The Barbarian Invasions [2004] [DVD]

Girard is excellent in the part (although he carries a bit too much weight for a guy about to die of cancer); but what makes this an outstanding film is the award-winning script and direction by Denys Arcand. This is a movie that is witty, honest, funny, sentimental (but not too sentimental), deeply human, candid about life, love, sex, and death, and filled with the kind of sharp, satirical dialogue that all screenwriters wish they had the ability to write. However this movie will offend some people, which accounts for some of the nasty reviews.

First, there is the little matter of heroin. Arcand makes the experience seem like something wonderful and absolutely necessary in a medical sense. But a closer look reveals that this justified use is only for Rémy who is a terminal patient in excruciating pain. Note that Nathalie is a junkie who is ruining her life and knows it.

Second, there is the candor about Rémy's sex life and the many risque jokes including some from an old gay couple that may offend some mainstream viewers. And there is an elitist feel to the intellectual atmosphere of the gathered friends that will not set well in America's (or Canada's) Heartland. And some will be offended by the implication from Sebastian's arrogant and successful behavior that money can buy almost anything and that corruption is the order of the day. And finally there is the matter of euthanasia which some viewers find immoral.

However this is not primarily a political movie. The dialogue that refers to the evolution of some of the characters from socialists to deconstructionists, is kind of like somebody from say Texas recalling that "I used to be long-haired hippy but now I'm clean-shaven evangelical." It's appropriately atmospheric talk from Rémy's academic world. The real story here is about how to live and how to die. Arcand's prescription is to live life to the fullest and to die peacefully in your sleep. This is the civilized way, and that is part of the reason that the film is ironically called "The Barbarian Invasions" (from a line in the film). When it comes to civilization the barbarians are always at the gate.

Of course if we want to get symbolic, the barbarian invasions could include the cancer itself, especially when we consider that Rémy is a history professor who has spent a lifetime reading, writing and lecturing about barbarian invasions. (By the way, whether the 9/11 attacks on the US are barbarian invasions is again beside the point of the movie.)

Bottom line: this film won a slew of international awards including the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2004. It is one of the best films I've seen in a while. I would rate it in my top one hundred of all time.

London investor Sebastien (Stephane Rousseau) is summoned home to Quebec by his mother, Louise (Dorothee Berryman) to attend the approaching death of his father, Remy (Remy Girard). Father and son have been long estranged - ever since Remy and Louise divorced. Remy, an outspoken Professor of History and a self-described "sensuous socialist", has spent his life indulging in wine, women, song, and learned conversation. Especially women. The reunion shows little promise of succeeding, especially after a stormy shouting match in Remy's bleak hospital room that leaves the audience facetiously asking, "That went well, don't you think?" But, after Louise reminds her son of a paternal love long forgotten, then filial duty and guilt compel Sebastien to use his considerable wealth to arrange an easier transition for Old Dad by improving the conditions of his hospitalization, and to gather around his treasured friends, colleagues, and mistresses.

The "star" is Remy, who, at the end of his life, contemplates and comes to accept the final sum of it. This exercise would be thought-provoking enough in itself, but writer/director Denys Arcand also interweaves into the plot such prickly subjects as socialized medicine, euthanasia, and the use of illegal drugs to ease terminal medical conditions. About universal health care as practiced in Canada, in the bureaucratic, union-controlled, and overcrowded web of which he is now entangled, Remy stubbornly rants that since he voted for it, he certainly wasn't going to run off to the United States for something less squalid.

Every role in this Cannes Film Festival award-winner is excellently played. Best Actress went to Marie-Josee Croze as Nathalie, the heroin-addicted daughter of one of Remy's ex-mistresses, who is recruited by Sebastien to obtain the banned substance to ease his father's suffering. Remy's lust for life has a profound effect on the young woman.

THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS is a film to be viewed by everyone who'll one day die. Unfortunately, the majority of moviegoers will stay away, opting instead for the mindless bread-and-circus fare habitually doled out into the cinematic trough by the major studios. Shame!

The last twenty or so minutes of the film, which are set at a lakeside cabin, contain some of the most poignant and emotionally powerful moments I've seen recently on the Big Screen. Lucky is the person who can say to those gathered around his/her deathbed:

"Sharing with you this modest life has been a delight".