Books, Arts & Manners: Worst Declension

A heavy curse hangs over Canadian filmmaking. Thanks to the National Film Board of Canada, excellent documentaries, short subjects, and cartoons have been made through the years all over the country. But neither from the Film Board nor from any other producers, neither from French nor from English Canada, has there come a single outstanding feature film. There have been some competent commercial efforts (though not many of those); a few, rather parochial arthouse favorites (though not on an international scale); and some not unworthy co-productions with England, France, and the United States. But in the full-length fiction-film category, not one solitary Canadian masterwork.

In a way, it is understandable. Canada is a tragic country, saddled with three separate but equal inferiority complexes: toward France, toward England, and especially toward the United States. And though I am not speaking only cinematically here, I am certainly speaking cinematically too. When it comes to actors and actresses, Canada has done well enough; in fact, Canadian performers have the advantage of being able to play Yanks in England and Brits in the U.S.A. But the moment we move a step up to writers and directors, the frost sets in. It need not be so forever, but Denys Arcand’s The Decline of the American Empire is symptomatic of what obtains now —down to its very title. Although Le Déclin de l’empire américain is very much a Canadian, indeed French Canadian, film in content and sensibility, it must pretend, to convince itself of its own importance, to pertain to an “American empire,” which presumably includes the U.S. and Canada, though not the Eskimos.

JS

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John Simon

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A heavy curse hangs over Canadian filmmaking. Thanks to the National Film Board of Canada, excellent documentaries, short subjects, and cartoons have been made through the years all over the country. But neither from the Film Board nor from any other producers, neither from French nor from English Canada, has there come a single outstanding feature film. There have been some competent commercial efforts (though not many of those); a few, rather parochial arthouse favorites (though not on an international scale); and some not unworthy co-productions with England, France, and the United States. But in the full-length fiction-film category, not one solitary Canadian masterwork.

In a way, it is understandable. Canada is a tragic country, saddled with three separate but equal inferiority complexes: toward France, toward England, and especially toward the United States. And though I am not speaking only cinematically here, I am certainly speaking cinematically too. When it comes to actors and actresses, Canada has done well enough; in fact, Canadian performers have the advantage of being able to play Yanks in England and Brits in the U.S.A. But the moment we move a step up to writers and directors, the frost sets in. It need not be so forever, but Denys Arcand’s The Decline of the American Empire is symptomatic of what obtains now —down to its very title. Although Le Déclin de l’empire américain is very much a Canadian, indeed French Canadian, film in content and sensibility, it must pretend, to convince itself of its own importance, to pertain to an “American empire,” which presumably includes the U.S. and Canada, though not the Eskimos.