Tristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2005)

The novel by Lawrence Stern that this movie is based on was a rambling and very lengthy book that began before the birth of Tristam Shanty and ended, a thousand or so pages later, shortly after his birth. It has been described as a classic and yet unfilmable book.

My youngest son is taking a film class that is entirely made up of films that are odd adaptations of novels, and this certainly fits the bill.  It is a film about the making of a film based on a novel about the writing of a novel.  There are frequent breakings of the fourth wall, and even a fifth one.  The movie is within itself so often that it is hard to see how many mirrors we are reflecting off of, and Steve Coogan is the perfect actor to pull the whole thing off brilliantly.  Download the first 10 or so chapters of the book off of any number of websites that offer both the text and the audio version free of charge and then watch this movie.  It is an adventure in slow motion.