'Dance First' Reviews: Samuel Beckett Gets the Biopic Treatment

         On August 9, 2024, Magnolia Pictures releases 'Dance First', which also has a streaming release on August 16, 2024. In the biopic, Samuel Beckett is introduced to a new generation as the iconic playwright's past, including his stint as a WWII Resistance fighter is presented. The ensemble cast includes Aidan Gillen, Gabriel Byrne, Fionn O'Shea, Maxine Peake, Bronagh Gallagher, Robert Aramayo, and Sandrine Bonnaire. The film has received a mixed reception from critics, currently holding at 53%, but what did the critics say?

Image Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

        Hugh Barnes of The Arts Desk praises the film, stating, "Byrne gives a thoughtful performance as a successful writer clinging desperately to his own imperative of failure so memorably expressed in the 1983 novella Worstward Ho: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Adding, "Scottish screenwriter Neil Forsyth doesn’t actually use that line but he gives Bonnaire a wonderful speech at the Play premiere: “You and I, Sam, we are not made for victory. We need to fight. So let us retreat from victory. Please don’t let us win.” His terse dialogue is also enhanced by the elegant chiaroscuro of Antonio Paladino’s cinematography.        

        Peter Bradshaw of Guardian notes, "But surely the scene stealer is Aiden Gillen, with his very enjoyable impression of James Joyce (has Mr Gillen performed in Tom Stoppard’s Travesties yet?). Gillen’s twinkle-eyed yet faintly malign portrayal shows how predatory Joyce was towards Beckett, his young amanuensis and translator in prewar Paris, with an almost abusive scheme to pair him off with his troubled daughter Lucia (Gráinne Good) and so get this young woman off his hands. When Beckett let him down, Joyce did not forgive, and perhaps a good deal of Beckett’s creative minimalism can be seen as a traumatised reaction to Joycean giganticness."

        Roger Moore of Movie Nation writes, "One simply could not do better than have the great Irish actor Gabriel Byrne playing Beckett as a reluctant Nobel laureate...but it was never going to be easy to fit all that Beckett was, with generous samples of his work, into a 100 minute movie." Adding, "O’Shea gets across the conflicted, emotionally stunted egoist consumed by his art and Gillen auditions for a Great Joyce biopic to come. But Byrne will only get one crack at Beckett, and it isn’t great. With Joyce, as well as Beckett, we’re unlikely to ever get more than one film telling that life story. “Dance First” isn’t exactly bad. It’s just too narrow in focus, too incomplete, a biopic that leaves us “waiting” for an elusive, mythic “author” to truly make his entrance."

       David Rooney of Hollywood Reporter says, "Cerebral men of letters often make unrewarding screen protagonists, spending too much time in their own heads to fully engage as characters. That’s sadly the case in the capably acted but emotionally lifeless Dance First."

Photo Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures