Passchendaele and the Insecurities with Canadian Cinema

I'm sort of having a love/hate relationship with my home and native land of Canada when it comes to the movie industry. After going through a film program here, a teacher of mine once said you can probably count Canada's important filmmakers on one hand, and that's probably true. I would count David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan, Guy Maddin, and Denys Aracand. There might be more but that's all I can think of, in time perhaps Sarah Polley will be a part of that list. These filmmakers stand out as with all great filmmakers and that's because they have an original vision, a vision that holds up outside of their borders and can be accepted all around the globe. However when it comes to promoting Canada as a force to be reckoned with in the cinematic community this is where our insecurities come to the forefront which causes us to suffer a severe identity crisis.

Now let's take "Passchendaele" a film that opened this years Toronto Film Festival and has been overly hyped by the Canadian press as a truly important film. The true importance of the film comes from the fact that it is now Canada's most expensive movie to date with a budget of about 20 million dollars, but the film itself and what it was trying to convey is an ultimate failure. It tells the story of an important and most untold story story of a famous World War I battle the Canadians fought and were in the end victorious. Although this is what the film claims it's about, it mostly spends it's time on a worthless cliche driven love story between a soldier and an army nurse, the battle scenes although impressive never develop an emotional connection with the audience as due to the lack of focus drawn to the battle. In the end the battle of Passchendaele never really seems as important as the filmmakers were hoping for, and it never really becomes a true tribute to the soldiers who died in the trenches. Canada's most expensive movie is a hollow mess.

After reading the reviews of "Passchendaele" the reporters never really discussed the movie itself and rather focused more on the importance on Canadian history. That's true, Canadian history is important and should be presented more in film, and in that way "Passchendaele" does a service. However what that history is, is never fully explained and in that way the film does an even bigger disservice.

I sight most of this blame on actor/director/writer/co-producer Paul Gross who turns this mostly into an ego trip for himself, right down to the sight of him at the end of the film holding up a cross as a Christ like figure, I almost felt sick. Perhaps Gross had good intentions like most people do when making a film such as this, in which case he should've stood aside and tried to tell a more complex story.

Films like "Passchendaele" are sadly among a long line of big budgeted insecure Canadian films. Another of these is "Bon Cop Bad Cop", a Jerry Bruckheimer type action buddy cop picture featuring an English speaking cop and a French Canadian cop who must join forces when a murder is committed in between the Quebec/Ontario border. The film was a success in Canada mainly because it dealt with the differences between french speaking and English speaking Canadians. Maybe that's all well and good here, but if the film were to be promoted anywhere else, it would've tanked.

Canada needs a new direction in the film industry, it seems unaware of the richness and pure originality it has to offer. We seem too preoccupied to compete with Hollywood movie making, we begin to lose our individuality. I am proud to be a Canadian and there are many classic Canadian films in our repertoire. We have one of the top film festivals in the world, we need to embrace all of this more and show that we can make our own films that tell our own stories in our own way.

On a side note, let me just tell you of one such original Canadian film I viewed recently: Guy Maddin's "My Winnipeg" is a beautiful, touching, funny ode to the Canadian city of Winnipeg. Told in a new style of filmmaking (as Maddin puts it) it blends reality and fiction in a way I have never seen which makes it a totally unique and original movie going experience. I've been to Winnipeg before and I was not impressed that much with it, but the way it is described and seen in Maddin's movie, it looks more like a dream than I had ever envisioned. See this movie and experience what real Canadian cinema is all about.