Category Archives: Canada

Movie: Jesus of Montreal — Jésus de Montréal (1989)

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Jesus of Montreal was directed by Denys Arcand, who also directed The Decline of the American Empire and The Barbarian Invasions, and some call these three movies his trilogy. Although Jesus of Montreal won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the Cannes International Film Festival, compared to The Decline of the American Empire (nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award) and The Barbarian Invasions (won the Academy Award), its popularity in Japan was one step below the others, and I hear it is difficult to get it on DVD. All three works are certainly very well-made, but I feel that Jesus of Montreal is my favorite of the three. This movie intellectually explains Christianity, is a humorous love story with charming characters, has interesting story development, and is original and artistic. I think this movie has elements that appeal to Japanese people.

Quebec, as represented by Montreal, is unique within Canada. Because it was originally a French territory, the official languages even now are English and French, and the predominant religion is Catholicism. Resentment towards the federal Canadian government is strong, and they have a unique socialist system that was established by means of an election. Until recently, there was quite a violent anti-Canada independence movement, and even still, there is about equal support for the Quebec sovereignty movement and for the party in favor of staying within the Canadian government. My friend who is a lawyer from Quebec said his neighborhood when he was a kid was poor, and riots happened quite frequently.

First, Quebec intellectuals, as represented by Denys Arcand, underwent a revolution to break free from the influence of Catholicism, and chose Marxism to support their revolution. However, they gradually became disillusioned with Marxism, too. This disillusionment is symbolized by the hospital seen in The Barbarian Invasions that is run with socialist principles, where helping patients is secondary to bureaucracy and patients are always left in the hallways.

Jesus of Montreal criticizes Christianity as a religious authority, but the tone is very smart, refreshing, and full of charm. In this movie, there are two plays within the story, and the plays within the main story make up about one-third of the whole movie. I almost stopped watching this movie because the first play within the story was too absurd and boring, but I think the boringness is Denys Arcand’s criticism of some untalented artists who arrogantly smile and say, “Can you understand the greatness of this piece of art?” when they make boring piece like this one. The second play within the story was very beautiful, and I was unexpectedly drawn in.

This movie starts with Daniel—an actor who is extremely talented, but not interested in mainstream commercialism, and does underground theatre work—being asked by a priest of a big Catholic Church to produce a play that depicts the life of Jesus. The priest says, “Do it however you like,” so he seems like a very supportive, understanding, and kind person. Daniel recruits a woman who works at a homeless shelter and was an upperclassman at his drama school, an actor who works as a stand-in in pornographic movies, an actor who seems difficult and only partakes in plays that he really likes, and a young actress who appears in cheap-looking commercials that try to attract viewers using only her body and is looked down on as “someone with no acting ability”; with this crew, Daniel creates a wonderful play, and he receives high praises from the audience and critics. The actors working with him realize their talents as actors for the first time, and they are excited and happy.

However, due to Daniel’s interpretation of Jesus as, “a man with a strong and kind spirit and not the Son of God, but the child of a Roman soldier and Mary,” the priest gets pressure from a superior in the Catholic Church; worried that he may lose his position, the priest tries to discontinue the running of the play. Through this, it becomes clearer and clearer that the priest who appeared to be respectable at first glance, is in fact quite unholy. The movie ends with a tragedy that is caused by the conflict between the protesting audience and the church trying to stop the play.

I think Daniel symbolizes what Jesus would look like if he were born in modern times. The actor who performs in the boring play at the beginning of the movie, when praised, points to Daniel saying, “There is an actor better than me,” resembling John the Baptist’s prediction of the arrival of Jesus. The way the four actors cast their jobs aside to work with Daniel resembles how believers at that time threw away their assets to follow Jesus. The actress who specializes in commercials and is scornfully told, “Your acting ability is only your ass,” gives unconditional love to Daniel, who treats her with respect—particularly reminiscent of Mary Magdalene. The moment Daniel dies is like when Jesus is on the cross. The miracle of Jesus bringing back the dead and giving sight to the blind happens after Daniel’s death. Also, after Daniel’s death, there is a scene where the talented lawyer proposes that the two actors that followed Daniel closely create a theatrical company to convey Daniel’s great achievements. These two actors seem to symbolize Jesus’s apostles, such as Peter or Paul. “We are happy to start a theatrical company if it is not commercial and it has direct interaction with the audience, as was Daniel’s intention,” the two answer, demonstrating a sincere desire to carry on the spirit of Jesus; but something like, “This could be a great success,” also glimmers in their eyes. This may be an omen for what their future may hold, parallel to how the Christian church that started with a modest feeling became corrupt as a big political organization after the Roman Empire officially recognized it.

Anyhow, this movie is very enjoyable and it resonates with the heart. I’m glad I didn’t stop watching in the first 2 minutes…

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Movie: Les Invasions barbares – The Barbarian Invasions (2003)

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Director Denys Arcand, who made The Decline of the American Empire in 1986, made this sequel, The Barbarian Invasions, 17 years later. Unlike how The Decline of the American Empire focused on the school dean Dominique, The Barbarian Invasions focuses on the lives of Rémy and Louise, but the main characters are Rémy and Louise’s son Sébastien and Diane’s daughter Nathalie.

Sébastien, who works vigorously and earns a lot of money as an investor in London, is informed that his father Rémy is sick with cancer, so he and his fiancée Gaëlle return to his hometown Montreal. Since his parents are divorced, Sébastien doesn’t have many memories of living with his father, but upon his mother’s request, he decides to make his father’s last days enjoyable.

This hospital that is ruled by labor unions is very inefficient, and the patients are put into the hallways even though there are many vacant hospital rooms. Utilizing the power of money, Sébastien secures a private room for Rémy; he invites his father’s former coworkers—Diane, Dominique, Pierre, and Claude—and the private room becomes something like a class reunion and a party. Pierre, who despised the idea of being married, is now married with a young wife, is working hard every day to raise a small child, and really looks happy. Claude, a gay man who had uncommitted relationships with many different men, seems to be living a stable life with a partner. Sébastien bribes former students to come to the hospital and tell Rémy how excellent of a teacher he was, which delights Rémy.

Rémy’s cancer is already terminal; it cannot be treated, and Rémy suffers from pain. Sébastien plans to ease the pain with heroin, so Diane introduces him to her daughter Nathalie, who uses heroin. Sébastien hires Nathalie to care for his father by administering him heroin. Through the course of this, Sébastien and Nathalie become attracted to each other; Nathalie decides to stop using heroin and follows through.

Since Rémy approved of the socialization of Quebec and supported the hospital’s labor union, he made up his mind to not complain about the poor medical treatment he got as a result of what he supported, but what gave him peace in his final moments was his son, who succeeded in the capitalist society that Rémy so denied. With death close at hand, he sadly realizes that, even though he tried hard and played around with many things, he didn’t accomplish anything; but he unexpectedly finds that his best achievement is his child, whom he didn’t realize until then was an achievement, and passes away peacefully.

Quebec is unique within Canada. This area was historically a French settlement in the 17th century, but it was occupied by the British army since the Seven Years’ War in the 18th century. USA, independent from Great Britain since 1776, invited Quebec to join the United States since they understood the anti-British sentiment present in Quebec, but Quebec decided to remain in Canada after careful consideration. However, Quebec continued to oppose Canadian federalism after Canada’s independence, and in Quebec, French is the only official language; even now, a little less than half the residents of Quebec insists on independence from Canada.

The socialization of Quebec that progressed since the 1960s and did not rely on violence was called the “Quiet Revolution,” and was founded on nationalism and social democracy (leftist thought); it established anti-Catholic laws, socialistic medical insurance policies, and strong labor standard laws that gave people the right to go on strike. Canada is the model child of the Commonwealth of Nations, and incorporates mild socialism, like Europe, regarding issues such as medical care and working conditions, but Quebec took it one step further.

Since director Denys Arcand was born in 1941, he was greatly influenced by the Quiet Revolution in Quebec. The characters of The Decline of the American Empire and The Barbarian Invasions are generally the same generation as or just slightly younger than director Denys Arcand, since they were in their forties in 1986. In the 1980s, this generation wondered what the doctrine for life would be, since Catholicism and capitalism were both weakening, and Marxism turned out to be disappointing; but capitalism remained healthier than they thought it would, and after all, family—which tends to be overlooked—is the core of our life. This is the point of this movie. All things considered, I am surprised that the six actors are able to star together in both movies. In 17 years, someone could have died, someone may have resigned as an actor, or the negotiation of the performance fee for the actors may not be easy due to the status of the actor having gone way up or down, but everyone seems to be in good spirits and gives a good performance. I think as actors, they recognize the value of this movie, and that director Denys Arcand has the power to attract actors.

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Movie: Le Déclin de l’empire Américain – The Decline of the American Empire (1986)

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The Decline of the American Empire is a grandiose title, but since the movie director Denys Arcand studied history and is knowledgeable about the Roman Empire, he used a historic concept to express his theme. The meaning of the title is not clear if you only watch the movie casually. I would say it is nearly impossible to understand what this movie wants to say if you only watch it once. If the viewer does not understand the intention of the movie, I think they may be frustrated. In fact, I read some of these frustrated thoughts after I watched the movie.

Dominique is the dean of the school of history at a university in Quebec; she published a book recently in which she proposes the theory that the strong trend happening today (1980s) of people pursuing individual happiness is correlated with the decline of the nation. Diane, a teaching assistant in the history department, works part-time at a broadcasting station as the host of an interview program. In an interview on this station, Dominique brings up as examples of the pursuit of individual happiness the free and uncontrolled lifestyle of the intelligentsia, the liberation from conventional sexual morality, and an increase in women not marrying. Dominique is of course single, and Diane is a divorcee with a daughter.

The professors in the history department led by Dominique gather at one of their houses in order to enjoy dinner. Professors Rémy, Pierre, and Claude, and graduate student Alan make up the men, while Dominique, Diane, undergraduate student Danielle, and Rémy’s wife Louise make up the women. Rémy, Pierre, Claude, Dominique, and Diane are intelligentsia, and have arguments about grand topics. Rémy is married to Louise, but is involved in all sorts of extramarital affairs. Pierre was married, but wanted freedom and so divorced, and he now dates Danielle. Claude is gay. Diane, while the other four people have developed their careers smoothly, laments that she doesn’t have a great career since she is divorced and has to spend most of her time raising her child; Louise consoles her by saying that having a child is life’s greatest accomplishment. Louise gets carried away and starts to say that Dominique, Pierre, and Claude, who don’t have children, are missing something important even though they have successful careers, and the three people, especially Dominique, get annoyed.

At the climax of the dinner party, the members listen to the later part of Dominique’s interview. She continues on in the interview to say that after Marxism-Leninism collapsed, there was no longer a principle to guide people, and society without a principle is doomed to collapse. Louise, who had not been participating in the loud argument between the intellectuals, innocently objects without hesitation, “I don’t know why you say the times we live in are bad. We may actually be living in wonderful new times full of scientific advancements.” Dominique interprets these comments as being a personal attack—scorning her work and pitying her lonely life resulting from prioritizing her career—and discloses her relations with both Pierre and Louise’s husband Rémy. To make matters worse, she cruelly notes Rémy’s excitement to have relations with a powerful and intellectual woman such as herself, Rémy’s boss. Louise learns that Diane also had relations with her husband Rémy for two years, and is shocked.

Since 99.9% of this movie is conversation, and 95% of that is each person bragging about their sexual exploits, one would think that is the focus of the movie, but I think that the focus of this movie is quite different. To say it briefly, it is the confusion people feel when their conventional value systems are collapsing. One was the value system of the Catholic Church, which always had a big influence on Quebec society. The other was Marxism-Leninism, which had captured the hearts of young people of the 1950s and 60s. I think Marxism was a bright guiding principle for those who specialized in studying history. However, it had collapsed by the 80s. As a result, pursuit of individual happiness and narcissism spread during the 80s, as seen with the trends that Dominique mentions of people preferring free love over marriage, and the thought that a family and children are burdensome and snatch away one’s freedom. Also, this sense of liberation produced a new culture in the 80s that included acceptance of interracial as well as gay relations.

This idea seems to have been very novel in 1986, and this movie received high praises. However, it seems that director Denys Arcand grew up with the times, and made a sequel, The Barbarian Invasions, addressing this theme 17 years later. I plan to talk about this movie in a separate entry.

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Movie: Incendies (2010)

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Twin brother and sister Simon and Jeanne live in Quebec, Canada when their mother Nawal suddenly dies. From their mother’s will, the two children learn that not only is their father that they until now believed to be dead is alive somewhere on the earth, but also that they have an older brother. Nawal entrusted her lawyer with two sealed letters and asks her two children in her will to track down their father and older brother in order to deliver these letters to them. Jeanne sets out to the Middle East, Nawal’s birthplace, to carry out her mother’s final wish and search for the hidden past of her mother. This land seems to be Lebanon, although the movie does not specify the country. Are her father and older brother still alive? If so, where and what kind of life are they living?

In short, this is a mystery solving movie, but it gives the impression that this story was created based on facts and is close to reality or even possibly based on the author’s personal experience because of the Lebanon-like scenery and the violent confrontation between Christians and Muslims killing each other which actually happened in Lebanon’s history. However, as this story develops and goes from being simply a sad story to being an improbably terrifying story, I feel, “Come on, this shouldn’t be a Greek tragedy,” and have lost interest by the end of the movie. It would be really terrible if this story was true. In fact, I think many viewers are overwhelmed by the terror of this movie.

However, when you think about this movie calmly, many things don’t make sense and bring up many questions. To name a few… The mother and older brother are too close in age. Also, since the mother suddenly loses consciousness one day and soon dies without regaining consciousness, it is not likely there was time to contrive this mystery left behind in her will. The mother falls into situations during the civil war where she could have died many times, yet she mysteriously survives while countless people around her die one after another. Furthermore, there are too many miraculous accidental encounters that can’t possibly happen, and people remember the mother and older brother well, even though it was thirty years ago. The unconscious mother in the hospital, who fell into a coma when she learned a shocking truth, somehow seems to have enough intellectual control to write the elaborate letters given to her children. Because of these inconsistencies, the movie itself feels like it’s all a lie. Even though this movie depicts deep human tragedy, it is not believable.

After watching this movie, I learned that this movie was Denis Villeneuve’s movie adaptation of the play written by Wajdi Mouawad and finally understood. Wajdi Mouawad left Lebanon to avoid the Lebanese Civil War and immigrated to Canada in 1983 when he was 15 years old. Because he was Lebanese and knew what happened in Lebanon, this play is set in a Lebanon-like Middle East country, but the intention of the play was not, “I want to convey the tragedy of the Lebanese Civil War.”

I think the movie adaptation happened because the play was very powerful, but the original work inevitably becomes something different whenever a play is adapted to a movie. The play expresses an abstract concept by borrowing the Middle East as a stage, but, because the movie takes a very realistic approach, the movie gives an impression that it is based on what actually happened and that there is a political opinion and agenda. Of course Wajdi Mouawad who had to leave his homeland may have some kind of political agenda, but he probably wrote this play out of his ambition as an artist to carry on the tradition of Greek tragedy and to be some form of a modern Shakespeare. Or possibly he wanted to present the question of, “Who is this ‘God’ that causes Muslims and Christians who live amongst each other to kill each other?” At any rate, his goal seems to be to play an intellectual game in the Middle East, rather than communicate the truth. The answer to this game was the stylish formula “1+1=1.”

Surely “the arts” are “artificial” and the stage and movie are certainly “artificial,” but there is a subtle difference between the two. For a person watching a play, a trivial discrepancy between facts is not a problem if there is a powerful theme. The audience doesn’t demand “realism” because there are too many limitations on a stage to present reality, but the audience often demands “realism” from a movie. Certain plays are smoothly adapted to movies and the audience doesn’t have the feeling that something is not right. However, because this movie uses too much of a documentary touch and has an impression that it is based on reality, the audience cannot immediately understand it as a magnificent Greek tragedy. Anyway, even if they don’t understand it, many viewers seem to be overwhelmed by the powerfulness of the movie and are emotionally moved.

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Movie: Monsieur Lazhar (2011)

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In an elementary school in Montreal, Canada, an Algerian immigrant, Bashir Lazhar, is hired to fill in for a female teacher who commits suicide in the classroom. He straightforwardly faces the students in the homeroom who haven’t yet recovered from the shock of their dead teacher and opens the hearts of these children. However, Lazhar carries his own sad past and secrets. Lazhar experienced the violent civil war in his home country and came to Canada as a refugee. His wife and children were killed by terrorists; he has been trying to get permanent residence in Canada as a political exile; and he didn’t actually have any qualifications as a teacher or experience teaching. When the principal finds out about Lazhar’s lack of qualifications, Lazhar is fired, but he leaves a powerful impact on the students.

This movie was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and it was praised highly in many countries, but I was not very impressed with this movie. First of all, it seems strained that the teacher would hang herself in the classroom. Did she choose this time and place for her suicide so that the male student involved in her problem could discover her? At one point, Lazhar wonders out loud why she would commit suicide in the classroom, but a coworker who was close to her just says, “Because she seemed to be a little bit mentally ill for some time.” Since the teacher was supposedly popular with the children, why wouldn’t any of the students or surrounding people think to question her mental condition? Also, why would Lazhar who had no teaching experience suddenly apply to fill in for the teacher who committed suicide? Furthermore, it is not very convincing that Lazhar would be hired at the school to teach without permanent residence and without the school performing a background check.

At any rate, the movie seems to focus on the students that are wounded from their teacher’s suicide, and, despite his more profound injury, Lazhar is able to heal with his cheerful attitude; the story doesn’t seem to care how he got there, or maybe the intention is to make the message more moving by having a dramatic story. When a suicide happens within the school, a school must proceed very cautiously in order to avoid inadvertently causing any more trouble. Since suicide is such a serious issue, there must be a serious buildup that leads to the suicide; however, the way the movie used the suicide as a tool to move the story along without considering the background of the suicide was not convincing. It should have been the boy who drove the teacher to commit suicide who was most wounded by the teacher’s suicide, but the movie widely incorporates the whole class and the development of the story mainly relies on the particular little girl who opens up to the protagonist Lazhar. Because of all this, the message of the movie did not reach me.

This movie’s background is that Abdelaziz Bouteflika was elected as the president of Algeria in 1999 to put an end to the Algerian Civil War that had been developing over the last 10 years; he was forced to compromise with the opposing group within the country and so he acquitted the past political crimes of extremists by granting amnesties. Because Lazhar’s wife published a book that criticized this, his family was threatened by extremists and eventually his family was killed by terrorists.

Mohamed Fellag, the theatre actor and comedian that played Lazhar, also has the history of escaping from Algeria. Triggered by a bombing of his stage in 1995, he took refuge in Tunisia and, from there, France. This movie was based off of a one-man play and the play’s author—Évelyne de la Chenelière—highly recommended Mohamed Fellag for the role of Lazhar, but it is said the movie director—Philippe Falardeau—thought Fellag’s acting was too theatrical and did not immediately support the choice. However, Fellag’s training on the stage and real-life experience seemed to prove enough to persuade the director.

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