Comedy-drama about the life and times of Barney Panofsky (Paul Giamatti, in a Golden Globe winning performance). Based on Mordecai Richler's prize-winning novel. Also stars Dustin Hoffman, Rosamund Pike and Minnie Driver.
A candid confessional, the film spans three decades and two continents, taking us on a tour-de-force of Barney's passions and unusual history. There is his first wife (Rachelle Lefevre, Twilight), a flame-haired, flagrantly unfaithful free sprit with whom Barney briefly lives la vie de Boheme in Rome. The Second Mrs. Panofsky (Driver) is a wealthy Jewish Princess who shops and talks incessantly, barely noticing that Barney is not listening. And it's at their wedding that Barney meets, and starts pursuing, Miriam (Pike), his third wife, the mother of his two children, and his true love. Hoffman is Barney's sidekick and father, Izzy.
Without having read Mordecai Richler’s 1997 novel which Barney’s Version is adapted from, it’s still abundantly clear that this long, glossily mounted tearjerker exhibits all the usual problems with paring down 400 pages into an orderly feature film. With its time-jumping flashbacks, and uneven tonal balance that strains to blend soapy melodrama, romantic comedy and murder mystery, it’s an initially engrossing but progressively rambling and schmaltzy film that’s mostly saved by a set of fine, if not exceptional performances. Being partial to Paul Giamatti’s now-familiar rumpled-sadsack schtick also goes a long way to making the film somewhat palatable: Barney’s Version is full-bore Giamatti for 132 minutes.
He plays Jewish-Canadian TV producer Barney Panofsky, a hopelessly romantic curmudgeon who’s gone through three marriages before an onset of Alzheimer’s cuts him down. The character’s a genuine Giamatti Standard: the puppy-dog-faced-jerk-whom-you-hate-but-grow-to-love-but-still-kind-of-hate. The film views his tumultuous life with generation-spanning sprawl (wigs!) which it can’t quite sustain; nevertheless there are individual vignettes to savour, such as Panofsky’s first swoony meeting with the gleaming, doll-like Rosamund Pike at his wedding to loud-mouthed affluent socialite Minnie Driver, and the touching, often amusing scenes with delightfully scene-stealing beat-cop father Dustin Hoffman. Look out for cameos by Canadian directors David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan.
By Aaron Yap, Flicks.co.nz
Appropriately, for a film very much about the passage of time, Richard J. Lewis' Barney's Version takes its time getting its hooks into you. Detailing the adult life of Barney Panofsky (Paul Giamatti), the film is a slow-paced and melancholic reflection piece, a character study of memory and how our interaction with the past leads us to the present. It's unfortunately a film that has been largely overlooked, but is certainly well worth your time. Telling the story largely in flashback from a character's memory, Lewis invites us to question and scrutinise what we are being shown. Indeed, as the title of the film suggests, what we are seeing is very much Barney's remembered version of events. Yet memory is such a subjective thing, and with slowly decreasing subtlety leading up the devastating final scenes, Lewis makes it clear that perhaps Barney's version is not necessarily what really happened. Certain elements just don't seem to fit, and it's impossible not to see flaws in Barney's recollections. The film itself isn't perfect either. There is a significant amount of time dedicated to Barney's second marriage to Minnie Driver's character, an incredibly unlikeable character serving no purpose other than to present an awkward situation for Barney to meet the true love of his life, Miriam (Rosamund Pike). Similarly, the mysterious disappearance of Barney's best friend Boogie (Scott Speedman), while seeming at least initially to be an important aspect of the story, is left to linger and suffers from a clunky, tacked on resolution. Lewis clearly wants us to see these moments as parts of Barney's constructed past, born from guilt perhaps, but they could have been handled better. However, in spite of its flaws, the film succeeds chiefly for one reason: the masterful performance of Giamatti. Much like the film itself, Giamatti's performance is a slow burn. For the majority of Barney's Version, it's fairly typical work from Giamatti, an actor who has the bitter, cynical middle-aged man role down with such precision to the point of almost becoming typecast cliche. He's not an easy character to empathise with, as early on his memories seem to remove himself from any responsibility for the various tragedies that occur, yet something about Barney grows on you. Lewis slowly introduces things which suggest Barney is not the awful person that he thinks he is, and it's not until the end that the brilliance of Giamatti's performance can truly be understood and appreciated. For anyone interested in how a gifted actor crafts a character, Barney's Version demands multiple viewings to study Giamatti, in arguably his finest performance, and his skill at leading audiences down one path, only to completely change tone at the crucial moment with heart-breaking results. There is excellent support from Dustin Hoffman as Barney's eccentric father, and a wonderfully graceful performance from Rosamund Pike, but the film belongs completely to Giamatti. Barney's Version is not going to be for anyone. It's slow, and borders on being a little melodramatic at times, but worthwhile to see some of the absolute best work by an actor in recent memory. tinribs27.wordpress.com
Wonderful movie with the great Dustin Hoffman giving superlative performances, very truthful, very funny and also very sad. An exceptional achievement!
Giamatti is stunning as the lead in this excellent Canadian melodrama with epic sweep, great poignancy, and dark humour. Dustin Hoffman gives his most truthful and likeable performance in years as the father, and while there are moments in the plot that stretch credibility, you are, on the whole, carried joyfully along in the the wild undertow that is Barney's life. I laughed. And to my great surprise, I cried. Giamatti makes this character study a triumph. Recommended.
Giamata makes it worth the watch
The film, lacking narration or much explanation of the character, is an outsider's version rather than his own. It's intriguing, but almost always frustrating.
Giamatti's performance is one of those achievements. He is making a career of playing unremarkable but memorable men.
While perhaps a touch overlong and with plot strands that don't hang together as well as they might, this is remains a triumph, illuminated by a terrific leading man turn from Paul Giamatti.
Highly entertaining and arguably the most satisfying Richler screen adaptation to date.
Whatever the film's flaws, and like its protagonist, there are times when things get a bit out of control, watching Giamatti use Barney to wrestle with success, failure, friendship, love and increasingly with time is exhilarating.
We've been told the NZ release date for this flick is Thursday, 2nd Jun 2011.
Release date: June 2nd 2011.
We haven't received times for this movie in this location yet. However these are updated as cinemas announce them, so check back soon. Hopefully the lovely cinemas in your location will choose to play it shortly. ~Ed.
