Barney's Version

Barney Panofsky is a television producer, married three times, drinking heavily, and held responsible for the death of an old friend. As he ages his memory begins to fail and he sets about telling his own life. Whether the version he tells matches what happened is unknown, and the title comes from that. The subject is not love but how much a man inventing his own account makes up. Barney is not likeable: selfish, coarse and usually in the wrong. The film does not try to correct him and sets his love for his third wife alongside those faults. The form is loose and jumps in time. The three marriages bring three tones; the wedding of the second is the film's best comic passage, and the last section deliberately comes apart because the mind of the man telling it is coming apart. The source is Mordecai Richler's last novel. It was shot in Canada and renders the Jewish milieu of Montreal closely as the book has it. The film won the Oscar for makeup; carrying Paul Giamatti's character from youth to old age was the centre of that work. Dustin Hoffman plays the father and Rosamund Pike the third wife. Richard J. Lewis directs. Who it is for: viewers who like character drama and Giamatti. Who it is not for: anyone who wants a likeable protagonist; the man is often unbearable and the film does not soften it.