How it is: Rudy Barichello’s new film captures the passion of poets — and bilingualism of Samuel Beckett.
Director Rudy Barichello’s latest film finds inspiration in the biculturalism of writer Samuel Beckett
“One of the reasons Beckett has always fascinated me is his bicultural mind, which to me is profoundly Montreal.”
RUDY BARICHELLO
Meetings with a Young Poet is that rarest of creatures — a major English-language Quebec feature film. But for an English film, there is a fair bit of français in there. Montreal writer-director Rudy Barichello figures the linguistic split is about 80-20 in favour of the language of Spielberg, but he was determined to have both of Canada’s official languages in the mix.
It is an original screenplay — penned by Barichello and Marcel Beaulieu — about a francophone poet from Montreal who meets up with and develops a lifelong friendship with the Nobel Prizewinning Irish author Samuel Beckett, who wrote in both languages.
“For one thing, Beckett was profoundly bicultural,” Barichello said during a recent interview in, appropriately enough, a Mile End café, where English and French conversations live happily side-by-side.
“He lived in France mostly, and he wrote in both French and English but the first plays that made him famous (including Waiting for Godot), he wrote originally in French,” Barichello said. “I found, as a bilingual Montrealer, it was perfect. I couldn’t think of making a film in either of the two languages without the other language invading a bit and kicking its way into the film. One of the reasons Beckett has always fascinated me is his bicultural mind, which to me is profoundly Montreal and (is something) that I don’t find anywhere else in the world. So there was something very natural about doing something about Beckett, doing it in Montreal and doing it in English, but with constant contamination of French.”
It’s funny. This was a few days before Liberal Leader Philippe Couillard’s infamous comments in the second Quebec leaders’ debate about the importance of being bilingual and the controversy that stirred up. But we got into exactly that discussion. Barichello is trilingual — his mother tongue is Italian and he learned English and French as a kid — and he says anyone who doesn’t believe in the importance of learning more than one language is “an ass.”
Not that Meetings with a Young Poet is about language politics. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. It’s about friendship, writers’ block and, finally, love.
Poet Paul Susser (Vincent Hoss-Desmarais) meets Beckett (Stephen McHattie) in a café in the small town in France where the novelist and playwright lives, and they keep meeting during the last two decades of Beckett’s life. It’s an entirely fictional story though many of the details of Beckett’s life shown here are indeed factual.
“It’s not quite him, but it is,” Barichello said.
Their meetings are intercut with flash-forwards to Susser’s relationship with an actress (Maria de Medeiros) who wants to perform Beckett’s play Krapp’s Last Tape but needs Susser’s permission to stage it.
“It’s a film about passion for creation,” Barichello said. “I want people to feel inspired. Beckett was to me the perfect lever for that. If people can come out of this film emotionally charged, if they feel they want to run to the corner and pull out a notepad and write something down, or if they want to go kiss their girlfriend because they’ve felt the beauty of something, that to me is the purpose. Then if they want to find out more about Beckett, they can go see a play or read a novel or Google him. But the object is not to become a Beckett expert or to speak to the Beckett experts. The objective is to communicate, through emotion, the beauty of creation.”
There are no words from any Beckett works in the film. The folks who control the Beckett legacy refused all access to his oeuvre.
“Ultimately it turned out better than if I had had any access to his work,” Barichello said.
Barichello — whose only previous feature is the 2004 thriller Dans l’oeil du chat — lived and worked in Europe for a long time, but he returned to Montreal, in part because he felt this was the best place to raise his son. And he also believes it’s a great place to make films.
“I think this is an act of resistance. I think English Montrealers and francophone Quebecers should remember that they have something in common — L’acte de résistance. To be an anglo in Montreal, you need to resist, the way the francophones in Canada have resisted. It’s the same battle. Can they understand that? And can an anglo Montrealer understand it’s not by (complaining) that you progress? It’s by affirming your culture. We have one. Let’s find it. Let’s affirm it. If I make a film in Montreal in English, come and see it.”