Prisoners of Beckett

2005, documentary, 85 minutes, English with subtitles for Swedish and Russian

Nominated for two Gemina awards, including Best Writing in a Documentary

Credits        Reviews        Screenings Backstory

Synopsis

Both tragic and comic, Prisoners of Beckett asks what it means to be incarcerated, and weaves an existential dream of freedom through the language of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. Against a background of songs by Bob Dylan, the film takes us into the world of men waiting and searching for their identity.

excerpt

Reviews

Deliberately Beckettian

“An abstruse puzzle, Michka Saäl’s film is deliberately Beckettian. Fluctuating between fiction and reality, the documentary takes shape piece by piece, building on archival images filmed in the 1980s, recent interviews with fugitives, and extracts of a monologue by the charismatic Jan Jonson. All this with the music of Bob Dylan. You must let yourself be seduced by the story to appreciate it fully, abandon any illusions of objectivity to savour its profundity. In three words: you must wait.”

Nicolas Delesalle, Télérama, February 22, 2006

Magnificent… cathartic… mysterious

“Magnificent. A blow to the stomach. For those who hate actors who overplay in a false reverie of affected emotions, these five young jailbirds will conjure up an emotion that is archaic, cathartic, mysterious. With life that turns into fiction and pulverizes concrete. With the words of Beckett that seep into the bones and well up like tears.

Marie Muller, TéléObs, February 27, 2006

Ambitious

“This is not your garden-variety documentary, and that’s a good thing… an ambitious feature-length film on the absurdities of prison life starting from a story ripped from the headlines that has the allure of a crime novel.”

Charles-Stéphane Roy, Ici, November 10-16, 2005 

Passionate and unforgettable

"With a good story that transcends anecdote to reflect on the role of art, freedom, redemption and destiny, Michka Saäl delivers a passionate and unforgettable film."

Odile Tremblay, Le Devoir, November 13, 2005

Complex, but fluid

“The construction of Michka Saäl’s film is complex, but always fluid, thanks in large part to editing that manages both to translate the poetic force of the words and create suspense. Like a puzzle, as Saäl says, the film develops with help from small details that slowly build to create a whole.”

Carlo Mandolini, Voir, July 10-16, 2005

Incomprehensible (!)

“Although it has magnetism, this documentary remains a bit of a dog’s breakfast, mixing up eras, and what’s true and false… In short, the film is incomprehensible.”

Vincent Ostria, Les Inrockuptibles, February 27, 2006                   

Backstory

A game you play

“A Beckettian film, thus bizarre, without a voiceover, built like a puzzle that does not yield its secrets easily, its true shape. And holding the escape until the last minute. ‘It wasn’t my interest,’ explains Michka Saäl. ‘I wanted nothing anecdotal, nothing sensational. It’s not without pleasure. It’s like a game you play, a little at a time.’”

Interview with Nicolas Delesalle, Télérama, February 22, 2006

“It gives me pleasure to push the limits. In Prisoners of Beckett, some people watching the film don’t know what’s real and what’s not because there is theatre in the film. All to tell a story that takes place outside the prison. I interviewed real people 18 years after the events. Some had hardly aged so it’s hard to know what’s real and what’s staged. That’s one thing that interests me, the other is to mix up the arts. To put theatre in documentary and to mix in dance and poetry as well.”

Master Class, University of Montreal, Observatoire de cinema au Québec (Mardis OCQ), 2014

Prisoners of Philistines

I worked on the 52-minute version of the film for television, the “philistine” version as Michka called it, which she had no heart to do. Yet, strangely enough, we made a short film that still had the Beckettian energy of the original because we rearranged the pieces in a “cut-up”. Without taking anything away from the full-length version, which I consider a masterpiece, this thing born of our philistine dilemma truly surprised and delighted us.

Michel Giroux, Editor

A tremendous gift from Michka

My second feature with Michka. What an adventure. For the shoot, Michka had asked me to take care of Jan Jonson, a great Swedish actor and the main character of the film. This meant staying with him until the early hours of morning to listen to his stories, each one more incredible than the last. He spoke about Beckett and the theatre. Of Bergman, who was his teacher. Of his audition for Tarkovski at the age of 18. And of course of his work as a theatre director in prisons around the world. Later I realized this was a tremendous gift from Michka. And not the last one.

Sylvestre Guidi, Director of photography