MONTREAL — Was Mordecai Richler a courageous seeker of truth and justice in the Jewish tradition or a mean-spirited polemicist out of his depth when it came to Quebec?
Mordecai Richler poses outside an eatery in his old neighbourhood soon after his return to Montreal in the early 1970s.
A new documentary film on Mordecai Richler directed by veteran Montreal journalist Francine Pelletier offers an intimate and generous portrait of the man through interviews with a score or more of people, from childhood friends to other writers such as Margaret Atwood to sovereigntist Jean-François Lisée.
Most are friendly and all are thoughtful as they reflect on Richler almost 10 years after his death.
The one-hour Mordecai Richler: The Last of the Wild Jews will air on Bravo, Dec. 19 at 8 p.m., and will be repeated Dec. 25 at 7 p.m.
Pelletier positions Richler among the brash (mainly) second-generation American Jewish writers and comedians of his age (and somewhat older) whose frankness about being Jewish shook up their elders’ historic fear of drawing attention to themselves.
The expression “wild Jews” was coined by early 20th-century Russian Jewish writer Isaak Babel who longed for a new bolder, more manly Jew.
Co-written with recent Richler biographer Charles Foran, the film, like Foran’s book, is less about Richler’s literary legacy than his complex, and in many ways unattractive, personality.
Why did he first rebel against and, some would charge, ridicule the Jewish community, then belittle the burgeoning Canadian cultural identity, and, in his last and fiercest crusade, skewer Quebec nationalism in the most wounding way possible?
Three comments stand out in the film.
His widow, the gracious and devoted Florence, says, without a trace of resentment, that “It was always understood that Mordecai and his work came first, and me second.”
New York-based writer Adam Gopnik observes that Richler equated Quebec nationalism with the “folkloric fascism of Europe,” of which Jews were a target, and he never wanted to understand francophone Quebecers’ view of history.
Richler’s good friend, Gazette cartoonist Terry Mosher (Aislin), comments that Richler’s battle against the separatists and language laws began with an admirable “righteous indignation,” but Richler “went too far and it backfired on him,” and he thankfully returned to writing literature before his death at 70.
What’s clear is that Richler had a very different private persona from the abrasive public one. Florence reveals that she grew used to his long silences even at home. Others describe him as a shy person, uncomfortable in social situations. To his friends and immediate family, he was loyal and loving.
Much is made of the influence on the young Richler of his maternal grandfather, the revered chassidic Rabbi Yudel Rosenberg, who was an expert on the mythical Golem, a supernatural protector of disempowered Jews. Richler grew up when antisemitism was still commonplace.
Globe and Mail literary editor Martin Levin posits that, eventually, Canadian Jews came to embrace Richler as “a cultural icon,” realizing that his often unflattering portrayals of Jews ultimately allowed them to be more comfortable with their identity.
Canadian nationalists also forgave him long ago, but no such reconciliation has taken place with francophone Quebecers, the target of his last and fiercest crusade.
In an interview, Pelletier doubted that will ever change much. Older people have made up their minds, and young Quebecers aren’t very familiar with Richler. Pelletier isn’t aware of any French school that includes his books in its curriculum.
She had difficulty even finding a narrator for the French version of the documentary. Well-known actor Guy Nadon initially hesitated before accepting the job, she said.
The French film is to be aired on Radio-Canada and the specialty channel ARTV some time next year and will include a few more French Quebec interviewees. It will also be screened at the annual Rendez-vous du cinema québécois festival in February.
Pelletier, who works in both French and English, describes herself as “not a typical Québécois” in that she has read Richler’s novels and “knew him a bit.”
“I was relieved that some of the English [like Mosher, Gopnik and former Globe and Mail columnist Rick Salutin] say they think Richler didn’t get it right [about Quebec]. I was afraid I’d have all the English saying how courageous he was, and all the French how terrible.”
