{"id":2938,"date":"2005-03-19T15:04:00","date_gmt":"2005-03-19T15:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2005\/03\/denys-arcands-dynamic-triple-bill\/"},"modified":"2005-03-19T15:04:00","modified_gmt":"2005-03-19T15:04:00","slug":"denys-arcands-dynamic-triple-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2005\/03\/denys-arcands-dynamic-triple-bill.html","title":{"rendered":"Denys Arcand’s dynamic triple-bill"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

You know how some films just grow on you? I saw <\/span>The Barbarian Invasions<\/i> (2003) at the Vancouver film festival two years ago, and didn\u2019t get around to seeing it a second time until a few weeks ago \u2014 and I find it has occupied my thoughts quite a bit since then.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is partly because I was working on an article on the subject; and partly because I watched the film on a DVD double-bill with its predecessor <\/span>The Decline of the American Empire<\/a><\/i> (1986), which I had probably last seen when I was studying Denys Arcand\u2019s films at UBC almost a decade ago; and partly because the closing song \u2014 Francoise Hardy\u2019s \u2018L\u2019amitie\u2019 \u2014 is just one of those really haunting, wistful, elegiac tunes that fits perfectly over the last images of this film, and fit even more when I tracked down the lyrics and ran them through an online translation engine.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is also partly because, a few nights ago, I finally watched the DVD\u2019s one bonus feature \u2014 a 50-minute promotional TV program in which most of the actors sit around a dinner table and discuss the film\u2019s themes and such. (You <\/span>could<\/i> say the <\/span>Canadian DVD<\/a> offers one other bonus feature, inasmuch as it includes both a longer version of the film and a shorter version, but I have no interest in the shorter version, at this point; apparently only the shorter version is available on the <\/span>American DVD<\/a>.)<\/span><\/p>\n

In one of several excellent posts <\/span>here<\/a>, M. Leary observes: \u201cArcand\u2019s genius is that he has built a drama around a large number of characters that are completely round, even dare I say \u2018opaque\u2019. . . . We are allowed to walk around in the story with no leading from the director in any specific direction.\u201d And that interesting mix of sympathy and detachment extends even to this TV program \u2014 while all the actors sit around trying to make sense of the characters they played and what their story means to two generations of Quebeckers, we are told that Arcand declined (no pun intended!) to take part in the show because he had said everything he wanted to say in the film itself. But then, in the very last minutes, we hear Arcand\u2019s voice, as he explains the joy he feels when he sees actors give flesh to the characters he has written.<\/span><\/p>\n

The program is, thus, completely of a piece with the film it was intended to promote. And the actors make some very interesting, even pungent, statements of their own. For example, Remy Girard suggests \u2014 a bit too optimistically, I think \u2014 that \u201cinvasion\u201d is not necessarily a bad thing if it can transform and improve an otherwise stagnant environment; and one actress notes that to give someone the gift of life is also to give them the gift of death (the film is all about terminal illness, and Arcand has said it was motivated by his own realization that he would probably not be around to see his daughter grow as old as he would like).<\/span><\/p>\n

Why do I say \u201ctriple-bill\u201d in the title of this post? Because, while <\/span>The Barbarian Invasions<\/i> is a sequel to <\/span>The Decline of the American Empire<\/i>, Arcand also brings a few characters from <\/span>Jesus of Montreal<\/a><\/i> (1989) into his newest film. Back in the 1980s, Arcand had kind of intended <\/span>Jesus<\/i> as a follow-up or response to Decline<\/i> \u2014 after exploring the dead-end hedonism that comes when people abandon dead-end ideologies, he wanted to push and probe and see if there was any greater, deeper, more mysterious sort of meaning out there \u2014 and I think it is very, very interesting that he brought the spirit of <\/span>Jesus<\/i> into the world of <\/span>Decline<\/i> when he decided to make a sequel to the latter film.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In the articles and lectures I have done on Jesus films, I have always made a point of explaining how <\/span>Decline<\/i> provides the social, cultural, political, provincial, moral, and even dramatic backdrop to <\/span>Jesus of Montreal<\/i>. Now that characters from <\/span>Jesus<\/i> have been explicitly brought into the world of <\/span>Decline<\/i>, via <\/span>Barbarian<\/i>, I think this point needs to be emphasized even more.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is especially interesting to see that Constance Lazure (Johanne-Marie Tremblay), the compassionate single mother in <\/span>Jesus<\/i> who had the affair with the priest and then went on to join the theatre group founded in Daniel Coulombe\u2019s honour, has gone on to become a nun by the time <\/span>Barbarian<\/i> begins. In <\/span>Jesus<\/i>, Constance and the other people who found the theatre group seem to represent, allegorically, the \u201corganized religion\u201d that rose up after Jesus died, and the fact that Mireille walks away from the group comes across like an indictment of the others, who may be on the way to losing the purity of Daniel\u2019s vision, just as the Church supposedly lost the purity of Jesus\u2019 vision. So does Constance becoming a nun \u2014 a servant of the established Church \u2014 make this parallel even more pronounced? Or does it show that she has turned her back on the presumably corrupted theatre group and found something more true, more good, more meaningful? (In fact, now that I think about it, while <\/span>Barbarian<\/i> spends a lot of time looking at how the children of Remy and Diane have rebelled against their libertine parents \u2014 one by becoming a \u201cpuritan capitalist\u201d, the other by becoming a heroin junkie \u2014 I find myself wondering what Constance\u2019s offspring made of her decision to become a nun.)<\/span><\/p>\n

It is also interesting to see that Fr. Leclerc (Gilles Pelletier), the jaded priest who once said that institutions live longer than individuals, is now concerned about the apparent demise of his institution. (In fact, he claims in the new film that the demise of Catholicism in Quebec can be dated to a single moment in the mid-1960s \u2014 which may be somewhat at odds with his claim in the earlier film that the churches are regularly crowded with people who come looking for something to believe in.)<\/span><\/p>\n

The only other character who appears to have returned is the Security Guard played by Gaston Lepage, who worked for the church in the earlier film and now works at the hospital. A few other actors have come back, too, but they seem to be playing different characters \u2014 a few, like Remy Girard and Yves Jacques, appeared in both <\/span>Decline<\/i> and <\/span>Jesus<\/i> and are now reprising their <\/span>Decline<\/i> characters, rather than their <\/span>Jesus<\/i> characters; while others, like Roy Dupuis, Sylvie Drapeau and Denis Bouchard just seem to have been given different roles altogether.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gadzooks, that\u2019s a lot more than I intended to say when I started this post. Anyway, all three films are very good on their own, but together, they\u2019re quite the experience.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know how some films just grow on you? I saw The Barbarian Invasions (2003) at the Vancouver film festival two years ago, and didn\u2019t get around to seeing it a second time until a few weeks ago \u2014 and I find it has occupied my thoughts quite a bit since then. This is partly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nDenys Arcand's dynamic triple-bill<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"You know how some films just grow on you? 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