I bought a DVD of "The Barbarian Invasions" on a whim because I'd enjoyed Arcand's earlier "Jesus of Montreal" and...well...I was in the mood for something French. I just finished watching it...and this movie is so...so lyrical and elegant, and in all the right ways. It's a story about people and not explosions and special effects. It's a tale of love (without the overwrought drama brought to the subject by most modern movies) and understanding (without the "Hallmark" syrup ALSO brought to the subject by most modern movies). It's about death and the realization that sometimes, even though you've lived that doesn't necessarily mean you've lived. It's about how you can know someone and not know them at all...yet still be influenced and overpowered by them, even as they do not recognize their influence. I'm still in awe at how Denys Arcand pulled it off.
The performances are magnificent. Not one false note (well...maybe the crazy woman who got in bed with Remy near the beginning; but she's in just the one scene). Remy Girard and Stephane Rousseau (as Sebastien) worked beautifully off each other, revealing a life's worth of resentment and irritation with each other in a shorthand style of interaction that is startling. And Marie-Josee Croze's Nathalie is alluring and scary and concerned and self-involved and aware all at the same time. Wow.
I'm not the sort who believes that just because someone's a stockbroker or oil trader, they have no soul, anymore than I believe that just because someone's a peasant or been a slave, they're spiritually pure. We are all, each of us, complex and enlightened and loving and hateful and vile and simplistic and stubborn and stupid and smart and flexible and open and closed and any other adjective you can think of...and "The Barbarian Invasions" embraces that humanity in us, even as it skewers how childish we can be because of it...and also celebrates how amazing all our contradictions can make us. It deserves every accolade it receives.
C'est formidable.
The performances are magnificent. Not one false note (well...maybe the crazy woman who got in bed with Remy near the beginning; but she's in just the one scene). Remy Girard and Stephane Rousseau (as Sebastien) worked beautifully off each other, revealing a life's worth of resentment and irritation with each other in a shorthand style of interaction that is startling. And Marie-Josee Croze's Nathalie is alluring and scary and concerned and self-involved and aware all at the same time. Wow.
I'm not the sort who believes that just because someone's a stockbroker or oil trader, they have no soul, anymore than I believe that just because someone's a peasant or been a slave, they're spiritually pure. We are all, each of us, complex and enlightened and loving and hateful and vile and simplistic and stubborn and stupid and smart and flexible and open and closed and any other adjective you can think of...and "The Barbarian Invasions" embraces that humanity in us, even as it skewers how childish we can be because of it...and also celebrates how amazing all our contradictions can make us. It deserves every accolade it receives.
C'est formidable.