“Geniuses”: an attempt at a biopic of Samuel Beckett

“Geniuses” by James Marsh, a director specializing in biopics (his filmography includes “Stephen Hawking’s Universe” and the doc “Man on a Wire” about tightrope walker Philippe Petit), is being released. Distributors are advertising the new film as a story about the Parisian acquaintance of two classics of Irish literature. However, this is just one episode of a gloomy, but not particularly meaningful attempt to reflect on the fate of Samuel Beckett.

Text: Vasily Stepanov

1969, Stockholm, the Nobel Committee announces the winner of the prize for literature: Samuel Beckett. A lean man over sixty sitting in the hall shudders and whispers: “Disaster!” – and, with difficulty, getting onto the stage, he organizes the very theater of the absurd for which he is awarded. Having snatched the check with the prize money from the hands of the organizers, Beckett climbs the ladder somewhere under the ceiling, knocks down the spotlight and finds himself in a very conventional megalithic cave somewhere behind the scenes. This is an inner world where the writer can talk to himself, the same lean, only slightly more comfortably dressed Gabriel Byrne, who plays the role of the great Irish author in the film. To whom does Samuel Beckett owe his recognition – this is the main question facing the hero.

A spectacular surreal frame, presumably, was required so that even a viewer far from Beckett could cinematically clearly demonstrate who exactly they would have to deal with for the next two hours. But it hardly helps to penetrate the letter and spirit of Beckett’s writing. Yes, visually the film is somewhat reminiscent of the lapidary style of the author, but still, looking at the neurotic, pitiful, bespectacled man, so similar to all cinema writers, talking with his fictional self, you will rather not remember the great “Watt” or “Molloy” , but about the series “Patients”, where for four seasons in a row another hero of Gabriel Byrne dealt with the psychological problems of his fictional patients (and his own, of course, too).

In “Genius,” the viewer will experience several—the film is divided into chapters—sessions of dubious, galloping psychotherapy for a genius who died 35 years ago. First, of course, are childhood traumas: Mom sternly scolds Sam under a reproduction of Millet’s pious masterpiece “Angelus,” and Dad dies treacherously, showing how terribly a windless kite strives for the ground. Next – an equally traumatic formation: the author, portrayed in his youth by Fionn O’Shea (the delicate student bears little resemblance to the athlete that the young Beckett was), moves to Paris, where he meets in a cafe the toxic and always drunk James Joyce (played by the imposing, as if from some other movie, Aidan Gillen) and works as his literary secretary. Sexual traumas are associated with the Joyce family (a kind of comic episode): the author of Ulysses tries to marry a student to his daughter Lucia, but Beckett turns back in time (by the way, schizophrenia, diagnosed by Jung himself, will not prevent Lucia from living until the 1980s). Over time, mental wounds are replaced by physical ones: a knife blow from a pimp in 1938 will clearly explain to the writer the nature of the absurd, and the Nazi occupation will teach him to resist death without any hope of avoiding it.

There will be no consolation: everything is decay, and there is only one solution – gracelessness. “Is it possible for me to stay here some time?” — asked the main character of “Happy Days,” based on Beckett by Balabanov. The hero of “Genius” also has nowhere to run. Family life with the pretty tennis player Suzanne is a kind of film adaptation of the same “Angelus” by Millet: underground fighters who hid from the Gestapo in Roussillon live a mournful peasant routine, collecting potatoes in the fields. The years will transform Suzanne from a girl in love to the irritated companion of a depressed genius (Sandrine Bonnaire). Here the director finds some kind of drama; a rather vulgar interpretation of the bizarre hardships of family life will allow James Marsh to quote Michael Haneke’s “Love” in the finale. Watching the scenes with the dove is perhaps awkward, but not as awkward as watching field work in Vichy France: agriculture is a complete disaster; it seems that the director has never participated in the banal procedure of digging up potatoes. Much has been missed (it’s a pity that there is no episode with a letter to Eisenstein and a request for enrollment in VGIK), but it’s even sadder that the listed real and fictional episodes of the biography do not add up to any coherent picture that could explain the nature of Beckett’s talent or the phenomenon his letters. The film passes in anticipation of the hero. What’s even worse is that this is categorically not funny; humor, the master key chosen by the writer for the absurd and sorrowful world, is discarded by Marsh as unnecessary. He has everything innocently wide open.

One could probably take comfort in the fact that the very demonstration of the meaninglessness of words and actions is a very Beckettian approach to describing life, if at times the main characters – Sam and his wife – did not demonstrate devilish practicality. For example, when they think about an inheritance or talk about how profitable it is to write in French, then receiving a double fee from publishers: first for the manuscript, and then for the author’s translation into English. Well, a potential viewer of “Genius” can also show practicality. For example, instead of a long new film, watch the short directorial debut of Beckett himself, starring Buster Keaton. It’s called simply “Film”, although the title “Genius” would be much more appropriate here.

In theaters from April 4

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