'Les Invasions Barbares' is a simple film about a man who is dying from cancer, and in his final days he and his family & friends reflect upon their lives.
I think that writer / director Denys Arcand manage to do something pretty impressive here through very small means. After the first 15-20 minutes of this movie I thought it was close to crap. I didn't like the pace, the way it looked or any of the characters. But as the story slowly moves forward, Arcand proves that he & his actors have the ability to change my mind completely. Simply by using intelligence, humor & compassion they turn the characters into human beings that I can recognize and relate to, and they show us that "people are people". Deep down we're not very different from each other, no matter where or when we live and die. And at the end I was left with the reinforced notion that even though we try very hard to fill our lives through various activities & distractions like work, sex, art, drugs, politics, religion ... when the final days are upon us there's only one thing that really matters, the relationship we have with our family and (if we're lucky) a handful of close friends.
My impression is that this is very much a movie for grownups. I don't think I could've appreciated it when I was in my teens or 20's. But if you're young today you could make a note to watch this when you reach something between 35-40. Maybe like me you'll get something good out of it.
I think that writer / director Denys Arcand manage to do something pretty impressive here through very small means. After the first 15-20 minutes of this movie I thought it was close to crap. I didn't like the pace, the way it looked or any of the characters. But as the story slowly moves forward, Arcand proves that he & his actors have the ability to change my mind completely. Simply by using intelligence, humor & compassion they turn the characters into human beings that I can recognize and relate to, and they show us that "people are people". Deep down we're not very different from each other, no matter where or when we live and die. And at the end I was left with the reinforced notion that even though we try very hard to fill our lives through various activities & distractions like work, sex, art, drugs, politics, religion ... when the final days are upon us there's only one thing that really matters, the relationship we have with our family and (if we're lucky) a handful of close friends.
My impression is that this is very much a movie for grownups. I don't think I could've appreciated it when I was in my teens or 20's. But if you're young today you could make a note to watch this when you reach something between 35-40. Maybe like me you'll get something good out of it.