On Canadian Film Day (Or Any Day), Watch The Canadian Masterpiece, NOBODY WAVED GOODBYE

By Robert Bellissimo

It’s always disappointing to me that I need to let Canadians know about all of the amazing movies they can see for free on the National Film Board streamer, as well as on their YouTube channel. Perhaps I’m being too hard on others. I myself neglected Canadian Cinema for far too long, as something inferior to movies from other countries, which is as absurd as saying French Cinema is better than Italian Cinema and vice versa. It seems to me that this way of thinking comes from Canadians who mostly only know bigger-budgeted, Hollywood films. However, cinephiles should know better, myself included. If you love the French New Wave, Italian Neorealism, German New Wave, Japanese New Wave, among many other independent films and movements over the years, than you’ll love Canadian Cinema. We had our own New Wave, which began in the 1960s, thanks to the National Film Board Of Canada, who had mostly made documentaries up until then.

One of their documentary filmmakers was Don Owen and he made his feature film directorial debut with Nobody Waved Goodbye. A favourite of mine about a teenager named Peter (Peter Kastner), who comes from a middle class family in Etobicoke and is rebelling against the status quo every chance he gets.

Each time I see the film, I find myself with him, for him and against him all at the same time. Peter doesn’t know what he wants in life, but he knows it isn’t what his parents have and want for him. They feel that they have the right to tell him exactly what he should do and this clearly is what sets his rebellion off. They see life one way and aren’t open minded. You feel as though they do love and care for him though, but are only equipped to raise him the way they know how to, instead of giving him what he needs.

With that being said, his rebellion goes too far, which leads him to getting arrested for driving without a licence, stealing and getting his girlfriend pregnant.

What I love so much about the film is that you feel for each and every character and the film pushes the audience to evaluate their motives and reactions. They are all fleshed out human beings, who have flaws, as all of us do. You could say the film is a coming-of-age story, but that would be putting it too simply. Often coming-of-age stories have the main character breakthrough what they are struggling with but, in Peter’s case, things just get worse and worse for the most part.

It simply is what it is. Another Canadian classic film, Goin’ Down The Road, has a very similar ending and even some of the things that happen to the main characters in that film happen to Peter in Nobody Waved Goodbye. I’m not sure if that’s a coincidence or not.

Peter drives out of Toronto with a stolen car at the end of end of the film and the question is, what comes next for him? The documentary approach is so well done and makes the film look and feel so realistic that I often feel as though real life is unfolding right in front of me.

You could say that the film is about how parents should be more sensitive to their children’s needs and listen to them more. However, can the parents here be blamed for everything Peter does? Peter is a young man who has his own life experiences outside of his house and not everything he (or we) does is a result of how he’s been parented.