In recent years, Paul Giamatti has devoted himself completely to the role of Chuck Rhoades in the series “Billions”, so we don’t really see him too often on film anymore. And since he appeared somewhere in the late nineties, he has often been the perfect choice for the roles of lovable losers. He was brilliant in “American Splendor”, even better in “Sideways”, and he is in top form in this somewhat forgotten humorous drama that Richard J. Lewis filmed based on the novel of the same name by the Canadian writer Mordecai Richler. “Barney’s Version” had its premiere in the main program of the festival in Venice, and while this film had only one Oscar nomination (and that was for make-up), the role of the frustrated Canadian Jew brought Giamatti the biggest award – the Golden Globe for Best Actor in comedy and musicals.
His Barney Panofsky is anything but a spectacular guy. He is a functional alcoholic who smokes like a Turk, is a passionate hockey fan and a producer of some thrash television series. He is neither handsome, nor rich, nor charming, nor funny, nor overly witty, but by God, he does quite well with women. Here we are following his version of events from his life sometime from the mid-seventies, as he remembers them, parallel to what is happening in the present. And now he’s a guy in his sixties who’s been left by his wife and he’s a bitter man who doesn’t want to admit that he’s in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. In addition, a former police investigator has just published a book about him and the case of the mysterious disappearance of his best friend a quarter of a century ago, and he is convinced that Boogie (Scott Speedman) was killed by Barney.
And it’s not like Barney didn’t have a motive. Boogie slept with two of Barney’s three wives, Clara who died when they were young and another woman (Minnie Driver) who he decided to leave at his own wedding. Then a key moment in Barney’s life happened and at his wedding he fell fatally in love with the beautiful Miriam (Rosamund Pike). And although it’s a bit unbelievable why any of those three women would end up marrying such a guy, the secret lies primarily in the fantastic Giamatti. He even managed to create a likable, likable character that the viewer can sympathize with despite all his flaws.
A man is aware of all his flaws and shortcomings, who seems to be pushed by the feeling that he was too lucky in life and that all that good must simply collapse. So when it won’t happen on its own, Barney will try his best to ruin everything good that was happening to him by making all the wrong decisions that come his way. Dustin Hoffman is also great as Barney’s father, a retired policeman, thanks to which we can partly understand why Barney is such a chaos of a man, and we also have numerous cameo roles from many famous Canadian directors such as Atom Egoyan and David Cronenberg who play the roles of those directors. bad soap operas that Barney directs.