Wallace Shawn's thought-provoking play comes to the screen courtesy his own script, posh director David Hare (Wetherby, Strapless), the London theatre cast, three days' filming at Pinewood and BBC Films. Among the cast of only three, the movie director Mike Nichols makes his screen debut in a compelling turn as the title character, once picked in days of yore to mourn for a tribe's last dying member. Also seated uncinematically at a trestle table are Nichols's wife (Miranda Richardson) and her dissident poet father (David de Keyser), fellow sufferers in some right-wing nation, but, worthy though these two players are, the main fascination here is to see Nichols acting. The film doesn't work as well as it did on stage and seems a bit of a plod. They should have stayed in the theatre.

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