Inadvertent Observations: Finding the Barbarian
February 2004 -- Given the fact that the title of director Denys Arcand's previous film was The Decline of the American Empire, that his new film is from Canada, in French, and that it includes images of the destruction of the World Trade Center, one would expect Oscar-nominated The Barbarian Invasions to be a not-so-thinly veiled attack on his neighbor to the south. While the attack might be there, it is subtle, and the film is morally ambiguous. In it, Arcand, intentionally or not, exposes the flaws both of leftist public policies and the moral decadence that tends to accompany them. The film opens with Remy (Remy Girard), a left-wing college professor, dying in a Canadian hospital. His ex-wife, divorced from Remy for 15 years because of his philandering, calls their estranged son Sebastien (Stephane Rousseau), a financial-risk manager working in London, to return to be with his father at the end. Sebastien reluctantly agrees. Remy's daughter is out sailing in the Pacific and opts not to return. You see, Remy has placed a jolly life of seductions, mistresses, and wine ahead of his family and, indeed, his academic career.
May 6, 2011
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