Barney's Version

Directed by Richard J. Lewis. Starring Paul Giamatti, Dustin Hoffman, Rosamund Pike, Minnie Driver, Rachelle Lefevre, Scott Speedman, Bruce Greenwood, Saul Rubinek, Denys Arcand, Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg 15A cert, gen release, 132 min

LIFE HASN’T always been kind to philandering hockey fan Barney Panofsky (Paul Giamatti). The son of a tough-talking Montreal policeman (Dustin Hoffman), Barney’s early bohemian tendencies coalesce into a successful career in Canadian television. Everything else about him, including his youthful deficiencies as a husband, remains quite shambolic.

It’s not entirely Barney’s fault. His first wife (Rachelle Lefevre) is plainly unsuitable and mad as a balloon; her successor (Minnie Driver) is so shrill and flighty that Barney, in his narration, fails to provide her with a name. Typically, however, he’s right in middle of marrying The Second Mrs P (her sole appellation) when he spies the love of his life, a mellifluous AOR radio DJ (Rosmund Pike). They get married and have two children. There may be trouble ahead.

Based on a much-admired novel by the late Mordecai Richler, Barney's Versionembraces the literary tropes of its source. Presented as an unreliable memoir, the film trawls through its protagonist's recollections in a haze determined by neuroses and Alzheimer's. Time dilates accordingly; we spend years on one marriage and seconds on another. There are conflicting reports regarding a missing junkie friend (Scott Speedman), who may or may not have disappeared with Barney's "assistance". There are any number of inconsistencies and tangents.

Against this brave dramatic sprawl, it is not too surprising to see Atom Egoyan and David Cronenberg lend their support with cameos, or to learn that the adaptation process took more than a decade. Unhappily, the film’s uncompromising form is often its undoing.

There is simply far too much information and complexity in Richard J Lewis’s textured screen adaptation to determine what exactly, if anything, we ought to be focusing on. The huge emotional swells and punches – the death of Barney’s father, his final marital failings – subsequently fail to connect as they might.

Giammati’s tremendous central turn goes some distance to making sense of an anarchic narrative that can feel like a breathless series of “and thens”. His defeated, kind, self-serving, paradoxical Barney warrants a Guernica-style canvas and almost gets one with this leftfield picture. The Golden Globe and any other plaudits that come Giamatti’s way are well deserved.