2009 Genie goes to… Passchendaele?
2008 was an exceptional year for Canadian cinema: a rarity considering this country’s normally minimal film output. This makes the Genie’s choice of Passchendaele as Best Motion Picture all the more disheartening, especially since it seems to have been given as more of a consolation prize than a deserved win.
Oddly enough, Passchendaele is everything we have been asking for in Canadian film and not realized we could do without until it came. A common complaint (and I myself am guilty of this) is that Canadian films have never reached high enough or had big enough budgets to compete with the American market. Gross’ film was the realization of the big budget Canadian war film – though frankly, we should have stuck to the Heritage Minutes. The dated romance was reminiscent of Cold Mountain and the discourse on war was on the surface alone and never reached the potency of other films about World War I or other wars of the 21st century. In a sense, without anything new to say, Paul Gross is years late (78 to be exact if you count back to All Quiet on the Western Front). And if the sole purpose was to create the Canadian war movie – well frankly, that doesn’t cut it. The fact that Canadians played a large role in a historical event does not preclude the need to make a film about it. The tagline for the film stated: “In WWI, 20,000 Canadians went into battle. They were known as the Stormtroopers. 5,000 of them never came home. THIS IS THEIR STORY.” Only it isn’t.
To avoid sounding like a complete cynic when it comes to the $20 million production, I have to commend its director/producer/writer/star’s commitment to detail. During production, Gross is said to have constantly compared his representative landscape with images from 1917. The resemblance is astounding, as witnessed by the above images. It is only regrettable that the audience was never privy to the madness that its protagonist Michael Dunne (Gross) was affected by. Not until the last twenty minutes or so do we see Passchendaele, and while it is as stunning as a war-shelled landscape can be, the focus of the battle is so narrowly dependent on so few characters that we never get a sense of the scale of the battle (the CGI-induced long focus up notwithstanding). In terms of its Genies for Art Direction/Production Design, Costume Design, Overall Sound and Sound Editing, it would have been a farce not to give them to Passchendaele – for it truly is the most astounding Canadian ‘production’ ever. It is in its impact as a film, both in plot and character, where the film fails to connect.
Besides the love story involved, which is really no different or better than the hundreds of similar stories out there, what was the point of Passchendaele? Was it to create the most epic Canadian movie ever, regardless of the results? Or was it really to be the first film to examine the horrors of war through the eyes of Canadians in one of the nation’s most noteworthy battles? Before the battle begins, we know Dunne as a man who has fought and was injured on the battlefield, already a commended veteran of the war. Through his dealings in the town, we learn that his outlook on the affair is that there is no glory in war, and he fails to dissuade his flame’s brother, David Mann, from answering the patriotic call and going overseas. Being the stand-up-guy he is, Dunne follows Mann in order to protect the youngster from the horror of war. In a sense, the film’s title is a misnomer – the film is not about Passchendaele, it just happens to end up there as an extension of the love story, and really could have been any battle. For me, this undermines the film’s dedication to the battle and both its importance and/or meaningless in terms of the bigger picture (after all, the same ground was recovered by the Germans in a fraction of the time).
According to Paul Gross, the film is not about the horror of war: “We have a very funny perception of ourselves, which is: ‘We’re peacekeepers.’ Well we are, and we’re extraordinarily good at it, we to some extent invented it, we teach the world how to do it. But, we’re also warriors. And we were the most feared fighting corps in the British order of battle.” (source) Gross wanted Canadians to have a war film much like the Americans, British and even Australians have had – one that could make Canadians proud of their military history… What? Stop. Almost every movie about WWI has not been a glorification but a grand question as to how nations managed to get themselves in a mess that resulted in the loss of millions of lives, of people who could otherwise have been friends. Films on WWI, in direct contrast to WWII films, have been red flags in an attempt to deter future generations from descending into similar pointless madness. Certainly Dunne’s character has an inkling of this feeling – but apart from his minor clashes with the local military bigshot in Calgary, the film never condemns war nor does it totally glorify it. Its decided middle ground may not deter from its artistic merit, but its middle-of-the-road stance on the war echoes its mundane, average storyline. It sort of feels like a rewrite of Sullivan Entertainment’s continuing adventures of Anne of Green Gables, only Gilbert comes back shell-shocked and Anne is a morphine addict. Paul Gross’ effort is commendable – he is a smart and respectful of history, but his baby just wasn’t up to par and never speaks to anything greater than itself, especially given Canadians are currently serving and dying in Afghanistan. This isn’t a prerequisite, but given the lack of any resounding theme, it may have been a step in the right direction. The only meta-textual portion I seemed to catch, was Gross’ character punching out an Albertan hick aptly named Mr. Harper (zing!).
I would have recommended both Ce qu’il faut pour vivre and Tout est parfait as good alternatives. Moreover, arguably two of the best Canadian movies were relegated to their thematic category: Up the Yangtze and My Winnipeg. One a documentary and the other a pseudo-doc, these films were not only our countries greatest exports of 2008, but showed that our filmmakers can be both contemporary and original. I’ll never understand why award ceremonies give less credence to documentaries, animated films and the like due to their lesser importance in comparison to the Drama.
As for some World War I films I could recommend to viewers not totally satisfied with Passchendaele, here are a few: Already mentioned, Lewis Milestone’s 1930 epic, All Quiet on the Western Front, is the quintessential anti-war film. Likewise, Stanley Kubrick’s 1957 Paths of Glory (left) starring Kirk Douglas, treads the popular ground of the lesser soldier paying the price for the mistakes of the incompetent commanders. Australia’s own WWI film, Gallipoli, directed by Peter Weir and released in 1981 also deals with this issue during the titular campaign in Turkey. Oldies but goodies are Jean Renoir’s La Grande illusion (1937) and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), both of which deal with the nonsense of war but from the perspective of the aristocrats or commanders. Most of the above deal primarily with issues of war, though Colonel Blimp successfully melds in a love story that is much less prominent than in Passchendaele, but more interesting. If its romance you’re looking for, may I suggest The Notebook?
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April 8, 2009
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By ShaKha, April 8, 2009 @ 10:55 pm
I KNOW that I’m the only one who thinks this, but I believe that Blindness was the best Canadian film of 2008 (it is actually my number 2 overall). However, I do agree that My Winnipeg deserved more respect. On another note, 2009 is turning out to be a good year. It’s only April and we have already had two fantastic releases in Pontypool and Polytechnique.