Les ordres

It's a docudrama about five persons imprisoned for up to three weeks during the October 1970 crisis in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Based on interviews with 50 of the 450 persons arrested and ultimately released without charge following Pierre Trudeau's invocation of the War Measures Act, it tells the story of five composite characters, making extensive use of the interviews. Clermont Boudreau (Jean Lapointe) is the union steward in a weaving factory. He and his wife, Marie (Hélène Loiselle), have three school-age daughters. Dr. Jean-Marie Beauchemin (Guy Provost) heads a medical clinic. Claudette Dusseault (Louise Forestier) is a social worker. Richard Lavoie (Claude Gauthier) is unemployed but has trouble with structure.

The film begins with a quote from Pierre Trudeau about justice and a little background on the October Crisis. We then turn to interview clips and each person's life immediately before the arrests in black and white. After arrest and while in prison, the drama turns to color. We wait, as the prisoners wait, for any explanation of "Why me"? We wince at the crude and illegal behavior of some of the guards. Then we see people released without explanation or apology.

"Les Ordres" is a faint glimpse of the underside when a democracy loses its way. The film is not polished or commercial. It's not riveting drama, but it makes the viewer cringe, especially this viewer, who generally idolizes Pierre Trudeau for allowing me to come to Canada during the Vietnam War. But there's still a warning in this movie fifty years later.

Les Ordres: made in the infancy of Canadian cinema, as far as feature films go. Canada's official submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for 1974, and not nominated. It's easy to see why, and indeed, I imagine a country putting this up against the cinema of the entire non-English speaking world would have raised a few eyebrows in the Academy. Okay, so you have a historically significant event (at least significant to Canada). But that's all you have. The direction has all the creativity, imagination and style of a TV movie. That's all it looks like, it never rises above that level for the entirety of the film. The sole "innovation" you have is interviewing the actors about the characters in the film itself- but that's a stunt just ripped off from Ingmar Bergman's The Passion of Anna (1969). I didn't particularly care for it there, either, but at least Max von Sydow had something to say. None of these television actors know what they're doing here, except to say "My name is X, and I play Y..." It would have been more accurate to say "I'm nobody, and the 'character' I play is barely a character at all."

It's not enough to have a human rights violation as a subject matter (and as far as world history goes, a few days in prison is small potatoes). You have to *do* something with it to have a film.

I can see why this would have made the Toronto International Film Festival's Top 10 Canadian Films of All Time when that list was first assembled in 1984. There were a lot less good films to choose from then, and Les Ordres having inexplicably won Best Director at Cannes in 1974, I might have felt obligated to write the film in, too, for its strictly historic interest. Whether it deserved to stay on the Top 10 in the 1993 update is more debatable. Why it didn't fall off in 2004 is puzzling. The fact that it's still wasting space on the list in 2015 is laughable, especially when far worthier films like Les Bons Debarras fell off and Incendies and Mommy didn't make it at all. If this, and Mon oncle Antoine, were really the best we could do as a country, that's not inspiring- that's embarrassing.

One of the great engaged movie of the seventies. This a real drama with its atmosphere from such a Kafka. The filming is very simple and precise. The actors are convincing and sincere. This particular way of sharing movie and documentary is very interesting and powerful. Michel Brault gave us once a cinema lesson in the University of Québec in Montréal. He told us to direct movie with the stomach, not only with the head. So I realized that even a great director like him could create through emotions more than spirit. So feel the movie and you'll discover soon enough what you understood through the movie. For every person who loved this movie, I recommend "Punishment Park" directed the same year by an English guy in USA, Peter Watkins. You can find this rare movie on IMDb.

In October, 1970, Canada's War Measures Act allowed authorities to arrest and imprison anybody that they suspected of domestic terrorism in association with the FLQ (Front de Libération du Québec). As a result, over four-hundred innocent Montreal citizens were wrongly incarcerated. Fifty of them gave their stories to director-writer Michel Brault. From their stories, five composite characters were created for "Les Ordres": a unionized labourer (Clermont Boudreau) and his wife (Hélène Loiselle) who are raising three school-age daughters; an unemployed father (Claude Gauthier) who cares for a baby and toddler at home; a social worker (Louise Forestier) who advocates for welfare recipients; and a doctor (Guy Provost) who has been involved in socialist politics.

Even before the arrests have begun, the story shows how bleak life is for the working-class and the poor. However, this appears relatively mild compared to the shocks that are yet to come. Brault shows brilliance in his subtlety during the arrest scenes. His level of detail for nuanced yet important actions have at least as much impact as violence does in other films especially the situations where children are to be left without a caretaker at home. And his intermingling of the various arrest scenes is done perfectly. Not only do they flow well together; they even have more impact when shown simultaneously.

The second half of the film takes place in the men's and women's prisons. While these scenes have less impact than those in the first half, the theme of a shocking injustice continues especially the abuses in the men's prison.

The performances are uniformly strong and moving. The actors convey to the audience what it would be like to enter an unexpected nightmare with apparently no end in sight.

One of the reasons this docudrama feels like a thriller is that it took place in Canada, let alone under the popular Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Considering similar incidents during the past few years (the scandalous G20 Toronto conference), it shows that certain freedoms can never be taken for granted. - dbamateurcritic

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT: Directing by Michel Brault

This film takes place in the infamous 1970 October crisis in Québec. After a separatist movement kidnapped a minister of the government, the army is in the streets of Montreal and makes hundreds and hundreds of arrest, with the help of the police. The arrested are students, activists, syndicalists, but also people who ''look'' strange, are at the wrong place at the wrong time and really don't have anything to do with the situation..... This film shows the complete lost of control of the Canadian government (Pierre.E. Trudeau) and how they orchestrated their plan of making all separatist look like terrorist...

The acting of 'Jean Lapointe' as a textile worker and taxi driver is incredible...

In my opinion, this film ranks with Costa-Gavras's ''Z'' and the infamous 'Battaglia di Algeri' of Gillo Pontecorvo, as the top 3 best political movies of all times..... A must see!