The Trip (2011)
The Trip (UK) Directed by Michael Winterbottom Starring Steve Coogan; Rob Brydon; Claire Keelan; Rebecca Johnson; Kerry Shale; Margo Stilley
There are several moments in Michael Winterbottom’s latest that recall sections of Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami’s brilliant The Wind Will Carry Us (1999). Steve Coogan, playing a version of himself, is forced to travel long distances from the inns and hotels where he is staying in order to get phone reception, and we see him set against vast natural backdrops as he attempts to connect to the people in his life; there are also numerous long lensed static shots of a vehicle trolling along through the Northern English countryside that also remind us of similarly composed frames as Kiarostami’s erstwhile director and crew traverse the desert in search of their film.
The Trip started as a three hour/six part series for the BBC, and has been edited down to feature length for a theatrical release. That it takes a meta approach is unsurprising given the players involved (Winterbottom; Coogan; and Welsh comedian Rob Brydon) collaborated onTristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2005), a meta film if ever there was one. Like Kiarostami, Winterbottom is interested in, among other things, the relationship between filmmaker and audience and the way we perceive reality as it relates to the making of narrative/documentary, often blurring the line between the two. Winterbottom is nearly unpinnable when it comes to categorizing him as a director, seemingly intentionally navigating his career in such a manner that he has always been impossible to pidgeonhole. He continues to be highly respected by his peers and legitimate critics, however, and there is no dearth of top talent looking to work for and with him.
On the surface, The Trip’s premise of Coogan being hired by a publication (The Observer) to write about top shelf restaurants in Northern England, and bringing his friend Brydon along when his American girlfriend Mischa (Margo Stilley) and he take a break, sounds, frankly, like a snooze-fest. Structurally, the film bears some similarities to another famous for having two main characters who do nothing but talk, Louis Malle’s My Dinner With Andre. While Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory similarly waxed poetic on subjects such as philosophy and art, among other intellectual matters, Coogan and Brydon are comedians and thus their conversations are more entertaining, albeit perhaps less substantial in content (a fact not helped by brevity that one can assume is the result of having to conform to the less than two hour run time).
The best thing about The Trip, beyond the laughs, is that Winterbottom imposes little overt commentary into the proceedings. Reportedly wholly improvised, Coogan and Brydon are allowed to be alternatingly funny, boring, annoying, selfish, and their opposites. Coogan’s character (one we’ve seen before) is a self-involved womanizer who looks down on Brydon’s career. Brydon comes off as an easygoing sort who concedes that Coogan is more famous and successful, but is simultaneously proud of his own accomplishments and relishes simply having the opportunity to make people laugh. Brydon longs to return home to his wife and child. Coogan misses his girlfriend (or recent ex), and would like to get back together with her, but seems more obsessed by legitimizing his career, and working with top directors (his American agent tells him it’s a good time to be Steve Coogan).
There are some excruciating moments with Brydon doing terrible impressions of American actors like Al Pacino, but the dueling Michael Caines and James Bonds are funny, and the sparring that goes on between the two is consistently amusing, even if it does eventually get trying. Coogan and Brydon annoy and entertain one another, seemingly in equal doses, and we as an audience feel much the same. The strength of their interaction is, in fact, that we imagine ourselves along for the ride, enjoying the fun, while dreading the claustrophobia that comes along with it.
The Trip itself consists of nothing more, really, than Coogan and Brydon driving in a Range Rover and making pit stops at various high end restaurants where they are served expensive multi course meals. Shots of the chefs preparing the food and waiters in designer suits serving them are infused with table conversation between the two as they comment on what they are eating, about comedy, their personal lives, poetry, literature, geography, and various other subjects. The pair also visit various landmarks, including a home of Samuel Coleridge, and Bolton Abbey. Brydon spouts poetry and does impressions non-stop (many of which bring about eye rolling and pleas for him to stop from Coogan); Coogan vomits geographical factoids and rambles on ceaselessly about himself and his career.
Yes, the minutiae and bickering gets tiresome at times, but the idea is that we have two forty-something men aging in vastly different ways. Brydon settled and satisfied, in love with his wife and baby, happy to be nothing more than a funny man. Coogan, divorced, smoking pot, chasing women, and feeling insecure as to his place in the business as a legitimate actor. He dreams about working with Wes and P.T. Anderson and The Coen Brothers, longing to be respected as a dramatic actor, while failing perhaps to grasp all the gifts he is presented with. At one point, Brydon compares him to Don Quixote.
Ultimately, The Trip is probably not enough of one thing or another - not a real food and travel guide; not a true comedy; not weighty enough to be actual drama; not satirical enough to be an actual mockumentary, but like it’s director it is satisfied with being difficult to categorize, content with merely existing as itself.