I'm going to make a link today between the book Barney's Version by Modecai Richler, and the movie Magnolia, directed by PT Anderson. But the strange thing is that I'll only provide a hint as to why.
Barney's Version is about an aging Montreal Jew who is convinced to write his memoirs as a defense against accusations in the autobiography of an enemy. The story itself, the characterization of Barney, are all incredible. He's tough to love if you imagine yourself actually knowing him, but easy to smile with as he tells his own version of his life story. He was accused of the murder of his best friend, was found innocent, and is incredibly upset at his best friend for disappearing. But his best friend was sleeping with Barney's third wife. Barney is an increasingly unreliable narrator, which always makes for an interesting story, and Mordecai Richler does not fail to entertain and enrich.
Barney's Version is about an aging Montreal Jew who is convinced to write his memoirs as a defense against accusations in the autobiography of an enemy. The story itself, the characterization of Barney, are all incredible. He's tough to love if you imagine yourself actually knowing him, but easy to smile with as he tells his own version of his life story. He was accused of the murder of his best friend, was found innocent, and is incredibly upset at his best friend for disappearing. But his best friend was sleeping with Barney's third wife. Barney is an increasingly unreliable narrator, which always makes for an interesting story, and Mordecai Richler does not fail to entertain and enrich.
In addition to a great story with a curmudgeonly character, Barney recalls all sorts of places and times that strangely overlap parts of my parents' and grandparents' generations: Barney, the storyteller, was apparently born sometime in between those two generations (Richler himself was born in 1931, closer to my grandparents), and a number of places that he describes could very well have been out of my own family's history. But my enjoyment of this book went well beyond how the book touched me personally.
Magnolia is about the strange intersections of a number of characters in modern Los Angeles. The ensemble cast is incredible, with such powerful acting as so many strange events unfold and personalities are revealed, that it is truly a riveting movie. Tom Cruise and Julianne Moore cut loose, Phillip Seymour Hoffman is dreadfully tender, Phillip Baker Hall and Jason Robards are filled with such profound regret... and there's more as well. Really, watch it.
The thing is, that the movie is about coincidence as much as anything else - the coincidence that these so very different characters lives are all intertwined in some fashion: As one character says at a pivotal moment, "This happens. This is something that happens." This is the sort of coincidence that links this movie to this book. Highlight it to discover the spoiler: Several people die in unlikely ways in the movie, and the manner of one of those deaths is the key to solving the mystery of Barney's Version. Enjoy the trailer...
Magnolia is about the strange intersections of a number of characters in modern Los Angeles. The ensemble cast is incredible, with such powerful acting as so many strange events unfold and personalities are revealed, that it is truly a riveting movie. Tom Cruise and Julianne Moore cut loose, Phillip Seymour Hoffman is dreadfully tender, Phillip Baker Hall and Jason Robards are filled with such profound regret... and there's more as well. Really, watch it.
The thing is, that the movie is about coincidence as much as anything else - the coincidence that these so very different characters lives are all intertwined in some fashion: As one character says at a pivotal moment, "This happens. This is something that happens." This is the sort of coincidence that links this movie to this book. Highlight it to discover the spoiler: Several people die in unlikely ways in the movie, and the manner of one of those deaths is the key to solving the mystery of Barney's Version. Enjoy the trailer...
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