polytechnique :: spoiler alert

25.10.09

the BFI london film festival has been on since oct. 14th and i have been meaning to see a film ever since i saw the posters advertising it on my commute. a lot of the bigger name films have already sold out. yet i could easily blow much of my weekly necessaries budget on tickets to the film festival. i have to be very discerning about what i went to see. at GBP 12 a pop (for evening and weekend shows) (equivalent of about US $20), i have to be very, very, very discerning. but i did want to see one canadian film at the very least.

i chose "polytechnique", a 2009 film directed by denis villeneuve (he also directed maelstrom) and booked a ticket for tonight.

i can't remember the last time images moved me like this.

"polytechnique" tells the story of the "montreal massacre" of dec. 6, 1989 at the ecole polytechnique (an engineering school, part of university of montreal) through the eyes of two witnesses: valerie (a woman who was in the classroom that the gunman first entered and who survived the massacre) and jean-francoise (a classmate of valerie's who was one of the male students removed from the classroom; he too survived the massacre but then took his own life). fourteen female engineering students were shot dead in a 45 minute rampage that ended when marc lepine -- the gunman, who is never identified by name in the film (even in the credits he is identified only as "the killer" -- took his own life.

the film is shot in black and white, the imagery so potent -- a cold, cold montreal day, naked branches and floating snowflakes. the building, that 70s architecture we know so well -- it could be anywhere. ubc, carleton, uvic.

i remember watching the news with my parents on cbc on dec. 6, 1989. we watched "the national" and "the journal" together every night from 10-11pm -- i remember knowlton nash was the news anchor on "the national" that night even though he had been replaced by peter mansbridge by that point. my dad sometimes had to work a night-shift and then we'd watch the national without him, but i am pretty sure he had a day-shift and we all watched it together that evening. when i realized that marc lepine killed 14 women and injured many others because he hated women, i felt like i had been punched in the stomach.

this movie took me back to that feeling. stark. blunt. haunting. for 77 minutes, were were all transfixed. quietly awed, my stomach clenched, my eyes -- wide -- glued to the screen. when the massacre happened, i was 14 and in grade 10. i had a lot of things i wanted to do in my life and i was impatient, just as i am now. on dec. 6, 1989, i was angry. it was a frustrated anger -- the kind of anger that often turns into tears of powerlessness, the salty taste of tears on a pillow. i remember thinking: how dare he take those girls' lives away like that? what gives him the power to do that? why didn't someone stop him?

today, when i left the movie, i felt that anger again, but muted. instead i felt something else. something lonely. there was no one beside me to turn to, no one to say "did you see that" to. i knew that no matter how lax and lazy i'd been about posting to this blog lately, i had to write tonight, even if what i wrote sounded overblown and self-important. i had to write because if i didn't, i wasn't sure where this angry, lonely feeling would take me.

the audience sat in silence while the credits rolled. no one got up until the curtain fell on the screen. the spontaneous burst of applause at the end seemed garish and sounded tinny, somehow. i passively let the escalator carry me down the several flights to ground level. neither i was rushing, nor was anyone quick-stepping around me. at the ground floor, we were directed to exit a particular set of doors. i stumbled out of the theatre and into a melee.

apparently, another film was premiering and the star of that film was attending. there were paparazzi and tourists snapping cell phones photos, shouting over one another and craning their necks. children sat on parents' shoulders. all this -- right outside the exit.

my quietude was shattered. i felt disoriented and pained and i couldn't move fast enough. i broke through the crowd and huffed away. outside, i felt even more alone than inside the theatre when i looked beside me in vain to find someone familiar to share my experience with. i had planned to head home right after the movie to do some work, but as i walked towards charing cross station, i felt not myself. i felt removed. instead, i decided to wander around the dark city.

as i walked away from the national gallery, i was stopped by a belgian couple. they were hopelessly lost. they had to be back at their hotel by 7 pm (it was now about 6:40) and their map covered only a short perimeter around their hotel. i looked up where they needed to be in my a to zed and we realized that they had wandered very far from where they needed to be. they thanked me and, as they walked away to hail a cab, the woman said to me: "it is so big here."

it put a hole in my heart, her saying that. i've realized over the last several weeks that london is the perfect lonely city: it's big, mostly unknown to me, but not foreign. it's streets wind and wend, taking me to places i've never been or back again to places i've just seen. i lose myself in these meanderings and i feel alone in a way i haven't experienced in a long while.

lest you (and by you, i really mean j.m. and m.r. who might think that they are neglecting me somehow and that i'm seriously becoming cracked as a result) think this is a cry for help, i have to admit this alone-ness is sort of a compelling feeling: i am indulging it and seem in no hurry to shrug it off.

funny, while i started typing this out to be a movie review, it's kind of turned into a life review.

things are pretty good all-told. i give it 5 stars. and the movie too.