Thursday, January 20, 2011

In naming a film Barney’s Version, a viewer, or at least this viewer, might expect that the film is a telling of a series of events as seen through the eyes of the titular Barney. And that the main character’s "take" on the events of his own life might be rife with the sort of delusions and imagined outcomes we as human beings are prone to. The interest of the film would lie in sifting through the truths and the imagined truths of the story and learning about the title character’s personality through this deciphering. Richard J. Lewis’ film Barney’s Version manages, with the great help of Paul Giamatti’s shambling performance as Barney, achieve half of the equation: the film adequately tells a version of Barney’s life, but one surprisingly mundane in its delivery, rife with cliché and straightforwardness.

Review - Barney's Version

Based on the novel by Canadian novelist Mordecai Richler (referred to as a Canadian Saul Bellows), Barney’s Version follows the remembrances of a surly, oft times drunken television producer Barney Panofsky as he looks back on the trials and tribulations, loves and losses of his life. The film follows Barney as his boozes his way through three marriages (to three very attractive women - Rachel Lefevre, Minnie Driver, and Rosamund Pike), supporting his friends and family along the way. At some point there’s a murder of Barney’s best friend Boogie (played with able drug-addled jitter by Scott Speedman) and a few wildly romantic flourishes by the drunken protagonist, but Barney is man-child, a bundle of love and emotion and caring that can’t seem to propel itself in to maturation. Barney Panofsky has the potential of being a truly great character and Giamatti does an amazing job of making Barney a prickly teddy bear, bouncing between bawling and explosive anger and rough-edged sentiment at the drop of a pin, and the film struggles to keep up. Instead of a sharp, biting look at the life of a thickly-layered man, Lewis creates a cloying look a thickly-layered man’s life.

I wanted the life of Barney Panofsky to shine with the filled-in spaces our human minds are so good at creating. I wanted the alleged murder to play deeper in to the storyline (it doesn’t, and it’s last minute resolution seemed brutally tacked on) and Barney’s interactions with his various wives to be imbued with more passion. Especially with the film’s reveal near its end, Panofsky’s memory should be a piece of wet cheese cloth, with memories overlapping and words disappearing and the life he lived slowly fading before his eyes. Michael Konyves’ screenplay is a glossy bit of streamlined Hollywood storytelling, the type of biographical schmutz you’d hope the post-Oscar season would be barren of. At times the over-sentimentality works as Barney relies so heavily on loving and being loved by his closest people. His lifelong quest to wed Miriam Ward (Rosamund Pike) (after meeting her at his second wedding) creates the backbone of the film, and I’ll admit that the relationship, clichéd as it is, is brought to life with nuance by the two leads. Quality performances persist throughout the film - Dustin Hoffman as Barney’s dad is a casting wonder, a blue-collared tramp with a big heart and a gleam in his eye - but they’re not enough to bring this film together. Rather, in their shadow, the clichés and loose ends only seem to glow brighter, and Barney’s Version struggles to emerge from a puddle of sentimental ooze.

- Noah Sanders -



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