Days of Darkness (L'Age des Tenebres) @ the Canadian Film Festival
November 27th 2008 22:38
It's a horror movie of the most insidious kind, one that reaches deep into your fear-box and squeezes until the juicy juice comes out. I could handle zombies, ghosts and vampires, but Arcand's film strikes out at a fear that I keep deep down inside, where the mushy parts are.
I lie - "Days of Darkness" is not really a horror film, though it did indeed cause me to recoil in fear. It's a comedy, one that starts off with the main character, Jean-Marc Leblanc, fantasizing about sleeping with a comely blond princess, only to be cruelly awoken by his wife.
Leblanc lives in a world of lusty fantasies, happily slipping into a world where his favourite roster of sexy women complement his every mood. His real life, however, is excruciating: his wife ignores him in favour of throwing herself into her work, his daughters seem indifferent to anything he says and his job is constructed within the deepest levels of bureaucratic government Hell.
"Days of Darkness" is the conclusion to a loose trilogy of films, beginning with "The Decline of the American Empire", followed by "The Barbarian Invasion", but the most despondent film is the last one, a movie that offers no hope, no glimpse of a way out, except to remove yourself from civilization.
Arcand seems to be fascinated with the dehumanizing nature of modern society - we've self-assembled to form countries and cities, which are triumphs of human evolution, a pinnacle of technology and luxury, removing us from the savage realities of the predator-prey relationship back in the jungle.
What did the city do for us? Leblanc knows well - he sits in a traffic jam every morning, then rides the subway, surrounded by mobile phones. Money bought his family video games, widescreen TVs and a modern kitchen, all which serve to separate his family into individuals that have enough space and convenience to ignore the rest of the family.
Sigh... I could go on, tirelessly. Leblanc's life, to the audience, is one we all struggle to avoid, but, after my 30th birthday, seems dangerously close to being a fate that we all are pulled towards, like the gravitational pull of a sickly asteroid in the distance.
The tragedy of "Days of Darkness" is that Leblanc is so completely alone - as his mother lies struggling in silent pain in the hospital, he breaks down and moans that he doesn't know what to do, and there's no one to ask. No one. It's a moment that reflects the rest of his life, and ours as well. Did we evolve so far, for so long, just to get to a place in history where we've never been this lonely?
Though it feels a little incongruous at times, the film moves along merrily, then with a heavy hand to your sternum, dropping from comedy to painful tragedy. Arcand does a wonderful job of avoiding similarities to "American Beauty" and "Falling Down", but his final scenes, ones of quiet tranquillity and simple movement give us the impetus to get up, step out of our suits and walk away from it all.
I say: Perhaps one of my favourite Canadian movies, beautifully fashioned and delightfully funny... Arcand's vision is the highest form of comedy, where we laugh at a scenario that terrifies us to the very core of our spirit.
See it for: Radiant, luxurious images of Quebec, contrasted to the grey concrete of the miserable Montreal highways. Yes, I've been stuck on them, and there's nothing that makes you want to recede back into the Artic tundra like a Montreal traffic jam.
Marc Lebreche plays Leblanc and is wonderful in his role, taking the punches, effortlessly delivering slapstick, but showing a terrifying amount of pain and suffering.
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