Les invasions barbares

I come from Quebec and just wanted to clarify some things.

• I cannot believe some people can give a rating below 5 for this movie. Were you looking for a Vin Diesel movie? This is a movie about real life, about human relationships. Its purpose is not entertainment, but reflexion. This is when a movie is considered art.

• Quebecers are not French. I'm speaking for myself but my ancestor came here in Quebec in the 17th century from France. We do speak french, though (more than 7 million of us). Are Americans British?

• The Chinese "woman" named before the movie is Arcand's adopted daughter.

• Yes the health care is that bad here. But then again where is it perfect? The population is growing old, hospitals are overcrowded, our government spends most of our tax money for it and its still not enough. But at least we don't have to pay for health care. I'm happy to pay taxes that help elders and sick people get treated.

I didn't think this is a masterpiece, but it's the kind of movie that stays in your mind for a couple of days and makes you think about where we were 40 years ago, where we are now and where we are going in the future. This is certainly one of Arcand's best movies with Jesus of Montreal and Le declin... He is an actor director and it shows. He deserved that Oscar if not for this movie for one of those 3 movies.

This is a smart, charming and intelligent film about dealing with loss, love and ageing. On several deeper layers, the characters meditate on the socialist health system in Canada, mortality, their explorations of sexual relationships and the freedom and restraints that come with maturity.

This film effortlessly presents us with characters struggling to live in a system which aims to meet our personal needs but exists to serve capitalist benefits. It demonstrates the uncertainty of life circumstances and mortality. The son's transformation from corporate power-driven lifestyle into a battle against preserving his father's memory and dignity are heartfelt captured are genuine and sincere. The role of the faithful and courageous nurse is compassionately portrayed while indicting the system in which the patients struggle to maintain power of their lives. As a nurse myself, I found it tremendously affecting and a poem to the ideals impart to our patients who have been let down in some way either by the system or in their own personal relationships.

Superbly written, one may accuse the film of being to preachy or pretentiously highbrow for these complex characters. But I actually found it terribly poetic and concise, ranging the vast life experiences of the characters and their skepticism and maturity. At times, the dialogue flows like poetry, holding no preconceptions or vanities about these people, but displaying their desperation at the state of a socialist society their has providing them with an abundance of great literary wealth but failing to meet their basic human needs.

Sophisticated, smart, thought-provoking, tender, and mature, films like this are extremely seldom nowadays. Audience can only too shockingly relate with such vividness and irony to the themes; and we are never played for fools, confronting these issues as if it were a close friend divulging personal secrets over a coffee. Films like this truly show us that life is not for granted and serve to remind us what human qualities we deserve from each other and expect from ourselves.

I recently watched this film and was very impressed. The screenplay, acting and directing were all top-notch. It was at times funny, sad, tragic and thought-provoking. It touches on everything from drug-use, Canadian medicare, the child-father relationship and of course, past intimate relationships- not all they were cracked up to be! Denys Arcand is so very astute on all these fronts and wrote a fantastic screenplay for the wonderful cast of characters.

It has to be one of my all-time favourite DVD's of 2004.

I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to see a riveting, quality film made in Canada. It deserved the Oscar!

"Wonderful" is the only word I can think of to describe this movie. Denys Arcand skewers the Quebec Provincial Government, the Federal Government, Socialized Medicine, Labour Unions, and just about everything else, but gently and wittily. (Rather more funny since there are a lot of Canadian tax dollars financing this effort). The aging and dying student radicals of forty years ago gather to give it all one last heave-ho and the dialogue (so much better than the sub-tiles can convey) is smart and witty and sad. They poke wistful fun at their younger selves while fearing the end as it comes for them and for us all. Love is thick on the ground as is self-loathing and anger and lust. These are rich, educated, privileged people who are still not all that far removed from their student days, at least in their own minds. They are something that many people may have trouble comprehending: wealthy Socialists.

It isn't necessary to have seen Arcand's previous work with these characters,( `The Decline of the American Empire') to appreciate this movie, but then, why would anyone deny themselves that pleasure?

I have never been a fan of Canadian cinema because it was generally soaked with the sort of contrived politically correct sexual and social attitudes of which the conformist majority was already a proponent. Thus, Canadian films tended to be "pop-Canadian-culture" films about political correctness.

Of course there were exceptions: Atom Egoyan's "Exotica" or "The Sweet Hereafter," or some of Cronenberg's more experimental films like "Naked Lunch" possessed some of that existential starkness that attracted me to those films. Nonetheless my expectations generally remained low, which is why Denys Arcand's great "Barbarian Invasions" was such a pleasant surprise.

The film is about three things: the disillusionment with socialism, the growing disillusionment with capitalism, and the death of a man who happened to have been a socialist professor in Montreal, while his son a millionaire.

Remy is dying of cancer. He is dying in a Montreal hospital, which in a five minute scene is established as the horror of socialist Canadian health care. Remy's ex-wife calls upon his estranged, well-off son, Sebastien to come visit and take care of his dying father. What follows is both a comic and a touching critique of the achievements of socialism. The film also suggests that the increasingly nihilist capitalism, or money, seems to be the only way to get around in this world. Money gets Remy out of an overcrowded ward, it gets him the most accurate medical tests and the "painkillers" he needs to survive.

But "Barbarian Invasions" is critical of both systems: there is a beautiful scene where an auctioneer visits an old Montreal priest who takes her to the basement where he apparently has statuettes and chalices he wants to sell. The girl examines them and tells him that they would be of more value to the people at the church than on the world market. The priest remarks starkly: "In other words, they are worthless." Capitalism, consequently, is as anti-spiritual as socialism was.

However, there are far more levels to "Barbarian Invasions" than mere politics. In fact, the film's goal is really to scream "Politics Aside!" so that we can make room for the man who is dying. Because Remy is not a quiet, subdued man. He is a lusty man a la Sabbath from Roth's "Sabbath's Theater" who loves life, women, wine and radical socialism. But now, that all those things are distant from him, he is forced to question his life, his relationships with his friends and his estranged children.

What follows is a profound and touching elegy to the stupidities of youth, the mistakes in life, the regret and acceptance of old age - in other words of humanity. In the end, though Remy may be disillusioned with socialism, and definitely not all-too-happy with capitalism, facing death somehow robs politics of their significance. Not to say that politics aren't significant in life, because they pervade everything we do and see and so on, but bare, unadulterated life shines through for Remy. In the end, "Barbarian Invasions" is about death, and dying with dignity and how that dignity is achieved. While neither capitalism nor socialism offer it, it can be found at a more basic, human level.

It's ironic, as a side-note, that this film came out roughly at the same time as Bertolucci's "The Dreamers," which is essentially a contemplation on the idealism and romanticism of French socialism and the "free love" culture of the 60s. I found Bertolucci's film much less profound than his greater ones - it used an affair between two siblings and an American closed off in an apartment for several days as a metaphor for the sixties. It ended rather tragically, but unrealistically - it tried to convince us that people got out from their cloistered "apartments" (read mentalities) and went to the streets to protest. What "Barbarian Invasions" tells us is that the protesters on the street were still really in that apartment, cloistered from reality.