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December 31, 2010
The true shape of character
Richard J. Lewis’ film version of Richler novel hits home.
MICHAEL FOX
Filmmaker Richard J. Lewis, like a lot of Canadian Jews, read Mordecai Richler’s triumphant final work, Barney’s Version, when it came out in 1997. Fresh from his successful adaptation of another comic Canadian novel, Whale Music, Lewis set about writing the screenplay – without the rights – and on spec.
It was an audacious leap of faith, and unsuccessful, at least on one level. Lewis’ script didn’t pass muster with producer Robert Lantos, nor did various others penned by a succession of writers over the ensuing decade. But when Lantos finally received a screenplay (by Michael Konyves, a Montreal Jew) that won him over, Lewis was the natural choice to direct the movie.
Barney’s Version, a marvelous picture that opened the Vancouver International Film Festival last fall and spans a commercial television producer’s three marriages and runs the gamut from broad comedy to wrenching pathos, opens Friday, Jan. 14, at Fifth Avenue Cinemas.
“I grew up a traditional Jewish kid in Toronto, so I relate to a lot of the going-ons in Barney’s Version and Richler’s world,” Lewis said in an interview with the Independent. “It’s a world I knew very, very well.”
All of Lewis’ grandparents were Orthodox Jews from the Old Country, and he was assuredly bar mitzvahed. And, while many secular Jews describe themselves as “cultural Jews,” Lewis is more specific.
“If one were to define Jewish as intellectual, bookish and funny, I’d like to put myself in that category,” he said, without a wisp of heaviness or self-importance. “That tradition or offshoot of Jewish culture is akin [to] my identity.”
His circuitous path led from undergraduate studies at Northwestern University in Chicago through graduate film school at the University of Southern California, from children’s television in America to a productive Canadian period making Whale Music (starring Maury Chaikin, who died in 2010) and directing an episode of the hit show Due South. He returned to Southern California and found success producing and directing several seasons of CSI.
Along the way, Lewis discovered Buddhist teachings – without diluting his Jewish identity.
“Later in life, I became more philosophical,” Lewis explained over the phone from his Southern California home. “I was never one for religion. I’m particularly fond of the cultural aspects of being a Jew, but I’m not a big fan of religion in general, so it suits me to be more of a spiritual person who relates to the philosophical underpinnings of Jewish thought. On the other hand, so I don’t piss off the Jewish contingent, I must tell you I’m a big fan of Jewish holidays and my [10-year-old] daughter is growing up as a young Jewish woman. And my [six-month-old] son is going to experience that culture as well.”
The late Richler, for his part, was an object of both admiration and criticism among Jews for his portrayals of Jewish characters in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and Joshua Then and Now.
“I think that he liked to send up anyone who was over the top,” Lewis mused. “He was ruthless with the Quebecois and he’s ruthless with television people and he felt like his own people sometimes embarrassed him. By no stretch of the imagination was he a self-hating Jew, but he wasn’t one to adopt his own Jewish culture without questioning it, analyzing it and, ultimately, parodying it.”
One of the most surprising aspects of the screen adaptation of Barney’s Version, given Richler’s trademark irreverence, is the honest, unvarnished emotion that imbues the scenes between Barney (beautifully played as a kind of shlub-hustler by Paul Giamatti) and his father, Israel (etched to a tee by Dustin Hoffman).
“Some of it is extrapolation,” Lewis shared. “It’s not entirely in the novel. Izzy is the only one Barney truly trusts and the only one who believes his son is worthy. For a guy like Barney, who’s always trying to prove himself ... always trying to battle his own demons of doubt and insecurity, there’s tremendous solace in this relationship, and it’s a refuge for him. That relationship allows him to be exactly who he is.”
Izzy is a retired cop whose rough edges were never completely sanded down. The filmmakers gave him a wardrobe with a Miami Beach flavor that’s well-suited to his colorful dialogue.
“Richler was not entirely parochial,” Lewis asserted. “Both Barney and Izzy are very proud of their Jewish heritage but are not in any way religious people. Izzy really stands for that kind of blue-collar Jew who will punch you in the face for a slur, and would teach his son to do the same. What Dustin Hoffman was able to do was bring a part of him – we all nurture a sense of comfortableness with being Jewish; at any given moment we love to throw out the Yiddishe [spirit] – and I think he opened the valve in this part.”
Barney’s Version easily avoids caricaturing its major male characters, but the film walks more of a tightrope with Barney’s second wife, a riff on the Jewish princess, played with great touch by Minnie Driver.
“If you look at the depth of the character, it’s quite an interesting construction,” Lewis said. “Richler has sort of taken the stereotypical bone structure and, in it, he’s placed this very sensitive, nuanced woman. Everything is so real for her, we see a lot of [princess] in this character but we also see a lot of human being. I know lots of JAPs [Jewish American princesses]. My first girlfriend was one – her name was Marla. They might be in the shell of a stereotype but they’re not a stereotype per se.”
There was a time when the movies – and audiences – embraced flawed characters who behaved inappropriately. Barney’s true measure, Lewis suggested, can only be determined after a lifetime of passions and kind gestures, selfishness and screw-ups.
“The trouble with modern filmmaking is that they try to wrap the entire essence of the character in one piece of action or one triumphant thing the character does. I was trying to get at the idea that the true shape of a man’s place is the many aspects of the man, some are foibles and flaws and some are strengths that would fall under the category of integrity.”
Michael Fox is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.
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