Polytechnique

I've read many comments by people stating that this film is bias because it only reflects the point of view of the victims who were mainly female and that is just giving support to the feminist movement but that is not the case.

This film isn't about the shooter, it isn't about the families...it's about the victims/survivors of this horrific ordeal. It does not focus on the background of the killer, it does not explain in great detail why he committed this terrible act of violence... it depicts what the victims/survivors went through.

Some people tend to feel empathic for the shooter, commenting on the fact that he felt prosecuted for his gender and that he felt threatened and hatred for females who in his own opinion were taking jobs away from males who deserved them... Kind of like the two shooters from Columbine who to some people became a icon for anti-bullying, thinking that the only reason they committed these crimes was because they were prosecuted by their peers and the community. It doesn't change the fact that both the Columbine shooters and Marc Lepine took innocent lives and then so cowardly take their own.

Some people liken this movie to "Elephant" and I agree but it also reminds me of "April Showers" since both movies did not focus on the killer but on the people who suffered through the event.

It's heartbreaking that this actually happend. The characters, for the film, were fictionalised, but Polytechnique shows a glimpse of what those innocent young people would have gone through. And it's truly saddening.

Handled as delicately as possible as the subject matter dictates, Denis Villeneuve's film is a haunting, and a deeply moving account, of an event in close history, that should never have taken place.

A tense early Denis Villenueve film based on a mass shooting at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique in 1989. Villenueve's fictionalized account follows the killer (never named; played by actor Maxim Gaudette) and three students on the day of the massacre. The shooter was an incel-like anti-feminist who specifically targeted the female students.

POLYTECHNIQUE isn't a by the numbers school shooting account. It flits from the day of the shooting to flashbacks and even a flash-forward. It's a highly stylized, almost impressionistic presentation. The three principal students are two female roommates, Valerie (Karine Vanasee; very good) and Stephanie (Evelyne Brochu), and Valerie's male friend Jean-Francois (Sébastien Huberdea). They are fairly quickly introduced and sketched out before the main events play out.

Shooting on Black & White film gives it a stark look, but Pierre Gill's camera glides and slides along gracefully. It's composed in the very widescreen aspect ratio of 2:35 (as opposed to the standard 1:85). The combination of the movements and the elongated monochrome frame gives the whole film the added haunting dimension. The music (Benoît Charest) is similarly against type for a crime picture. Simple and plaintive.

Villenueve's treatment (he collaborated with two others on the script) isn't exploitative, but, it's still very difficult to watch at times. His almost matter of fact direction of the central sequence is shocking without showy montage. The most chilling shot is of the killer calmly reloading as his victims lie dead or dying.

It's a relief in a way that the film is only 77 minutes long, but, it also adds to the general intensity. Villenueve's next film, the brilliant Oscar Nominated INCENDIES, really put him on the map (leading to his Hollywood career (SICARIO, PRISONERS, BLADE RUNNER 2049), but POLYTECHNIQE is, in its own compressed way, a significant achievement of its own.

P.S. The French-Canadian production shot simultaneously in French and in English. I saw the English language version, but the dialogue is so relatively sparse, it doesn't appear as if seeing the Quebecois version would be much different.

An amazing little French Canadian film about the Quebec massacre. Personally I recommend watching everything Denis Villeneuve has made. This guy is among the greatest living directors in the world right now and he is definitely making some of the most interesting films of our time...Incendies, Prisoners, Arrival, etc. This is one of the films Denis made before he became well known. I've seen everything he's made now except for his newest version of Dune, which I'll check out in the theatre when it opens in October. Every single one of his films was well worth the watch! Forget the overhyped Fincher and Nolan of the newer generation of directors, this guy easily wipes the floor with them. In my view, Denis is definitely the most interesting filmmaker alive today that hasn't made anything prior to the mid 1990's. 7/10.

Since I'm really really looking forward to seeing Dune in the future, I felt like checking out this early film from Denis Villeneuve's filmography. This movie's based on a real-life tragedy that occurred at the Polytechnique Montreal engineering school in 1989, and it dramatizes the event in a way that feels very humanistic. It doesn't make any comments or draw conclusions about the event and still leaves you feeling for most of the people involved. It does a great job of being ambiguous, something Villeneuve has mastered throughout his filmography. My heart goes out to the survivors, and my thanks go out to Villeneuve for being so great at making films like this.