Eiljert Gabbles On

Samuel Beckett wrote a piece called “Play Without Words”. I haven’t read it, though I imagine that it contained stage directions (probably destined for that remarkable woman, Billie Whitelaw) that consisted of “Breath. Pause. Breath. Breath. Pause. Breath. Die.” Anyway, today we all went to see the modern equivalent: a film without actors - “The Incredible Hulk”.

Given that it starred Edward Norton, featured Tim Roth, William Hurt and Robert Downey Jr. it was something more than perplexing that the director had decided that he could do without actors entirely - and given that the script actually showed every sign of having been written, rather than word processed, it was a double loss. There’s a nice edge to the central idea: that Banner became infected with the serum that turns him into The Hulk in a US Government bid to develop a new breed of super-soldier, and that the serum is contained solely in Banner’s body - and the government want it back, with him alive or dead.

It’s probably the project that I’m entwined in at work at the moment that makes me see things this way, but it’s also been written as a more than glancing reinterpretation of The Beauty and The Beast legend, with Liv Tyler filling the role of Beauty more than adequately…

Quite how relevant this was to the three youngest members of the family, I cannot tell. Daughter was content to converse with the screen, asking “Why are you doing that?, “Why are you crying?” and (most often) “Why are you shouting” in a piping, uncontainable treble throughout. Youngest Son decided to bounce up and down, with particular attention being paid to my scrotum, alternating that routine with wild arm-pumping that would shame a WWF crowd. Eldest Son was able to commentate occasionally on how The Hulk compared unfavourably to Ben 10 - which is his current outlook on life, and then to ask if we could see “Kung Fu Panda” and “Indiana Jones” later on in the day. No.