Beckett

[Anonymous No.20222999]

In terms of style, Beckett seems like the David Lynch of literature. I don't exactly know why but seems to be that way. Is this comparison accurate?

[Anonymous No.20223004]

they both have great hair too

[Anonymous No.20223006]

>>20223004
It's their Irish genes. For some reason Irish chads have that amazing hair. Not all, btw.

[Anonymous No.20223009]

>>20222999
>I don't exactly know why but seems to be that way. Is this comparison accurate?
I hate it when people do this. If you have something to say, explain yourself, or don't say it at all.

[Anonymous No.20223029]

Lynch draws a lot from absurdist fiction, a movement that Beckett (and maybe more importantly for Lynch, Kafka) was a part of.

[Anonymous No.20223050]

>>20223009
To me they seem to share a taste for surreal/absurdist stories and characters that are presented in a fitting style. Lots of times you don't exactly know what you're experiencing even if it seems simple. How It Is could've been a Lynch book, for example. Lynch tends to be more explicit (his medium requires it) and Beckett more evocative (his medium allows it), but lots of times they feel quite similar in terms of aesthetics. I'm not saying they're 1:1 the same but they do share certain qualities.

[Anonymous No.20223060]

>>20223050
Excellent, now why didn't you say that in OP? It would've made a far more compelling start to thread.

[Anonymous No.20223104]

>>20222999
Both are schizo-core
Both evoke a sense of liminal space, an emptiness, a dread without a tangible root of cause, both opt for confusion rather than clarity

[Anonymous No.20223112]

>>20222999
No, because Lynch still has well-defined characters and a lot of action. Not enough silence in Lynch for him to be comparable to Beckett. And, above all, not enough self-consciousness about the futility of the craft.
It's easier to compare Lynch to certain passages of Kafka or certain surrealist painters, or maybe the webs of unexplained connections in Robbe-Grillet's works. All of those were close to Beckett too, but Beckett is something else.
If I had to compare some filmmaker to Beckett it would be either the later Godard (when he's not being political and sentimental) or Isidore Isou, for the cheer amount of self-consciousness (and humor) they brought into their films. Either that or very obscure stuff, such as the CinemaScope Trilogy by Peter Tscherkassky.
Still, Beckett did direct a movie, whose major influences are Bunuel and Eisenstein, but I think it's not the most representative of his works.

[Anonymous No.20223119]

>>20222999
Beckett is depressed laurence sterne

[Anonymous No.20223166]

>>20223119
And Laurence Sterne is the Anglo-Irish Cervantes.
I mean, all novelists who are worth-reading are, in one way or another, directly or indirectly, descendants of Cervantes, Sterne, Rabelais, etc. Anything else is soap opera trash written to please the youth, so you could use those kinds of descriptions for any good author.
I disagree that Beckett is depressed, though. He wrote some of the funniest stuff I've ever read. Words such as "happy" and "depressed" simply do not apply. It is what it is, and what it is is a bunch of words. The rest is in the mind of the reader.

[Anonymous No.20223521]

>>20223060
> It would've made a far more compelling start to thread.
My long career in shitposting on this site have shown me that this statement is sadly not true.
Explaining your full view and opinion on something in the OP is often pretty counterproductive to a threads lifespan.

I'd go as far and say that OP already elaborated too much. A quick OP like
>picture of beckett
>post in greentext: gay version of Lynch
>what a fucking hack. No wonder this board is obsessed with him
...would probably gain more replies even though it's a objectively worse post.

[Anonymous No.20224116]

>>20222999
Who’s Beckett?

[Anonymous No.20224123]

>>20224116
A nicens little boy.

[Anonymous No.20224128]

Lynch is the Kafka of film

[Anonymous No.20224129]

>>20223521
Yea, this guy's right. Controversy sells and gets people talking and /lit/ (and 4chan in general) is a great example of this.

[Anonymous No.20224170]

As someone who's only read Waiting for Godot, I can kind of see what OP is saying, but picrel is probably the true cinematic parallel to Beckett. I'd also very comfortably place Beau Travail, Playtime, Where is the Friend's House, the Taste of Cherry, the Wind will Carry us, certain aspect of Close-up and also Certified Copy.
Those last 5 are all by the same director, so I guess my vote would be that Kiarostami is the most Beckett person in film, though for single films I think Jeanne Dielman still wins.

[Anonymous No.20224205]

>>20222999
They have very superficial similarities, but they basically come from completely different worlds. Lynch is good and I am far from understanding him fully but the filmmakers in >>20223112 are the sorts that could actually compare with him (not that I know them either, but I know Beckett is the high water mark of advancement in his form, and Lynch certainly is not so in his).

>>20224170
This is a pretty perceptive answer if you've only read Godot because Kiarostami's reflexive works have a lot of fundamental similarities with Beckett's own intense reflexivity in his later novels. Also you're based for posting about Kiarostami in any context, he's so great.

[Anonymous No.20224212]

>>20224170
I'm also just now realizing that 3/4 of the directors I mention here are all French, and that Beckett resided in france and sometimes wrote in french? Is is possible that Akerman, Denis, Tati and other frenchy filmmakers were directly influenced by beckett??

[Anonymous No.20224219]

no

[Anonymous No.20224231]

>>20224205
>Beckett is the high water mark of advancement in his form, and Lynch certainly is not so in his
None of the other filmmakers mentioned are that, either.

[Anonymous No.20224353]

>>20224231
Not saying they are, but they are actual avant-garde whereas Lynch is pop-avant-garde.

[Anonymous No.20224370]

>>20224353
Eraserhead is "pop-avant-garde"? I don't see how.

[Anonymous No.20224432]

>>20224205
Here's an anon after my own heart.
Have you seen any other iranian new wave? I checked out 2 films by Makhmalbaf, the cyclicst and Kandahar.

[Anonymous No.20224443]

>>20224432
Ive only seen the vampire movie by that Iranian chick and only because I thought she'd fuck me if I praised her movie.

[Anonymous No.20224517]

>A review of the film in [The Daily Telegraph] compared Eraserhead to the works of Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, describing it as a chaotic parody of family life.

[Anonymous No.20224543]

>>20222999
Robbe-Grillet is closer to Lynch than Beckett, I think.

In his movies he even used similar imagery (before Lynch): https://old.reddit.com/r/twinpeaks/comments/s8le2n/some_lynchian_imagery_in_la_belle_captive_1983_by/

[Anonymous No.20224633]

>>20224432
Tbh I haven't been watching movies recently because I felt like they were going to ruin books for me, but I should get back into it and learn to just appreciate different forms for the different things they offer. I was mostly into Tarkovsky and anything adjacent to him, but my understanding of it all was fairly unsophisticated beyond the basic ideas of neorealism and slow cinema (which was enough for me to find them, especially Kiarostami and Ozu, incredibly compelling).

>>20224370
I haven't seen Eraserhead, maybe that's different and he just "sold out" later on, but I think he fits comfortably in the middlebrow category, he has popular appeal in a way that does not apply to Beckett or to highbrow art filmmakers, i.e. ones who play in galleries rather than theaters.

[Anonymous No.20224654]

>>20224633
There's not really "highbrow" filmmaking and Lynch has been in galleries, too.

[Anonymous No.20224671]

>>20224633
Also, I'm not sure what constitutes "selling out." Making a TV show? Kieślowski made Dekalog which many consider his masterpiece. The only film where Lynch might have sold out is Elephant Man. Other than that, he's always been himself.

[Anonymous No.20224710]

>>20224654
>>20224671
I'm not trying to cast any aspersions on Lynch, I have mixed feelings about him but I'm not trying to force my opinions on anyone, just making the point that there is more "pure" stuff out there that would make a better comparison with Beckett.

Here are a couple examples to illustrate what would be considered purely highbrow films:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=963PSjAHo48
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2Paq_XhF7U

Not actually trying to compare these to Beckett either btw, I wouldn't know where to start with that, just giving straightforward examples of what's considered pure art film.

[Anonymous No.20224716]

>>20224710
repeated myself like a stupid retard yikes fucking cringe

[Anonymous No.20224747]

>>20224212
they were probably all into the same stuff. check out some early 1900s french theatre. lot of good stuff, the surrealists, dadaists, maeterlinck, the theatre of the absurd stuff a little later, etc etc

[Anonymous No.20224777]

>>20224710
Is cinema the only medium where making a highbrow piece is easier than making a middlebrow one?

[Anonymous No.20224790]

>>20224777
I'm not sure about that, there's a lot of suspect shit in modern literature, visual arts, etc. as well as film. It's all a very weird phenomenon that I'm not qualified to dive into but I certainly couldn't disprove people who say this sort of thing is charlatanry, I just try to remain agnostic about it. Beckett was a fan of Duchamp btw so he would probably not approve the idea that sophistication or difficulty of composition = quality.

[Anonymous No.20224914]

>>20224633
I'm kiarostami anon, and I get that. I alternate in phases between film and literature. I find it funny that you'd mention tarkovsky considering how high-minded and abstract his stuff is, as opposed kiaro who seems to work with much more elemental subject matter e.g. "i need to find my classroom friend so that I can give him his homework for tomorrow". Although K does approach those topics with a really earthy perspective, and the characters aren't extremely detailed, so maybe there's something in common between him and Tarkovsky, but I find a lot more in common between K and french new wave.
Also, I'll give you my criterion login if you send me pictures of your butt

[Anonymous No.20225150]

>>20224543
thanks for the rec

[Anonymous No.20225256]

>>20224914
Sadly my butt is not worth seeing, but this chart on the other hand will reward close inspection. Delineates relationships between all of these sorts of filmmakers, whether rightly or wrongly I don't know, but it helps to make sense of things and most importantly gives all the recommendations you could ask for. It was made by Paul Schrader, writer of Taxi Driver, for his book about Transcendental Style in Film, focusing on Bresson, Dreyer and Ozu, but also discussing Tarkovsky in depth. I don't know FNW that well though so I can't speak to that comparison - it seems like those films have a certain amount of playfulness to them, which Kiarostami definitely has, while also being serious and conceptually fascinating.

[Anonymous No.20225259]

>>20225256
>retardedly forget image
having a bit of a retarded day but here you go anon, in case you haven't seen it

[Anonymous No.20225914]

>>20225256
Not that anon but i will be the judge of that. Send butt. For literary purposes.

[Anonymous No.20225929]

>>20223104
There is something unsettling in the "hollowness" of the worlds in Beckett films. They are very directionless and lacking in clear purpose that evokes a sense of unease about what will happen next.

[Anonymous No.20225967]

what should i read of beckett? i just started watching twin peaks (my first lynch) and i want to read some different lit

[Anonymous No.20226423]

>>20223166
The ridiculousness which causes comedy stems from the depression of their tragedy.

[Anonymous No.20227407]

>>20225259
Nice