Meshugge in Love

Barney’s Version. Written by Michael Konyves, based on a novel by Mordecai Richler. Directed by Richard J. Lewis.

A couple of years ago, the Coen Brothers put out A Serious Man, a dry-as-bones paean to the modern Jewish-American male that caused a fair amount of head-scratching among the goyim. Specifically, it baffled audiences by showing a knot of interweaved middle-age insecurities, expectations, temptations and failures, without recourse to the relief of weed and cheap sex that we saw in gentile counterparts like, say, American Beauty. For members of the tribe of Abraham, being trapped on the far side of the hill seems like more than just a function of age—it’s an existential comedy (or in the case of A Serious Man, unfunny existential comedy).

            For the perplexed, we now have Richard J. Lewis’ Barney’s Version, a far more digestible story that likewise springs from the Philip Roth/Saul Bellow tradition of artful kvetching. The complaint is delivered this time by Barney Parnofsky (Paul Giamatti), a dyspeptic putz who produces bad TV comedy for a living but mostly just watches hockey and chomps cigars. Based on a novel of Mordecai Richler, the film traces the romantic ups and downs of a man who, over his eventful lifetime, somehow manages to land—and then lose—one gorgeous woman after another (in order, Rachelle LeFevre, Minnie Driver, and Rosamunde Pike).

            Barney is a sourpuss, but he’s also smart, and level-headed, and exceedingly romantic in the way guys with few options (and understanding, non-litigious girlfriends) can be. Throughout Lewis’ somewhat overlong story, we’re supposed to roll our eyes at Barney’s cruel humor, and root for his open-hearted search for love, and excuse his curmudgeonliness, which at least he comes by honestly. And, admittedly, Paul Giamatti’s performance makes all that pretty easy. That rare romantic lead with non-matinee-idol looks, Giamatti (who is, incidentally, not Jewish) is one of the few reasons to believe Hollywood is still interested in making movies about real human beings. From the character’s younger days among the ex-pat literati in Rome—in a perm, no less—to his post-divorce years of cursing the darkness of cold, lonely Montreal, it’s difficult not to like him.

            The trouble with Barney’s Version, though, is that it never seems too sure we like him, and keeps straining to make sure we do. Every sadistic impulse is balanced by a gratuitously redeeming gesture—as when, for instance, Barney cruelly chews out an aging actress (Macha Grenon) for her vanity, but is vindicated five minutes later when we learn he was secretly sending her fan letters. He’s a schmuck to his dreamboat lady-love Miriam (Pike), but then he’s a chronically ill schmuck too, which deflects all anger at his prickishness.

            Where A Single Man expected too much of an audience for whom Portnoy’s Complaint is just a one title on a list of Great Books, Barney is afraid to go “all in”, to give us the straight, petty, self-loathing truth. While there’s nothing wrong with the literature of self-exposure, what’s the point when it’s afraid to expose the goods—all of them?

Copyright 2011 Nicholas Nicastro