Les Invasions Barbares (The Barbarian Invasions)
directed by Denys Arcand, 2003

It strikes me that Les Invasions Barbares (The Barbarian Invasions) is both a very Canadian movie and very un-Canadian movie at the same time. It's very Canadian in the sense that, if asked what country a movie about a guy dying of cancer comes from, there's a good chance you would say Canada. (You'd be right.)

But when you find out the movie doesn't make you want to go and blow your brains out, odds are good you would say something like, "Well, that's not very Canadian." This may be because it's a Quebec film.

Of course, this is my bias about Canadian films and I'm not really familiar with current Canadian cinema, so it's probably an unfair generalization. But growing up with Canadian movies and literature of the 70s and 80s I came away with a knee-jerk response based on a lot of grim films and books. (I sometimes think "lighthearted" is utterly absent from the Canadian vocabulary.)

Les Invasions Barbares is an absolutely wonderful movie and while the plot centres on Rémy (Rémy Girard), a man who is dying, it is about living and what our lives construct through friendships. (Even if we're largely unaware of it until we're dying.)

Rémy is in the hospital with cancer. His estranged wife (Dorothée Berryman), is overwhelmed and calls their estranged son in London. She wants him to come home and be with his father.

The son, Sébastien (Stéphane Rousseau), returns with his fiancé to be with his mother and the father he has barely spoken to in recent years.

Rémy and Sébastien are almost opposites, at least in how they live their lives. Rémy is an intellectual. His life is books, ideologies and womanizing. Sébastien cares nothing for books. His life is computers, video games and business. They appear to have nothing in common beyond their frustration with one another.

Yet it is Sébastien who brings comfort to his father. Using his money (he has become a young millionaire through his business skills), he arranges to get around the Canadian health system, basically using bribes to acquire a private room.

He also finds a way to get heroin for Rémy, to deal with the pain. Most significantly, however, he arranges for Rémy's friends to come and see him during his final days. It's here where the heart of the film is, Rémy's friendships.

Through these, Rémy comes to terms with his life. And while it may sound like a downer, or something that may be excessively maudlin, it's quite the opposite. It's both joyful and, quite often, incredibly funny. In fact the humour helps to leaven the weighty circumstances of the film.

Visually, the movie almost looks as if it was shot for television. (And maybe it was?) This is because the movie is about relationships and is rooted to a great extent in dialogue. It's composed of a great many medium shots and close ups because of this. It's really not an exercise in visual techniques.

It's firmly rooted in its story, its characters and what those characters have to say, both through their words and through their facial expressions. In some ways, this could have been a play.

As for the barbarians of the title ... Well, there are quite a few, I suppose - terrorists, drug dealers and so on. But for all intents and purposes, the barbarians are generational. Sébastien and his generation are the real barbarians, at least for Rémy. Sébastien in particular is the barbarian with his technology and indifference to books and other intellectual pursuits.

So it is significant that the film reconciles the two; that it is Sébastien who works to bring comfort to his dying father.

Les Invasions Barbares is an elegiac film about the reconciliation of opposites. Husbands and wives, friends and lovers, fathers and sons, ideologies and materialism ... it goes on. However, the reconciliations are not about choosing one over another, or incorporating dualities, but about coming to terms with and accepting each other, as seemingly incomprehensible as the other may be.

© 2004 Piddleville Inc.