Dance First

Drama • NR • Directed by: James Marsh • 104 minutes

Literary genius Samuel Beckett (Gabriel Byrne) lived a life of many parts: Parisian bon vivant, World War II Resistance fighter, Nobel Prize-winning playwright, philandering husband, recluse. But despite all the adulation that came his way he was acutely aware of his own failings. In 1969, having been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, an embarrassed Beckett simply wanted to be rid of it and its prize money. Exploring the man through his mistakes and fraught relationships with James Joyce (Aidan Gillen), his wife Suzanne (Sandrine Bonnaire) and his lover Barbara Bray (Maxine Peake), film is a sweeping account of Beckett’s life, titled for his famous ethos “Dance first, think later.”