(Canada, 85 min.)
Dir. Rudy Barichello, Writ. Rudy Barichello, Marcel Beaulieu
Starring: Vincent Hoss-Demarais, Stephen McHattie, Maria de
Medeiros, Linda Smith
“To each his own Beckett,” says Lucia (Maria de Medeiros) to
Paul Susser (Vincent Hoss-Desmarais) in Meetings with a Young Poet. Meetings
with a Young Poet offers its own Beckett of sorts as director/co-writer
Rudy Barichello mostly paraphrases the late Irish writer in this fictional
exploration of Beckett’s legacy through the eyes of struggling Montreal poet
Paul Susser. Adapting Beckett’s work is virtually impossible due to the
notorious restrictions/alleged hard-assedness surrounding the writer’s estate,
hence the film’s tag “Inspired by Samuel Beckett” to acknowledge that the legacy
of the writer is the film’s central source. Meetings
with a Young Poet consequently makes an easy watch for anyone approaching it
in relative ignorance of Beckett’s body of work. Plays are staged similar to
their productions and the lines are paraphrased, so Meetings with a Young Poet creates its own Beckett in the name of
art.
The conceit both stumbles and succeeds. The “original
Beckett” of the film slips, for one, because it simply seems awkward to honour
a writer with the absence of his own words. The gap in Poet feels a bit like the lack from which Hitchcock suffered while making a film about the production of Psycho without actually showing any
iconic references to the Hitchcock film itself. It’s an unfair casualty of circumstance
that undermines Meetings with a Young
Poet, but the film’s own reverence for Beckett just seems weird without an
equally tangible sense of the words that make Beckett such an esteemed artist
in the eyes of the two younger artists.
The ruse works, though, because it provides the audience
with a sense of Beckett and, in turn, an appreciation for why Lucia and Paul
have such great admiration for the man. Meetings
with a Young Poet looks less at the specificities of Beckett’s work and
instead looks at how it influences future artists, for Lucia courts Paul in an
effort to gain the rights to stage a production of Beckett’s play Krapp’s Last Tapes. Paul has a bit of a
soft spot for Beckett and he utterly adores the late writer. Paul, to put it
bluntly, thinks that this loony actress’s desire to stage Beckett’s veiled
autobiographical play is heresy.
The tango between Lucia and Paul then takes a backseat as Meetings with a Young Poet flashes back
to the fictional friendship between Paul and Beckett in Montreal. (The setting
should provide a decent flag for the looseness and subjectivity of the film.)
The shift in time introduces Stephen McHattie as the salty old Beckett.
(McHattie actually bears a striking resemblance to Beckett with the proper
hairdo.) McHattie is a joy to watch as his subtle performance, infused by
introspective observance and dry wittiness, gives insight into the writerly
process. It’s hard to explore the mind of a writer when one does not have
access to his words; moreover, it’s doubly difficult to convey the creative mind on film, since the thought process is tricky to convey as engaging
cinema. Hannah Arendt, for example,
does it remarkably with its elongated scenes of Barbara Sukowa chain-smoking in
deep thought, and Meetings for a Young
Poet finds similar success in the silent moments of McHattie’s performance that
punctuate Paul’s conversations with Beckett.
A moment in the café, for example, provides a striking
interlude in which Beckett washes himself with the sounds of the café. The
soundtrack tunes out his conversation with Paul as McHattie zones out in one of
Beckett’s moments of contemplation and takes in snippets of various
conversations popping up throughout the café. He observes fine details of life,
relationships, and character in these excerpts, and there’s a kind of poetry to
the thoughtfulness of Barichello’s direction.
Likewise, one of the film’s most notable moments appears in
a flashback scene in France as Beckett rides a horse-drawn cart and sits in the
back with a pile of turnips. His legs hang over the edge of the cart and he
enjoys the sounds of the wheels turning on the gravel. One can easily imagine
the writer conjuring metaphors for the ambient noise of the outdoors. It’s in
moments like these that Meetings with a
Young Poet finds, if you will, the poetry of life, although that probably
sounds pretentious.
The interludes highlighting Beckett’s mind are standout
moments in the film thanks to the strength of McHattie’s performance.
Alternatively, they provide a relief from the somewhat stilted conversations
between Beckett and Susser, which never really shake their on-the-nose
methodology for exploring Beckett via Paul. (The annoying and repetitive score
doesn`t help, either.) The café scenes work best for introducing Billie (Linda
Smith), presumably named for Beckett’s peer Billie Whitelaw, and her playful
rapport with the writers. The meetings with the young poet, ironically, might
be among the less successful scenes of the film, for Paul simply is not as
interesting or engaging a character as are Beckett and Lucia.
The film abandons Lucia somewhat as it goes along only to revive
her for the grand finale. Her underuse is unfortunate since Maria de Medeiros’s
performance might be the best thing about the film. There’s a playful flair of
theatricality to her performance, as Medeiros makes Lucia shine with an actorly
self-awareness and calculated performativity. She’s playing a role with Paul,
after all, and developing her own version of Beckett for her take on Krapp.
Medeiros is particularly good in the film’s staging of Beckett’s plays, as her
realizations of “Happy Days” and especially “Krapp’s Last Tapes” are inspired
moments that honour the magic of Beckett’s work through the strange comedic
bent of her performance. The finale, which sees Lucia make herself over in an exaggeratedly
theatrical make-up job to perform “Krapp,” is easily the highlight of the film.
Meetings with a Young
Poet, which is produced by Pierre Even and Marie-Claude Poulin (Rebelle, Café de Flore), offers something unique and intelligent for
art-house audiences. Barichello’s film has an indescribable air of artistry
thanks to the complementary performances of Stephen McHattie and Maria de
Medeiros—one poetic and the other theatrical—that afford the viewer a sense of
Beckett’s work, while the cinematography by Michel Le Veaux (Le démantèlement) highlights the alternative
poetry and theatricality of the film. To each his own Beckett, indeed.
Rating: ★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
Meetings with a Young Poet opens in Toronto at the Canada Square on Friday, April 18.
What did you think of Meetings with a Young Poet?
