Thursday 1 September 2011

Polytechnique

2009 by Denis Villeneuve - French movie from Quebec, Canada.

At times, film makers are inspired from a real life tragedy and makes beautiful movies on it. Kalloori, which I would consider as one of the best among the new age Tamil movies, was made so. The director picked up an event, which hurt the whole nation, and built a touching love story on it, backwards. I have this movie, Polytechnique, because of my appreciation for the director. On reading the synopsis I thought, ok he is inspired by a tragedy. It is a true story except that the director does not build anything around it. He just follows the incident.

On 6 Dec '89, a student in the Montreal Polytechnique, went on a shooting spree in his campus, killing 14 women and seriously injuring many others. Finally he killed himself. 

It is more like a docu drama, but I found it like a horror movie. There are spine chilling scenes in it, which we cannot fathom in anyways. The man just walks through the different parts of his school and just shoots at women. This is all the movie is about. Through random flash backs and forrwards, it just gives a few more scenes about the man, what he did before this, and also about two other characters who lived through the whole incident. Thats it. It is a chilling experience though.

The movie is shot in black and white, for reasons I cant make out. But it does give the reasons for which this guy went on this shooting spree. He was fed up of feminism and feminists. His death note says he is doing this only for political reasons. Neither does the movie goes into any details about why he hates feminism, nor does it points to anybody among the victims, who is a dreadful feminist. In many ways, this is just strange. I mean a feature film just shows a shooting spree. There is very little dialogues or scenes which occurs outside the main scenario. Naturally it ends up like a horror movie.

Quebec is definitely famous for its female supporting laws. It is nearly impossible for a woman to be a culprit there, they can only be a victim, it seems. This incident, infamous as the Montreal massacre still lives in the minds of many students and some are still traumatized, as mentioned through the later life of one character. Through the same character, the director also brings out a masochist point, which women will find atrocious. So may be he is making the point that the culprit here, might had some problems.

It is a very interesting watch, horrific though. But for me, it was quite different from the other Villeneuve movies, and will never be on my list of reccommended ones from this director.