Barney, the character study of this movie “Barney’s Version” is two hours and twenty minutes of Barney’s psychological pain as he tries, and tries again to attach to a love object. He desperately wants to love and to feel loved, like all of us. His style ranges from dismissive to obsessive to self-destructive. He wants to love his platonic male friends; he wants to love his wives and he wants to love his children. In the end, he seems to love alcohol and cigars the most; they don’t let him down. On the surface, it seems like a boring, trite story, but in execution it is gripping and disturbing. There are times I rooted for him, hoping beyond hope, that he could find the communication skills, the maturity, the determination to make his life work, and he almost did. At other times, I found myself feeling bad for those around him, who wanted to believe in him, but at the same time, knew that he could not sustain the commitment to the people he loves. The plot is not interesting, but the feelings one experiences while going through forty years of Barney’s life is what is interesting. One has to be in the right mood for this movie; the mood for a detached sense of looking into someone else’s emotional interior, knowing that you, the audience, can see the self-sabotage, but Barney, living his life, feels like he has no choice. I want to tell Barney that if he could just step outside himself for a moment, then maybe, just maybe, he could tolerate his feelings and not act on them. Barney made me wish that for him. For that, the movie is worth seeing.
Shirah Vollmer MD 