Montreal vu par... (1991)
1."Desperanto" (or "Let Sleeping
Girls Lie" Patricia Rozema) 讓她安臥 羅芝瑪
"My experience of Montreal is
closely lilnked with my relationship with a foreign language.
In general it's a city where the smallest sound that comes out of your
mouth is a political act, and if you don't speak French well, which is
the case with me, you appear infantile, in trying to break through that
barrier. ...
It is no accident that I
titled my film Desperanto, a play on Esperanto, the name of the
universal langauge whose promoters hope could be spoken and understood
by everyone in a linguistic utopia. In my film, subtitles
are, in a way, the missing link which guide the main character (Sheila
McCarthy) and langauge becomes an object which can be
manipulated. It's only thorugh the bias of fiction--music,
film and dreams--that she is able to enter this 'other' world." (Rozema)
- Montreal=Romance:
- What does the
Torontonian housewife expect from Montreal? Where does she
get her expectation? How does she prepare herself for her
night out?
- How does she behave
at the party? Why does she say that she is a dancer?
- Insiders
vs. Outsiders:
- How do the
Montrealers in the party respond to her? Who is the
other outsider in the film?
- What is presented as
the major problem between this housewife and the Montrealers?
- What kinds of gazes
and looks are cast between the outsiders and insiders? Why
does the filmmaker have the mismatch of their amorous glances concur
with the appearance of the red stain?
- Fairy-Tale,
subtitles & the film Decline of the American Empire:
- How is fairy-tale
(Cinderella, The Little Red Riding Hood) used in the film?
- What are the other
elements of fantasy? How are subtitles
used and played with? When do the subtitles in the film look
weird?
- The two that come
with ambulance are actually Denys Arcand and Genevieve Rioux, who are
respectively the director and a leading actress in The Decline
of the American Empire. How do they fulfill
the protagonist's wish?
2.La toile du Temps ("The Canvas of Time"
Jacque Leduc) 時光畫布 樂笛客
note:
Jacques Viger, the first mayor of Montreal (1833-1836)
| French-Canadian antiquarian and archaeologist, b. at
Montreal, 7 May, 1787; d. 12 Dec., 1858. He studied at the Sulpician
college of Montreal. During the war of 1812 he served as captain in the
"Voltigeurs" under de Salaberry. He was elected the
first Mayor of Montreal (1833), and strove to improve
its sanitary condition. Although he wrote little, his reputation as an
archaeologist was universal, and the greatest contemporary historians
of France and the United States have drawn from his collection of MSS.,
the fruit of forty years research. He compiled a chronicle under the
title of "Sabretache" (28 vols.), wherein he gathered plans, maps,
portraits, with valuable notes illustrating many contested historical
points. He was the founder of the "Historical Society of Montreal".
Pius IX honoured him with the knighthood of the Order of St. Gregory
the Great. (source: The
Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XV) |
The
Director's Words:
"What interested me was to take the city as a subject, rather than as a
setting. I quickly realized that, like most Montrealers, I
didn't know the history of my city, which can be really
fascinating. One thing led to another, and, along with
Marie-Carole de Beaumont[co-script-writer with Leduc), I became
interested in Jacque Viger, Montreal's first mayor. A film is
often a number of coincidences. This one came about with the
discovery of Jacque Viger, who seemed to be a fascinating
character. We also wanted to make the viewer smile.
I've mostly made 'serious' films, and I felt as though a change of tone
was in order." (Leduc)
- The film traces the history of the portrait of Jacque Viger
from the moment of its creation to its "re-creation" (year 1992),
tracing about eight moments of this history of Montreal.
Literally,
these moments are:
1. 1850 -- the making of the portrait,
2. 1880 -- the senile servant with the portrait meeting the
census-taker,
3. 1889 -- the death of the census-taker,
4. 1912 -- the immigrant's not paying the rent,
5. merry-making in a tavern,
6. 1940 -- a woman's getting the portrait from a Catholic school for
her lover, who is going to the war,
7. 1967 -- young couple's throwing out the portrait,
8. the studio.
1. Why are these moments significant to
Montreal? Why is Viger important? What does he
symbolize? How is Viger looked at in different periods?
What roles do the servant, the census-taker, the immigrants, a mistress
and the young couple play respectively in this film?
- Pay attention to usage of the stage, and, as its backdrop,
the painting, documentaries, historic photos, fire, firework as well as
real humans. How do they mean?
- What are the implications of "Nothing is more beautiful
than truth"?
3. La derniere partie ("The
Last Game" Michel Brault) 最後一賽 柏哈特
"I've made something in the
neighborhood of one hundred short films in my life, so it's a structure
that I'm familiar with. Jean Rouch once said, 'we should be making ten
minute long features. . . ' Also, I enjoy working with rules,
within certain limitations.
As far as Montreal goes, it
is a place where we tear everything down to build from the ground up,
where we're progressively killing the city. The destruction
of the couple in the film is a parable for the city I once
loved. Montreal has lost its soul. Montreal no
longer exists. . .That's the reason I don't show it and why I
use what might be seen as the most 'Montreal' of activities--hockey"
- Where do you
see the feminine perspectives in the film? (e.g. the opening
scene; the focus on the wife in the stadium; the words not spoken but
heard by the audience)
- What does the wife
want? What's the essential for her? When is she
hurt most? What does the "crack" mean for her?
- What are the husband's
problems (e.g. retirement, lack of understanding, etc.)
4.En
Passant ("Passing Through" Atom Egoyan) 旅途一瞥 伊格言
"The voice in the film is conceived
as a poem. I had originally written it two years ago in a
hotel room in Japan. I loved walking through the streets of
Tokyo, just letting my feelings take over. But I knew that
when I got home I would have to share my impressions of my trip with
everyone. My way of seeing the city had been altered as a
result of the experience. This became the starting point for
the film, although, of course, it was adapted to Montreal. . .
I was also very attracted
by the interest shown by my two characters in visual
representation. For him, the pictogram is a form of maximum
simplification for certain emotions or feelings which normally demand a
much more detailed approach. For her it's the
opposite. She captures extremely fleeting instants and tests
her faculties of observation. She is testing her ability to
reproduce these faces in the hopes of creating an intimacy that, in
reality, doesn't exist." (Egoyan)
- The woman:
Follow Egoyan's lead, try to contrast the woman with the man in the
film. What work does the woman do? How is her hobby
related to her work and the airport (where she works)? Why
does she takes off her black gloves on seeing a man caressing a woman's
gloved arm?
- The man: Unlike
Rozema's piece, Egoyan's focuses on the visual contact
of an outsider with a city. What does the man do as
a tourist? Of the things he does, which are typical of
tourist and which are not? What roles do pictograms
take in his travel in Montreal?
- The voice:
How do you characterize the voice he listens to? Does the
city become a woman through the voice? After
introducing the famous buildings in the city, the voice stops
introducing the tourist spots. Instead, it starts to
challenge the tourist's abilities to understand the city, and then it
shows its understanding of the tourist. What do you make of
it? Are there three voices or one?
 5.Rispondetemi (Lea Pool) 失去記憶的城市 雷而璞
"It's the route of an ambulance,
which is, obviously, very fast since it's a question of saving a
life. But I wanted to show all the shots of Montreal in slow
motion, in contrast to the actual speed of the vehicle. These
places seem to be out of sync, their rythm has no relationship with
real life. This is the concrete city, downtown, where the
architecture is impressive, but also cold and unknown. The
areas I show are not the areas where people live. The are
places without memory. Usually in my film it is my characters
who have no past. Here it is the city, while my character is
able to remember. .. .
The state of urgency that
exists in the film is linked to my impression that others always have
'time,' as if there was no hurry, as if we could live
forever. There's an extremely agonizing contrast for me
between my desire to live as fully as possible and the slowness, the
weight, of existence. In this film, you can see this idea
with the ambulance rushing through the night carrying a woman hanging
between life and death contrasting with shots of a city that stretches
on forever. I find the resulting distortion
interesting. Between the two, memory can be born. A
series of sequential images retrace the most intense moments from this
woman's life. It's the first time in my career that I tap
into memories like this, very autobiographical, even if everything is
transposed and adapted for narration. ..." (Pool)
- Structure:
The film shows a woman on the verge of death and being sent by an
ambulance to a hospital, while the camera pan (in different angles)
over a lot of city scenes. Juxtaposed with the city scenes
are glimpses of the woman's past. In between, we
have the woman's body, seriously injured and exposed for emergency
treatments.
- Sarah's
past: What moments of the woman's (Sarah) past does the
film present? Are there recurrent themes in these scenes
(e.g. between the Sarah the young girl and her parents, between Sarah
the young adult and her lovers)? What could have
gone wrong in the woman's life?
- The City
vs. Woman: What's even harder to understand is the city
scenes. Lea Pool has pointed out very clearly that she wants
to make a contrast between the fleeting, urgent and the slow and
permanent, the one with memory and the other without. What
other contrasts can you make between the city and the woman?
Or maybe how do we connect the memories deep in her mind to the
camera's views of the city? (Clues: pay close attention to
1). camera angles and the images of the buildings of different kinds;
2) the symbolic meanings of oxygen mask, the electric shock and IV
drip.)
- The ending:
The film shows the ambulance rushes through darkness (and dark
building) towards a hospital until it arrives at the hospital at
dawn. What do you make of the ending, about the flashback of
lesbian lovers, and the female victim's response to a male rescuer with
her hand, her eyes and then her question, "why"? How is it
related to the title?
6.Vue D'Ailleurs(Denys Arcand) 另類視角 阿坎德
Script: Paule Baillargeon
"It was the first time I'd come across such a precise and
detailed description of a passionate love written by a woman.
Why does this elderly lady begin to talk after thirty years of
silence? It's a bit of mystery, although she's talking more
to her husband than to the young woman.
For me, the city of Montreal was a pretext. The
result allows us to see the innumerable possibilities inherent in the
same subject. It's like a very revealing exercise on
style. The contrast is absolutely fantastic." (Arcand)
- How is the Montreal diplomat presented?
- Who are the "Others"? Montreal?
Montreal women? Or the aborigine?
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