Two films

David Hare's "play" on TV last night was advertised as a play but was really a film. He had written a piece in The Times about why the one-off play should be resurrected on television and, to start things off, he had re-written his stage play, "The Zinc Bed", for TV. But in essence it remained a play since the same hightened (unrealistic) dialogue had been used. However, scenes had been split so that filmed, outdoor sequences could be shown, a device that does nothing but make the whole enterprise false in two ways: it is no longer the play it was, yet it is not a film either.
When people talk of "the TV play" they probably refer back to a time when plays were acted in one go, so to speak; like a stage performance there was no cutting but the production was done there and then - actors had to learn the whole play not, like a film, learn bits and have them put into a proper sequence by an editor.
Thus, David Hare's play, which may have been successful on stage, was a disaster on TV.
They don't do plays on TV any more; all so-called "plays" are filmed. So the medium becomes a visual one rather than a theatrical one.
The other film I saw yesterday was "Gone, Baby, Gone", almost a masterpiece - certainly in comparision with the botched up affair that was Hare's work. The whole thing smacked of authenticity in the depiction of the characters and the setting. While Hare's characters were wooden, doll-like caricatures, those in this film were rawly real.
David Hare was making quite out-dated political points while "Gone, Baby, Gone" had nothing to say that was political but a lot to say that told you something about "the human condition".