Barney's Version (film)
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''Barney's Version'' is a 2010 Canadian comedy-drama film directed by Richard J. Lewis, based on the novel of the same name by Mordecai Richler. The film was nominated for the
Golden Lion The Golden Lion ( it, Leone d'oro) is the highest prize given to a film at the Venice Film Festival. The prize was introduced in 1949 by the organizing committee and is now regarded as one of the film industry's most prestigious and distinguishe ...
at the
67th Venice International Film Festival The 67th annual Venice International Film Festival held in Venice, Italy, took place from 1 to 11 September 2010. American film director and screenwriter Quentin Tarantino was the head of the Jury. The opening film of the festival was Darren Aro ...
.


Plot

Barney Panofsky is living with his best friend Boogie in
Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...
. He marries the mentally disturbed and unfaithful Clara Charnofsky after she tells him she is pregnant with his child. He later finds out the child delivered stillborn is not his, and he demands they separate. She commits suicide, and a devastated Barney decides to return home to
Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...
. Barney soon meets the woman who becomes his second wife, the daughter of a wealthy
Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
family. At their lavish wedding, Barney meets Miriam Grant and immediately falls in love. He tells her his feelings for her that night but she rejects him. Despite his marriage, Barney sends Miriam flowers and gifts. He later picks up Boogie, who comes to detox, for a few days at Barney's lake house. He later finds Boogie in bed with his wife. At first overjoyed that he has an excuse to divorce her and pursue Miriam, but later he questions Boogie's integrity. The drunk men argue, Barney shoots two bullets from his gun to dissuade Boogie from snorkling, one into the air before he trips and passes out onto the dock, and Boogie falls backwards into the lake. When Barney awakens, Boogie is missing. A detective tries to beat a confession out of him until his father, Izzy, intervenes. Barney continues to believe that Boogie ran away, and throughout the movie waits for him to reappear. With his divorce final, Barney asks Miriam out on a date. He travels to
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
to meet her, and finally begin a relationship. They marry and have two children as Barney gets a job producing a television series. Izzy later dies in a
brothel A brothel, bordello, ranch, or whorehouse is a place where people engage in sexual activity with prostitutes. However, for legal or cultural reasons, establishments often describe themselves as massage parlors, bars, strip clubs, body rub par ...
, causing Barney to laugh and cry and call his father a "King". Barney and Miriam live happily until, on another vacation to the lake house, Barney meets Blair, who works in radio, her old line of work. There is an immediate platonic connection between Blair and Miriam, much to Barney's noticeable consternation. After Barney and Miriam's son, Michael, leaves home, Miriam informs Barney of her intention to return to work. He attempts to dissuade her but she persists and secures employment, thanks to support from Blair. Miriam begins work on a radio station but Barney misses her first on air interview because he "was drunk and watching the hockey game, like has happened a thousand times before" and is rude and dismissive to Miriam's colleagues. Miriam remains steadfastly faithful to him, but eventually his picaresque behaviour results in her taking a week-long visit to Michael's place in New York. While she is absent, Barney gets drunk at a bar and ends up sleeping with a former actress on his show. He tells Miriam about his infidelity and they divorce. She later marries Blair. Barney, who displayed small signs of a deteriorating memory earlier in the film, forgetting where he had left his car on two occasions, now begins to show signs of an acute but unspecified
memory loss Amnesia is a deficit in memory caused by brain damage or disease,Gazzaniga, M., Ivry, R., & Mangun, G. (2009) Cognitive Neuroscience: The biology of the mind. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. but it can also be caused temporarily by the use o ...
. After Boogie's body is discovered near the lake house from an apparent sky diving accident, Miriam meets Barney for lunch in a favourite restaurant and offers to help as a friend. When Miriam returns from the bathroom, Barney has paid for the meal but forgotten his wallet. She follows him and, by the time she catches up to him, he has forgotten that they were divorced. He speaks to her as if it was years earlier, assuming that they're still married and that their children are quite young. Barney's condition worsens until his death. While his children are helping settle some of his affairs at the lake house, they observe a "
water bomber Water (chemical formula ) is an inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living organisms (in which it acts as a ...
" plane scoop up water from the lake and dump it on a fire on the mountainside, showing the children what could have happened to Boogie, referencing an
urban myth An urban legend (sometimes contemporary legend, modern legend, urban myth, or urban tale) is a genre of folklore comprising stories or fallacious claims circulated as true, especially as having happened to a "friend of a friend" or a family m ...
. The final scene shows Miriam visiting Barney's grave, leaving roses at a tombstone bearing both of their names.


Cast

*
Paul Giamatti Paul Edward Valentine Giamatti (; born June 6, 1967) is an American actor and film producer. He first garnered attention for his breakout role in '' Private Parts'' as Kenny "Pig Vomit" Rushton, leading to supporting roles in ''Saving Private R ...
as Barney Panofsky *
Dustin Hoffman Dustin Lee Hoffman (born August 8, 1937) is an American actor and filmmaker. As one of the key actors in the formation of New Hollywood, Hoffman is known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and emotionally vulnerable characters. He is th ...
as Israel "Izzy" Panofsky, the father * Rosamund Pike as Miriam Grant, the third wife * Minnie Driver as the second wife *
Rachelle Lefevre Rachelle Marie Lefèvre (, ; born February 1, 1979) is a Canadian actress. She has starred in the television series ''Big Wolf on Campus'' and had recurring roles in ''What About Brian'', ''Boston Legal'', and '' Swingtown''. She played the vamp ...
as Clara Charnofsky, the first wife * Anna Hopkins as Kate Panofsky, the daughter * Jake Hoffman as Michael Panofsky, the son * Bruce Greenwood as Blair * Mark Addy as Detective O'Hearne * Paula Jean Hixson as Grumpy's Bartender * Scott Speedman as Bernard "Boogie" Moscovitch * Thomas Trabacchi as Leo * Clé Bennett as Cedric * Saul Rubinek as Mr. Charnofsky, the first father in-law *
Harvey Atkin Elliot Harvey Atkin (18 December 1942 – 18 July 2017) was a Canadian actor best known for his roles as Morty Melnick in '' Meatballs'', Sergeant Ronald Coleman in ''Cagney & Lacey'', and for voicing King Koopa in ''The Super Mario Bros. Super S ...
as the second father in-law *
Macha Grenon Macha Grenon (born June 7, 1968) is a Canadian film and television actress.Atom Egoyan Atom Egoyan (; hy, Աթոմ Եղոյեան, translit=Atom Yeghoyan; born July 19, 1960) is a Canadian filmmaker. He was part of a loosely-affiliated group of filmmakers to emerge in the 1980s from Toronto known as the Toronto New Wave. Egoyan m ...
(early director of Barney's
soap opera A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored ...
''Constable O'Malley of the North''),
David Cronenberg David Paul Cronenberg (born March 15, 1943) is a Canadian film director, screenwriter, and actor. He is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror genre, with his films exploring visceral bodily transformation ...
(later director of Barney's soap), Paul Gross (star in Barney's soap), Denys Arcand (Jean, the maître d' at both of Barney and Miriam's luncheons beside the duck pond at Montreal's Ritz-Carlton), and Ted Kotcheff (train conductor).


Production

After being in development for 12 years, the film was released in September 2010 with
Paul Giamatti Paul Edward Valentine Giamatti (; born June 6, 1967) is an American actor and film producer. He first garnered attention for his breakout role in '' Private Parts'' as Kenny "Pig Vomit" Rushton, leading to supporting roles in ''Saving Private R ...
in the title role. It was directed by Richard J. Lewis and produced by
Robert Lantos Robert Lantos, Order of Canada, CM (born 3 April 1949) is a Hungarian-Canadian film producer. Life and career Lantos was born on 3 April 1949 in Budapest, the son of Ágnes (Bodor) and László Lantos, a mechanic and truck company owner. Lantos ...
from a screenplay by Michael Konyves. Filming took place in Montreal, Lake Memphremagog, Rome and New York. Special effects were produced by Modus FX in Montreal.


Release

The film grossed $472,892 in Canada over its first few weeks. As of April 17, 2011, the film had grossed $4.3 million in the United States and a total of $8 million worldwide. Most of the worldwide box office was in Italy.


Reception

, the film holds a 78% approval rating on the review aggregation website
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, based on 136 reviews with an average rating 6.65 out of 10. The website's critics consensus reads: "With a magnificent performance by Paul Giamatti, ''Barney's Version'' offers much comedy and insight to the complexities of modern romance." It also has a score of 67 out of 100 on
Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
, based on 33 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


Awards


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Barney's Version 2010 films 2010 comedy-drama films 2010s English-language films Canadian comedy-drama films English-language Canadian films English-language Italian films Films about Jews and Judaism Films based on Canadian novels Films based on works by Mordecai Richler Films featuring a Best Musical or Comedy Actor Golden Globe winning performance Films set in Montreal Films shot in Montreal Films shot in New York City Films shot in Rome Sony Pictures Classics films Universal Pictures films Jewish Canadian films Films directed by Richard J. Lewis 2010s Canadian films Films about disability