Review: Barney’s Version

Though it has spent the last year on the festival circuit, it was only this week that Richard J. Lewis’ adaptation of Mordecai Richler’s final novel Barney’s Version made it to theatres in my tiny, frozen little corner of the world. Well worth the wait, not only was Barney’s Version captivating but it also well acted, brilliantly scripted and at a very superficial level, also able to fill seats (which for a Canadian film is quite an achievement in and of itself).

Paul Giamatti, an actor who I am now a bit ashamed to admit, I am historically not a fan of, delivered a fully convincing performance as conflicted Montréaler Barney Panofsky. Hovering between being a complete (for the lack of a more accurate colloquialism) douchebag and a flawed but lovably sympathetic anti-hero, Giamatti was able to illustrate that the two archetypal film characters are not mutually exclusive.

The film stayed true to its roots, both in terms of fidelity to the original novel and to the context in which it was written. Despite bringing in Hollywood heavyweights – Giamati, Dustin Hoffman and Minnie Driver, the film made no attempt to mask its Canadian identity. By maintaining Montréal as the film’s primary setting, the producers and director were able to show that Canada’s major cities have as much to offer as the great old-world cities (such as Rome) and the megalopolises of the United States (such as New York). The inclusion of prolific Canadians like Scott Speedman, Bruce Greenwood and Ellen David in combination with a Leonard Cohen heavy soundtrack provided Canadian viewers with the sense that there is a whole layer of the film reserved for insiders like us while at the same time firmly planting itself in the UK-US big-indie filmmaking tradition.

All in all, I highly recommend this film, well worth the price of admission and quite possibly the Canadian film with the greatest awards potential since Denys Arcand’s Les invasions barbares.

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