Posts Tagged ‘Rémy Girard’

TESTAMENT: 2 ½ STARS. “a satirical look at cancel culture.”

Academy Award winning Quebec filmmaker Denys Arcand returns to theatres with “Testament,” a satirical look at cancel culture and political correctness.

Rémy Girard is Jean-Michel Bouchard, a world-weary 73-year-old bachelor living in a retirement home. To pass the time during the day he walks in the local cemetery and volunteers at a school. At night, thinking about how little time he has left, he has trouble sleeping.

One afternoon a protest happens outside the retirement home. “Respect our First Nations,” the assembled crowd chants. The object of the activist’s disapproval is an antique fresco that hangs in the home’s front hallway. In its depiction of the Iroquois people welcoming Jacques Cartier to their land, the First Nations are presented as uncivilized and sexualized, whereas Cartier is decked out in European finery.

The protestors call it a distortion of history, a depiction of genocide created from a Eurocentric point of view and demand the home’s director, Suzanne Francoeur (Sophie Lorain), have the painting removed.

“This whole painting is a disgrace,” they say, “and we’re going to come back here every day until you do something about it.”

Suzanne finds herself in the midst of two scandals as she orders the fresco to be painted over, hidden from sight, only to have the Deputy Minister of Culture Raphaël Saint-Aubin (Robert Lepage) declare that the painting’s artist was “the greatest muralist of the 19th century” and should never have been covered. “What you’ve done is unspeakable,” he yells at Suzanne. “There are no words. It was a D’Aubigny, you idiot.”

As the controversy roils, Jean-Michel has an awakening as his feelings for Suzanne take shape.

As a satire “Testament” aims for obvious targets—woke culture, political correctness, eager activists—and goes after them with a sledgehammer. The absence of subtlety in Arcand’s culture war screed mires the satire with a “get off my lawn” mentality that feels too easy, too mocking.

In one scene Saint-Aubin and Director of Fine Arts Emmanuel D’Argenson (Yves Jacques) indulge in a whataboutism argument that hits every talking point in the anti-woke playbook. Trouble is, it doesn’t play like satire, it plays like bad social media memes given the breath to speak. It’s not exactly cutting edge.

Better is Jean-Michel’s awakening. As Suzanne becomes a scapegoat for her bureaucratic bosses his gruff exterior fades away, revealing his feelings for her. It’s a late start for a man who never embraced life completely, and Girard displays those wasted years, those regrets with a subtlety the rest of the movie lacks. By the film’s end, he has something to live for, and realizes that change is possible, no matter your age. That should be “Testament’s” real message, its beating heart. Not the poking of a finger in the eye of ideology.

BONES OF CROWS: 4 STARS. “a story of hard truths, told with skill.”

“Bones of Crows,” a new period drama now playing in theatres, covers decades of history, but is tied to recent, horrifying events.

Jumping through time, from the 1800s to the 2020s, the story of the intergenerational trauma caused by the Canadian residential school system, focusses on the family of Aline Spears (Grace Dove). A Cree woman born to a large, happy family in 1930s Manitoba, everything changes when Aline and her siblings are forcibly taken from their parents who are told they will be thrown in prison if they don’t sign over their children to the residential school system.

Abused, physically and emotionally—“I could kill you and bury you out back and nobody would care,” a priest snarls at the headstrong Aline.—the priests and nuns systematically attempt to strip the siblings of their Indigenous heritage, religion and identity, forcing them to assimilate them into the dominant Canadian culture. It is, as one character says, “a lesson in unrelenting cruelty.”

During World War II Aline escapes the horrors of the school by enlisting in the Canadian Army.

“The only way we can make sure they don’t send you back to that school is to send you to war.” During her raining to become part of an elite squad of code talkers who used the Cree language to disguise military intelligence, she meets and marries Adam (Phillip Lewitski).

Returning home from war to raise their family, Adam suffers PTSD, while Aline is haunted by the abuse she suffered at the hands of her sadistic teachers.

As the movie skips through time, we learn more about the residential school, Aline’s life after the war, her sister’s legal woes and the next generation, the children that carry the trauma in their DNA.

The process of healing is ever present, however, as Aline remembers the words her mother said to her as she enlisted in the army. “You be everything you are meant to be. Don’t let the darkness win. Don’t let them win.”

Métis-Dene writer and director Marie Clements covers a great deal of ground, much of it hard going. The cruelty and attempts to dehumanize Indigenous youth are brought to horrific life, and the depictions of residential schools; child abuse, sexual and psychological abuse and racism may be very unsettling for many viewers.

But even though the film chronicles a century of generational trauma, it is also a celebration of Cree resilience and tradition. There are eye-opening depictions of atrocities, necessary to tell the story, but as Aline confronts the past, there is also a sense of justice.

It is a story of hard truths, told with skill—despite its sprawling nature, it doesn’t feel bloated—and emotion that gets to the heart of how generational trauma forever altered the lives of the characters.