I would feel the same about the play, I'm not sure and may never know but certainly here nothing really ever rang true for me and the "discussion" in and around the nature of addiction wasn't strong or interesting enough to engage me, mainly because of the lack of any sort of clarity or focal point. Interesting for the flow of dialogue but flawed as a film.

I watched My Zinc Bed last night on BBC2. I had high hopes for this one-off drama but quite frankly it was a truly awful piece of Television. It was clearly made for American TV. Everything about it felt fake: the over the top acting, the shots and the music. It was a adapted from a play, but why? It was boring.

The story focuses on an alcoholic poet (Paddy Considine) who starts working for a millionaire businessman (Jonathan Pryce) after they meet for an interview. The poet then meets his wife (Uma Thurman) and the pair fall in love.

Every conversation was about the same thing. Being addicted to drink. The characters just kept winding each other up, which led to me being wound up and wanting to stop watching it. It tried to be so clever and intelligent but it was just dull. I think it failed because it went for the "less is more" strategy: one conversation between Uma Thurman (what attracted her to this TV movie in the first place?) and Paddy Considine led to them kissing and then being in love. And the only way that the audience knew that was through the weak narration.

Surely the BBC can do better in future.