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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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 Posted - 12/24/2010 : 20:19:35
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The novels of Mordechai Richler, so rooted in the Canadian-Jewish experience, have only occasionally tempted Hollywood, as The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. Though he's often called the Canadian Philip Roth, Richler's insights, perhaps more gentle though no less incisive than Philip Roth's more muscular narratives, consistently failed to find real acclaim outside of Canada.
Now, as his first feature since Whale Music, Barney's Vision - dedicated to Richler by television director Richard J. Lewis - is clearly a labor of love, unleashing main character Barney Panofsky to barge through his own and our lives.
The film's already been and will be again nominated for a slew of Best Picture awards, but really the film doesn't and won't deserve them.
Not that it's a turkey, even a non-kosher one. But, at 2� hours long, it presents many scenes and some well-observed moments delivered by a stunningly good cast, but we never actually learn what makes Barney run, or tick, or scream, or fuck-up, or act-out, or self-destruct.
There are plenty of missed chances to understand this aging romantic who gets more from friends and family than he appears to deserve. I'm pretty sure part of the problem is that Richler's novel, though published in 1997 was begun decades before and its references and ambience feel constipated and old-fashioned.
Lewis and 1st-time feature screenwriter Michael Konyves don't help, primarily because they've chosen to eliminate the sine qua non of the novel -- a memoir by one of Barney's sworn enemies which galvanizes Barney to provide his own Version of his life. It's a mistake to conflate that with the book from an ex-cop pursuing a cold case over decades, one that seeks to implicate Barney.
But we've seen too many stories of men rampaging through life to be satisfied with just a parade of incidents. We at least want the Version to give us even a hint of the wisdom both Barney and his son ask from their respective fathers.
Although we know nowhere near enough about son Michael to predict whether the acorn will fall far enough from the tree to grow up less twisted, we see both Barney and his charmingly obnoxious dad betray those they love. But where did the pattern begin, and why are these guys so un-self-aware that they seem quite impotent to recognize the prison of their own behavior, let alone change it.
And then they whine for some forgiveness, never understanding why it won't and can't be granted.
Somehow, and with far more genuine humor than the film manages, Richler's novel does shine hint-y lights on Barney's emotional stasis, relating his own development to its cultural context.
What makes you keep watching, I guess, is down to Paul Giamattis' staggering central performance. He has and will be nominated for a Best Actor award and yep, he does deserve it. He even had me believing that such a shlubby guy, so wobbly of gut, so thin of hair, so hangdog of eye, so bloody unsexy - that such a guy could partner a succession of - as they're referred to in the film - lookers. Well, at least I could suspend my disbelief till my arms got tired.
Why any one of those women would be attracted to him is not only never answered, it's never even questioned. And that's most significant for his third major relationship with a beloved wife and mother of his two kids. As embodied by Rosamund Pike she parlays an astounding youthful intellect and emotional depth into a sophisticated developed persona that just gets more and more profound. She's just terrific.
The supporting cast makes the most of every moment, particularly Dustin Hoffman as Barney's ex-cop father. As a series of in-jokes there are cameos by Canadians David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan, and Paul Gross.
I just wish all that banquet-sized footage provided a more satisfying cine-feast.
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Edited by - BaftaBaby on 12/27/2010 18:59:42 |
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ChocolateLady 
"500 Chocolate Delights"
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Posted - 12/26/2010 : 07:48:27
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Yes, the cold case should have been a bit more of an ongoing line throughout the film, as it would have made it more cohesive. But I got why the women like him - he has a charm and gentleness about him that comes through all the other garbage. And yes, Gimatti is great!
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BaftaBaby
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 12/26/2010 : 09:05:14
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quote:
Originally posted by ChocolateLady
Yes, the cold case should have been a bit more of an ongoing line throughout the film, as it would have made it more cohesive. But I got why the women like him - he has a charm and gentleness about him that comes through all the other garbage. And yes, Gimatti is great!
OK - I'm willing to admit that charm can be a great opener to a relationship, but it's not a matter of women liking him. They're willing to enter into a serious relationship with a guy whose charm disintegrates like rain in a mud-puddle. As for gentleness - I'm not convinced. My reading of it - the film, not the book - is a man who relies on passive aggression to assure he's not the bad guy is presenting a very manipulative form of gentleness.
I can't even think it's great sex that keeps these women sweet on him. Of course, I'm only basing that on his increasing alcoholism. Sure, great sex is possible when drunk or stoned, but not over an extended period of time. Or through his near total deterioration.
Miriam isn't actually charmed by him when they meet. She's flattered by the attention, but it soon palls. She recognizes that though he believes he's falling in love with her, it's a matter of lust, of feeling already trapped in a marriage just codified. She's a beautiful, very intelligent, independent woman. When he pursues her - even long-distance - like some besotted maniac, I just can't believe he measures up in any way to the unseen men who must be interested in her or she in any of them.
Charm and gentleness? That's what you'd pick to father your kids when it's embodied in someone she knows is faking his intellect. He cannot even hold a literary conversation with her without writing crib notes.
That's the kind of thing I expect from Seth Rogan! She's got her nose in a book in so many of her scenes. If she can't discuss literature with a man who's shown he cannot share that passion, what exactly is he bringing?
When she eventually turns elsewhere (something we know early on the film will happen) - the other guy has been stripped of his political principles, replacing them thoroughly with being a vegan. His draft-dodging in the book would have thrown a big brick through the picture window of Lewis's re-arrangement of time in the film. But it could possibly come up as a subject for discussion so we might get an idea of intellectual alliances between Miriam and Barney. But she seems to have no life apart from his obsession for her.
And, if what we're supposed to think is that Miriam's self-esteem is so low that Barney's pursuit can repair it - well, that's something I'd want to know more about. But it ain't up there on the screen.
I believe Richler was echoing that old Irving Berlin lyric: After you get what you want, you don't want it. I think he's asking vital and valid questions about what people mean by love. About whether the shallow victory of the chase is really all they're capable of. About how they cannot accept the responsibility of fucking up the lives around them once they've somehow seen through some haze that whatever they thought they wanted wasn't it after all.
Miriam's no dope. The only question is - kids apart - why she stays with Barney. We don't even know enough about her to understand. Those are the kinds of thing I meant when I said we get plenty of information but we learn next to nothing. Just who in this film are we meant to identify with?
The other thing I believe was Richler's concern is that as Barney's Version of the truth/facts vindicates him, he's no longer mentally able to embrace his triumph. In that sense book is a study in irony, whereas the film ... well, the film ain't.
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ChocolateLady
"500 Chocolate Delights"
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Posted - 12/26/2010 : 11:26:45
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Maybe it comes through better in the book, but there certainly is something that we learn to appreciate in Barney in this movie. We don't really care for him much for most of the film and then, slowly, near the end, we realize there's something else there that would make someone overlook the shortcomings and stick with him. That would be his loyalty. Think about it - without ever thinking twice, he does things (often behind the scenes) that prove he is nothing if he isn't loyal. With his father, with his first wife and especially with her father, even with his second wife, and especially with the actress on his show. That's why his cheating on Miriam is so painful to him - not because he knows he's going to lose her because of it, but because he cannot forgive himself for being disloyal to her. It is that part of his personality that he brings to the women in his life, and if elsewhere he's doing things that make you want to slap him silly, he's always digging deeper and showing only the better parts of himself when he's around Miriam.
Giamatti deserves more than just nominations here for his acting here, mostly because when you see him together with Miriam, you see a more attractive person on the screen than you saw a moment ago when he was being a shit. Who he is in these scenes is more attractive than the other Barney and moreover, is very lovable - at least that's what I felt. We want to believe that if he could have held onto her, he might one day have become fully that person he was with her, and shed the creep. Having not read the book, I took the title to allude to the version of Barney that comes forth when we see him with Miriam. This is what drew me to the movie, but I see where this might not have been visible to everyone.
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Barney's Version- please see my Bafta thread
