DANCE FIRST - Mark Reviews Movies

Dance First, Magnolia Pictures

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | August 8, 2024

Samuel Beckett isn't exactly the kind of writer whose life story calls for a straightforward biographical approach. To the credit of the makers of Dance First, this movie isn't entirely paint-by-numbers, since it's more a series of interconnected episodes about the key relationships and the assorted betrayals within them of Beckett's life. The present-tense narrative of the story has an older Beckett, played by Gabriel Byrne, discussing his failures and regrets with a slightly older version of himself, also played by Byrne. The just-past-middle-age Beckett thinks things are bad, but the older one is partly here to convince his younger self not to worry. They'll get worse.

Screenwriter Neil Forsyth offers up an intriguing approach to the typical biography, in that the movie is an inherently introspective one for its protagonist. That's certainly the right approach for the subject, best known for his absurdist dramas—Waiting for Godot especially—and other writing that seemed to pour from his bleakly philosophical consciousness. The running theme here is of a man who appears to have little concern or affection for those around him on the outside, while spending a lot of his interior life in a state of mixed remorse, resentment, and insecurity.

In theory, all of that comes through on the pages of his plays, novels, and other pieces of writing, but the overwhelming majority of Beckett's work is entirely absent from director James Marsh's movie. There's a brief glimpse of his one-act Play, in which three characters—a man, his wife, and his mistress—are trapped in separate urns, and a slightly lengthier discussion of the wasteland of his most famous play, but the filmmakers seem to expect either a significant understanding of Beckett's writing or a complete disinterest in that topic.

That it's not clear which expectation they have for us is part of the problem, although the bigger one is the movie's own separation of the artist from his art. It's refreshing that the filmmakers don't try to tie the biographical details of Beckett's life directly to his work, but the sacrifice of basically any discussion or even acknowledgement of the bulk of the author's output probably isn't worth it.

Instead, we watch as Byrne's miserable elder Beckett recalls other miserable chapters of his former life, with both sections shot in stark black-and-white. The misery starts almost immediately, as a young Samuel (played by Cillian Hollywood and Caleb Johnston-Miller at different ages) is routinely harangued by his judgmental mother (played by Lisa Dwyer Hogg) and finds his only joy in spending time with his father (played by Barry O'Connor), who here dies earlier in Samuel's life than he did in reality. Either way, the mother's condemnatory nature extends to the early writings of an early-20s Samuel (played by Fionn O'Shea), who flees his native Ireland for Paris to pursue his writing career.

There, he meets and becomes a sort-of apprentice to his hero, fellow Irishman James Joyce (Aidan Gillen), whose own career is in decline and who recommends that Samuel keep his writing as a hobby, not a profession. They discuss craft by day, and at night, Samuel becomes an escort for Joyce's "mad" daughter Lucia (Gráinne Good), who dances the night away and becomes infatuated with the severe but mild-mannered aspiring author.

These are just the start of the many flashbacks of the narrative, which are framed within the dialogues between the older Becketts, sitting and conversing in an ancient cave. That comes to be after Beckett wins the Nobel Prize for Literature and, certain he doesn't deserve the honor, contemplates who among the many people he has wronged in his life deserves the prize money. The contenders include the memory of his mother, Lucia by way of the asylum where she has lived for most of her life, and someone or something connected to friend and fellow French Resistance fighter Alfred Peron (Robert Aramayo).

There's also Suzanne, his lover (played by Léonie Lojkine) during the war and now his wife (played by Sandrine Bonnaire). Whenever the older of the two elder Becketts mentions her name, though, the younger one hesitates to talk about her and how he has harmed her—and continues to do so by way of his professional relationship and intimate bond with translator Barbara Bray (Maxine Peake).

Marsh's movie is mainly an exercise in mood, then, although it's admittedly and slightly more complex than simply watching a sullen Beckett recall his stages of earlier brooding. There's a level of detachment—both in the storytelling, which feels more akin to isolated vignettes than a narrative, and in the character, who keeps his emotions bottled up—that says as much about the character as his monologue-as-dialogue confessionals. Where does all of that feeling go? Presumably, it's in the writing, which, again, is barely touched upon in Dance First, making the whole enterprise feeling as if there's a sizeable gap in the story it's trying to tell.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products