“Canadian films have got no
want-to-see.” For years the Montreal born, but defiantly Anglophone, proudly
Jewish novelist Mordecai Richler could claim that about the only English
Canadian films that Americans got to see were adapted (by himself) from his own
bestselling novels.
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In The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
a still baby-faced Richard Dreyfuss (fresh off starring in the George Lucas
teen hit American Graffiti) steals our hearts while creating a nuanced
portrait of a scrappy young hustler who doesn’t hesitate to screw his closest
friends in order to put Montreal’s St. Urbain Street Jewish ghetto firmly
behind him. Duddy is sweaty, ruthlessly ambitious, devoid of any social graces
and though his methods are crass and highly illegal, by picture’s end when he
asks the girlfriend he’s callously betrayed, “What do think of your Duddy Kravitz,
now?” it’s hard not to shed a tear and reflect on a very amusing account of a
life woven from a series of small crimes that’s boldly honest about what it
takes to make it in North America.
Richler’s follow-up (with the same
boyhood friend directing, Ted Kotcheff) Joshua Then and Now also pulls
no punches in detailing the ups and mostly downs of one Joshua Shapiro who lets
nothing in his past – a stint in a boys’ reformatory, dad an ex-bootlegger, mom
a stripper who hilariously performs at Joshua’s Bar Mitzvah, plus a
self-concocted gay sex scandal involving himself and an equally unscrupulous
older writer – prevent him from marrying into rich goy circles. The film – with
hints of a Bernard Madoff style financial scandal – delights in skewering
liberal and conservative sacred cows.
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The latest film carved posthumously
from the Richler canon, Barney’s Version, comes roaring out of the gate
-- fueled by a pugnacious, misanthropic bad boy turn by Paul Giamatti – but
then runs smack into a horrible second act anti-climax from which it never
recovers. As with most of Richler’s ghetto lads behaving crassly as they scheme
for fame, money and the ability to marry outside of the faith, Barney glides
over, around and through the carnage he instigates: the suicide of his pregnant
by another guy first wife in Rome, the acquisition of a testy second bride who
he immediately wants to dump once he lays eyes on wife number three (at the
wedding banquet for number two). At first the hard drinking, cigar chomping,
hockey loving Barney – who gets his cash from his Totally Un-necessary TV
Productions company’s ribald, soft core soap opera – seems an unlikely
candidate for respectability, that is until he spies his “shiksa” Miriam (Rosamund
Pike) on his wedding night.
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The time we spend with Barney early
on is greatly enhanced by the guys in his life: a charming ex-homicide cop dad
(a slyly funny Dustin Hoffman) and a drug addicted but seductive, blocked
writer buddy, Boogie, whose never finished great Canadian novel Barney has been
encouraging for decades. Acquiring his ethics from dad and his dreams from
Boogie – Scott Speedman breathes fresh life into the hoary cliché of the hetero
guy “bro-mance” – Barney is a profanely witty, and thorough engaging rascal
anti-hero until he lands Miriam and suddenly the movie turns into an
unconvincing apologia for his misspent youth.
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Richler’s novel had his usual
assortment of weird digressions and subplots – in the book the rival for
Miriam’s affections is a young American war resister, Blair; in the film Blair
pops up as a rather pompous vegan radio producer. In the book Richler creates a
kind of doubly unreliable narrator device by having Barney not only lie about
his past but also develop Alzheimer’s. In the film Barney’s memory lapses awake
us from the stupor the movie’s sudsy ending encourages but feel in some ways
tacked on.
We’re never entirely sure why
Barney is so gaga over a woman who is so condescending to the very qualities
you’d have to love in order to want his kids. By the third act Miriam and Blair
are living out a New Yorker cartoon parody of American tofu. The only way to
have saved the film would be to have kept either dad or Boogie alive: without
them he’s nothing.
Beginning as a wiseass, ribald
cautionary tale of just how far a guy can drift from his tribal roots without
becoming something worse than a phony, the makers of Barney’s Version have
sought their Canadian “want-to-see” breakout hit by turning a crass but
thoroughly authentic guy from St. Urbain Street into the mushy victim of a
Bridges of Madison County American weepy. For shame!