Review of Polytechnique

One of the darkest and most tragic events in Canadian history was surely the 1989 "Montreal Massacre" in which a number of female engineering students in a Montreal college were shot and killed by a misogynistic, feminist-hating gunman. This movie is based on those events, although changing the identities of everyone in the movie to the extent that none of the characters were even named as far as I recall. The movie begins with a long recital of a letter by the gunman expressing his hatred of women, and it closes with a long recital of a letter by one of the victims (who survived) expressing how the shooting had impacted her. Between those closing narrations, the story might best be described as "minimal." There's very little dialogue of any kind between any of the characters. The movie focuses more on the reactions of the students as the gunman wanders through the building, shooting any women he encounters. It's shot in black and white, which gives a somewhat "eerie" feeling to this, and it is very suspenseful; the viewer certainly feels the sense of helplessness and chaos that must have been felt by the students. This movie is quite reminiscent of the American movie "Elephant," which was based on the Columbine shooting. I preferred "Elephant" - I thought it made better use of the school setting than this one did. I can't say that I was really keeping track, but I thought this movie also exaggerated the event a bit. The Montreal Massacre was bad enough as it was; in this far more women seemed to be shot than actually were shot in the event itself - although, as I said, I wasn't really keeping track. The best part of this movie is the suspense that's involved. One doesn't really learn anything about the Montreal Massacre. Marc Lepine (the name of the real shooter) was a misogynistic feminist- hater. We already knew that. So, perhaps one wonders what the purpose of this movie was. The opening captions say it was to honour the women killed, and their names did appear in a scroll at the movie's end, but I confess that I honestly didn't think it succeeded in that goal. It was a dramatic enough portrayal of a school-shooting, but it adds nothing to our understanding of the event. 7/10