November 21, 2003 | Appropriately enough for a season when we traditionally divide our time between nostalgic glances backward and anxious gazes forward, we now have writer-director Denys Arcand’s The Barbarian Invasions , a ruefully wise and flawlessly acted comedy-drama charged that gracefully seesaws between resignation and celebration.
It’s a sequel to The Decline of the American Empire (1986), Arcand’s best-kown earlier film, a bracingly funny comedy of bad manners about the lusty lives and endless conversations of eight self-regarding French Canadian intellectuals. But don’t worry if you didn’t see that movie, or even know of its existence: While knowing a bit more about the backstories of a few key characters might enhance your enjoyment, Barbarian Invasions can be savored, for its own considerable merits, as an uncommonly satisfying self-contained work.
Remy (Remy Gerard), a Montreal history professor and self-described “sensual socialist,” is nearing the end of a zestfully misspent life. Hospitalized with terminal cancer, he admits to few regrets about neglecting academic matters while pursuing erotic adventures. True, he never did get around to writing anything worth reading, or even referencing, and Louise (Dorothee Berryman), his often-betrayed wife, left him years ago. But his greatest disappointment, to hear him tell it, is the way Sebastian (Stephane Rousseau), his adult son, somehow evolved into “an ambitious and puritanical capitalist.”
As it turns out, however, it’s a good thing to have a successful international financier for an offspring, especially if, like Remy, you’re stuck in an overcrowded, understaffed hospital that represents all the worst aspects of socialized medicine. Some of the funniest scenes in Barbarian Invasions depict the collision between enlightened capitalism, represented by Sebastian, and entrenched bureaucracy, represented by union officials, regulation-bound administrators and anyone else at the hospital who proves remarkably receptive to generous bribery. If money talks, then Sebastian uses his cash to say, “Hey, I love you, dad, in spite of everything.”
Sebastian wheels and deals with all the blunt-spoken directness of someone who assumes (usually correctly) that everyone and anything can be obtained for the right price. Indeed, when someone suggests that Remy could alleviate his pain with heroin, Sebastian simply marches out and shops for the drug – first at a police station (where cops suspect he’s really a muckraking reporter), later at the home of waifish junkie, Natalie (Marie-Josee Croze), whose mother just happens to be one of Remy’s many former lovers. Sometimes, it’s good to have friends in low places.
While Sebastian spreads money far and wide, Remy gathers old friends – and, yes, some ex-lovers, and his ex-wife – to his hospital room and, later, to a lakeside cabin. Stories are swapped, recollections are shared. They remember their salad days as political firebrands, and playfully mock their trendily idealistic dabbling in Marxism and Quebecois separatism. Just as important, they note with equal measures of bemusement and despair what they see as the slow, steady decline of a Western Civilization under siege from without – the title refers to the 9/11 terrorist attacks – and within. It’s all too terribly sad, too immensely overwhelming. So let’s have another drink with old friends while we make do and get by, OK?
Don’t misunderstand: The Barbarian Invasions isn’t a right-skewing comedy about aging lefty baby-boomers who see the “errors” of their ways. The movie is much richer, and much, much more complex, than mere sociopolitical revisionism. It speaks to all of us, in a quiet yet compelling voice, about the crystal-clear certainties embraced by the young and the puzzling ambiguities accepted by the older and, if they’re lucky, wiser. At the same time, the movie invites us to contemplate the pains and disappointments that make up so much of life, and how, as Remy grudgingly admits, you get so used to it all, so enthralled by it all, that it’s hard to leave even when it’s time to go.
