Lights, Camera... Passport
Canada has NO signature movie; a movie that has changed me, one that I can turn to again and again in memory. A movie that, frankly, offers reflection on how I might approach my own life, like literature can and does. A movie that speaks the human voice from Canadian lips.
Sure, sure there have been good Canadian movies made, but I challenged myself to name just one that has had a lasting emotive impact on me as a movie goer. And there is none I can name. Of course for each of the countries I'm about to name off the top of my head there are MANY films that would fit what I'm talking about, but for me there is Jibeuro (Way Home)and Tae Guk Gi (Brotherhood of War) from Korea, Beijing Bicycle and In the Mood for Love from China, there's Billy Elliot from UK, Gallipoli and, fuck, even Crocodile Dundee from Australia, Le Colonel Chambert from France, City of God from Brazil, Nuovo Cinema Paradiso from Italy...
I want to blame our screwed up distribution system in Canada -- we are on the distribution end of a movie making machine (American) that does not factor our movie makers into the equation. So, the type of Canadian movie I'm yearning for may be getting made (but I doubt it), but if so, they are not shown anywhere.
The "voices" of Canadian filmmakers that do get screened are interesting and artistic voices, but not the splendid blend of the human-condition voice, and voice of entertainment I hear in Billy Elliot or Le Colonel Chambert or Cinema Paradiso -- the latter I watched last night again. For a movie may be art, but it is when viewed in a movie theatre with popcorn meant to be entertainment as well. There are many movies as art that I deeply respect and even like, but that I would never watch in a theatre after paying 12 bucks and while stuffing popped corn in my maw. Those are films. Today, I speak of movies.
Anyway, what a remarkable view of the cliche 'you can never go home' Cinema Paradiso truly is. And in comparison, oh my, how the American movie machine so, so fucks that simple human truth up time and time again. So much so that it had been long enough since I'd last watched the Paradiso that I was filling in the story in my head ahead of the film, but was doing so incorrectly, expecting the American version I guess. I found myself remembering that the "returned child as adult" buys the theatre, refurbishes it and thus "saves" his memory... What actually happens if the theatre is blasted to the ground and turned into parking space. Which is a fine metaphor for the ironic theme of the film that nostalgia is a killer.
Okay, I'm done. But would someone make an entertaining, heart-warming or heart-chilling, human-filled Canadian movie. Porky's was close, I guess.
Sure, sure there have been good Canadian movies made, but I challenged myself to name just one that has had a lasting emotive impact on me as a movie goer. And there is none I can name. Of course for each of the countries I'm about to name off the top of my head there are MANY films that would fit what I'm talking about, but for me there is Jibeuro (Way Home)and Tae Guk Gi (Brotherhood of War) from Korea, Beijing Bicycle and In the Mood for Love from China, there's Billy Elliot from UK, Gallipoli and, fuck, even Crocodile Dundee from Australia, Le Colonel Chambert from France, City of God from Brazil, Nuovo Cinema Paradiso from Italy...
I want to blame our screwed up distribution system in Canada -- we are on the distribution end of a movie making machine (American) that does not factor our movie makers into the equation. So, the type of Canadian movie I'm yearning for may be getting made (but I doubt it), but if so, they are not shown anywhere.
The "voices" of Canadian filmmakers that do get screened are interesting and artistic voices, but not the splendid blend of the human-condition voice, and voice of entertainment I hear in Billy Elliot or Le Colonel Chambert or Cinema Paradiso -- the latter I watched last night again. For a movie may be art, but it is when viewed in a movie theatre with popcorn meant to be entertainment as well. There are many movies as art that I deeply respect and even like, but that I would never watch in a theatre after paying 12 bucks and while stuffing popped corn in my maw. Those are films. Today, I speak of movies.
Anyway, what a remarkable view of the cliche 'you can never go home' Cinema Paradiso truly is. And in comparison, oh my, how the American movie machine so, so fucks that simple human truth up time and time again. So much so that it had been long enough since I'd last watched the Paradiso that I was filling in the story in my head ahead of the film, but was doing so incorrectly, expecting the American version I guess. I found myself remembering that the "returned child as adult" buys the theatre, refurbishes it and thus "saves" his memory... What actually happens if the theatre is blasted to the ground and turned into parking space. Which is a fine metaphor for the ironic theme of the film that nostalgia is a killer.
Okay, I'm done. But would someone make an entertaining, heart-warming or heart-chilling, human-filled Canadian movie. Porky's was close, I guess.
posted by Heipel at
10:23 AM
2 Comments:
"Tae Guk Gi" is really good Korean movie...but...i don't like one actor in it.."WON BIN!!"...cuz he's so cute......haha...and another reason is that someone who i love really loves him....but remember steboo...there is no WON BIN in the world soon...!!..ha..
um, I do think some of the Quebec films are quite good. and I think Egoyan's Erotica was just fab in a creepy way. and i love the Anne of Green Gables movies. hah.
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