If
I have a boy, I'll teach him how to love
On
the 6th
of December, 1989, the life at The Ecole Politechnique was as usual.
Nothing predicted a tragedy, until one one young man entered the
classroom and shot into the ceiling...
The
Ecole Politechnique Massacre was a societal shock. Until this day,
there is a raging debate about the modus operandi of Marc Lepine.
This film depicts the day of this shocking tragedy.
The
director took a formalist approach in depicting the events of The
Ecole Politechnique Massacre. Denis Villeneuve doesn't depict any
theories or guesses about the modus operandi of the murderer; he
merely shows one day in life of students of The Ecole Politechnique.
By using this approach, the director follows the cinematography of
Michael Haneke, especially his “glaciation trilogy” («The
Seventh Continent”, “Benny's Video”,
«71 Fragments
of a Chronology of Chance”).
The
film starts with murder of a female student, who stands near the copy
machine. Then, the director gets back to beginning of this day and
depicts the day from a different points of view: The Murderer, The
Female Student and The Male Student. Politechnique draws a clear
parallel with a last film of the “glaciation trilogy” - «71
Fragments
of a Chronology of Chance”. Nevertheless, compared with the film of
Michael Haneke, all fragments of Politechnique are clearly connected
from the beginning.
The
director shows an indifference of the society, which led to this
terrible tragedy. As everybody knows, you cannot change the history;
nevertheless, during the film, there are many moments, when this
crime could have been prevented or stopped. Anyway, this terrible
crime was committed and, in my opinion, the society takes a larger
part of blame for it. It were not the horror films, the violent
computer games or some psychological or some other societal theory,
it was the society as the whole.
Politechnique
is a film which makes you think. This tragedies are happening again
and again, but we treat them, mostly indifferent, hoping that it will
not touch us.
7/10
This is reminiscent of the Japanese film Rashomon(1950) where an incident is presented from different and contradictory points of view.It makes for a compelling viewing experience and based on your review ,Politechnique offers a similarly challenging perspective on an occurence.
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