ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

Quebec

Days of Darkness – Are We in a New Dark Age?

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[NOTE: I wrote this review in 2008 after seeing the film at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, expecting to publish it when it was released in the US. However, the film never got a release. I’ve often wondered what happened to it in all those years. Now it is available on AMC+ and IFC Unlimited (both accessible through Prime Video Channels and both offer a one week free trial.)]

Days of Darkness is the concluding film of the Denys Arcand trilogy that also includes The Decline of the American Empire and Barbarian Invasions. (It could be argued that Jesus of Montreal is also part of this group of films. I’m unsure about the more recent The Fall of the American Empire, which I haven’t seen.) The two earlier films shared common actors and characters.  Two of the characters from those films show up in minor roles in this film, but by and large, this is a very different kind of film from the first two.  The titles of the film harken back to the Roman Empire.  The decadence leads to weakness that allows the barbarians to invade and bring about the Dark Ages.  As a Canadian on the border of the American empire, Arcand seems to be saying that he sees the same sort of process happening in current society.  He may well be right.  What really connects Days of Darkness with the trilogy is that The Barbarian Invasions is about trying to escape death; this film is about trying to escape life.

Henry Thoreau wrote, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”  That certainly describes Jean-Mark in Days of Darkness.  Jean-Marc leads a pretty boring life.  His world is grey – his house, his car, the sky.  His marriage isn’t happy.  His children aren’t happy.  He’s a bureaucrat who spends his day listening to unhappy people.  But he has his imagination.  Like Walter Mitty, Jean-Marc spends much of his time in his daydreams – but this is Walter Mitty as if he had been written by Woody Allen and Hugh Hefner.  Jean-Marc’s fantasy life is not just an escape; it is a critique of the many ways the world has lost its way.

The real world of this film is nearly as surreal as Jean-Marc’s imaginary world.  The great bureaucracy where he works is housed in Montreal’s Olympic Stadium.  It is literally a bureaucratic maze.  His co-workers have to take classes in how to laugh.  The problems he deals with each day are unbelievable, and yet each is an actual case.  (My favorite is a man who was walking on the side walk when a car hit a streetlight.  The streetlight fell on the man, who lost his legs.  The city charges everyone involved in the destruction of public property, so he has to pay for half the streetlight.)  There is rarely anything he can actually do.  One of the lines that sums up this world is “You’re wasting your time; it’s pointless.”

In his dreams Jean-Marc is in control.  He is the lover of a famous movie star and a TV news reporter.  He solves the world’s problems.  He is famous and rich and happy.  Those who are his nemeses are dealt with harshly (but of course they deserve it).

The film reflects the malaise that so often becomes part of life as we go through the same routines day after day.  Not only our personal lives, but our corporate life just seems to be one repetition after another.  Consider the skepticism with which we greet political campaigns.  Do any of the candidates live up to the dreams we have for someone to lead us?  Following Arcand’s post-empire metaphor, the meaninglessness of staged political debates or of reality television or blogs that do nothing but blather reflect a world that is as devoid of wisdom as those centuries before the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.

If we follow the world into this malaise, it is indeed pointless and we are wasting our time.  Instead all the Jean-Marcs in the world (and that includes us all) need to find a life that has meaning beyond the limits of our minds.

Monday at AFIFest 2018

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Although I’ve seen my share of comedies at AFIFEST Presented by Audi, it seems that film festivals often show darker films than many people are used to. That is in part because they are made not so much to sell tickets to a large audience as to bring a story to life that the filmmaker wants to tell. My choices for Monday all had a bit of darkness to them, even when they were showing hope.

Angels are Made of Light is a documentary by James Longley about a school in Kabul, Afghanistan. After years (actually decades) of conflict, the educational system in this old part of town is in ruins—literally. Even as a new school is being built, the walls in the old school are falling down. We meet some of the students (mostly boys, although there is a section that focuses on girls) that are trying to get an education, but the realities of their lives make it hard. Many need to work to help their families. The film weaves in some of the history of Afghanistan and its many wars.

Romanian director Ioana Uricaru gives us Lemonade, a story set in the U.S. about a woman trying to get her green card. She has married a man (For love? We don’t know.) and brought her young son over. But a corrupt immigration official and various other challenges begin to ruin the life she has made here and hopes to establish. It offers a look at the desperation that many face as they try to find a life in America.

Playing with Lemonade was a short, Desert Rats, by Shaz Bennett, a story of a girl whose father was abandoned as a child in the Utah desert by a polygamous father. She returns to the desert to remember him.

 

From Quebec comes Genesis from director Philippe Lesage. It is the story of two siblings as they struggle with love, belonging, and alienation. Guillaume (Thoédore Pellerin) is something of the class clown in school, but he is often the odd man out in social situations. His older sister, Charlotte (Noée Abita) leaves a safe, but unexciting relationship, but in her new relationships she is vulnerable both emotionally and physically. Both are seeking to understand how to deal with their yearnings and find someone to love. The last half hour of the film switches to a summer camp with a young boy and girl in their first experience of young love. That add-on is meant to remind us of the simplicity and awkwardness of youthful yearnings, but really distracts from the more powerful stories of Guillaume and Charlotte.

 

The Passion of Augustine – When Times Were A-Changin’

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“Modernity is killing me.”

The 1960s were a time of momentous change. We remember much of the social upheaval, but we often forget what major shifts happened in the church. As a bishop says in The Passion of Augustine, “Everything is moving too fast. Modernism is attacking us on all fronts: Vatican II, loss of faith, fewer vocations, and worst of all: the Ministry of Education . . .. Prepare for the worst.” The pressures of the changes play out within a small convent school in Quebec.

Mother Augustine (Céline Bonnier) heads the Sacred Heart Convent and the school for girls that specializes in music training. It is a very regimented life—both for the nuns and the students. The school often turns out winners in the provincial music contest. But things may change. The government wants to take over education, and the convent schools may have to close. Augustine battles with her superior over the convent. And then Augustine’s niece Alice (Lysandre Ménard) is brought to the school because her mother must leave. Alice is a gifted pianist, but is disruptive. Alice brings a bit of the social changes of the outside world into the convent. She also brings change into Augustine’s relationships.

At the same time, the church and convent are going through changes brought on by Vatican II (the 1962-65 Ecumenical Council of Catholic Bishops that brought major revolutions to the Church). At the beginning of the film we see a bit of a Latin mass. At just about the midpoint there is a folk mass. The shift is startling—and more than a bit jarring for those who have built their lives around the church. When the time comes for the nuns to abandon their old habits and vails, we see that it is a painful and emotional time for them. Not just because of the clothes, but because the security of their chosen life was being stripped away. How shocking and even distressing it must have been for them to go from dressing “like 18th century widows” (as one of the nuns put it) to airline stewardesses.

But this is also a very personal trial for Augustine. It is not just the changes around her, but the changes within her as well. We see glimpses of her past that show us she was not always a pious nun. And in her struggles with the church hierarchy, she must choose how she is going to best fulfil her gifts.

Change often brings a feeling of chaos. But that chaos often soon becomes the new established order. The changes from Vatican II were not easily embraced by some in the Catholic Church. In all churches the prospect of change can lead to dissension. (How many church board members does it take to change a light bulb? CHANGE?) Everything around us seems to be in a state of constant flux. We may rely on what we think are foundational institutions like the church to keep us grounded. But like everything else, those too undergo change. It is good to remember that often God can work through those changes to continue to fill the world and our lives with God’s love.

I first saw the film at the Newport Beach Film Festival two years ago. At NBFF it won five jury prizes: Best Feature Film, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. I don’t know if it ever got a non-festival release in the US, but now it is becoming available on VOD. I’m happy to have the chance to revisit this story of the struggles of faith in a changing world.

Photos courtesy of Under the Milky Way