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Les Invasions Barbares (The Barbarian Invasions)

Starring: Rémy Girard, Stéphane Rousseau, Dorothée Berryman, Louise Portal, Dominique Michel, Yves Jacques, Pierre Curzi, Marie-Josée Croze
Director: Denys Arcand

Reviewed by P. Joshua Laskey

I find it interesting what sorts of foreign-language movies Americans are willing to embrace. I would think that only those foreign films that most resembled Hollywood standards in storytelling, content, and appearance would translate, figuratively, for a large enough American audience to make distribution in the United States feasible, or more frankly, profitable. But this assumption is contradicted time and again by moving films like Les Invasions Barbares (The Barbarian Invasions), a francophone movie from respectably polyglot Canada.

When I begin to ponder the reasons why a stirring, difficult-at-times story like that depicted in Les Invasions Barbares can not only capture the imagination of America but also garner adulation and ultimately an Oscar® from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences®, the very differences I would have thought prohibited its acceptance actually shine as its greatest strengths. Without bashing Hollywood, for I believe many entertaining and sometimes brilliant works of art come out of the industrial movie machine, I would point out that it is the simple honesty of Les Invasions Barbares that sets it apart from most of the offerings available on the staggering number of screens across the country.

Whether it is American culture that demands easy answers in its cinema or American movie-makers who have their own reasons for delivering pared down visions of "real" life, it is clear that the foreign films which make it to market in the United States neither demand nor deliver either and, instead, tend toward dealing head on with the difficulty human beings face in the simple task of living. If Hollywood is the dream factory, then maybe it should not be surprising that the foreign films that compete successfully with the American industrial complex deal in a commodity often neglected by
American movie-makers: reality.

Offering an unvarnished truth, albeit through specific and admittedly subjectively focused eyes, Les Invasions Barbares realizes bittersweet contradictions and collisions living a human life entails much more clearly, and in my opinion satisfyingly, than the so-called "reality" of the American small screen or the "realism" of the American big screen. In this vein, the movie also creates situations in which its characters are forced to confront difficult dilemmas. Estranged relatives must face themselves and the choices that have led them to separate lives. Children must deal with the meaning of duty and loyalty. And friends must confront loss. While making me laugh out loud and weep almost within the same breathe, this movie, through its seemingly more irrelevant shots and scenes, made me think about the fact that life is full of such inconsistencies and confusing dead-ends. By this device, Les Invasions Barbares married a charming foreignness with a subtle familiarity and left me grateful for being invited to the wedding.

I have heard an appropriate sentiment which I will paraphrase here: What does it matter how a man falls? It matters very much when the fall is all he has left. Les Invasions Barbares is a story that neither shies away from depicting the fall nor avoids its inevitability and, instead, revels in the struggle, the heroic, tragic battle everyone knows will be lost but no one seems able to give up. Bravo to Denys Arcand (writer and director) for his script and the guts to execute it. Any artist willing to create a symphony of shots that builds into it the bittersweet themes of the human condition deserves accolades and maybe even little golden statuettes. True conflict, both internal and external, drives lasting drama. Les Invasions Barbares is lasting, fulfilling drama. For that, I feel almost ashamed I can give it no more than four stars.

Rating:

(4 out of 4 stars)