let's call this my extremely belated Remembrance Day post, okay
Just got back from seeing Passchendaele.
Paul Gross' directing abilities: ten out of ten. Paul Gross' acting abilities: ten out of ten. Paul Gross' fine, fine, fine ass: thirty billion out of ten, and Jesus Christ, what devil do I sell my soul to in order to be that pretty at 50? I'm not even that pretty now, guys. Paul Gross' screenwriting abilities: uhhhh.
Okay, let me be fair. I really, really enjoyed the film. Passchendaele is probably the single battle which lives in my head and in my heart as the icon of war. Vimy Ridge is all well and good, but somehow I just never got that jazzed about Canadian victories per se; Verdun and the Somme both come close for sheer enormity¹; but the image of Passchendaele is the one that's been indelibly stamped somewhere deep since I was 15 -- and, once again, ten out of ten for bringing it to life in, I swear to Christ, the most stunning battle scenes I've ever seen. Saving Private Ryan, eat your heart out; this was really phenomenal stuff. And by "phenomenal" I mean "grim as all get-out." Which is, of course, the reason Passchendaele's stuck with me all these years -- I couldn't even remember much about the details of the battle itself when we sat down; what I remembered was the word duckboards, and the struggle to conceptualize the idea of actually drowning in mud.
(It's odd, too, because I tend to be more interested in WWII, in general -- but when I think of war in the abstract it's this one, the Great one. I think I have, maybe, a tendency to identify with it through some weird kind of colonial pride, and I know this, again, comes mostly from where and how I learned about these battles, age 15, from a teacher whose angle on this war was more or less -- the colonial tragedy, I suppose, is a good way to put it? Like, the other huge iconic thing I remember from those discussions was Gallipoli, and specifically Gallipoli as the ANZAC tragedy, and as (excuse me) the birth of a nation -- and that's no coincidence. And I know, it feels strange to talk about post-colonial narratives when the colonials are -- let's be blunt -- white²? But I do think it is, in many ways, as valid a lens for viewing Canadian history (and Australian history, and New Zealand history) as for, say, Indian history. And that's, maybe, where Passchendaele -- where World War I in general -- hits me. Right there in the solar plexus of colonial outrage.)
I don't know. I have a lot to say about Canada all of a sudden, and a lot of that's another post for another night. I have a lot to say about Toronto, but that's another post, too. I have things to say about Calgary -- I really liked the choice to centre the film there, that Calgary got to be Canada for once. It seems to me, and maybe I'm just defensive now that I'm living in the centre of the universe (ha! ha! insert thigh-slap here, because that joke never ever gets old, am I right?!), but it seems to me that the West doesn't, by and large, get to be Canada very often in Canadian media -- and it bothers me, because, guys, I love this country with all my Maritime-born, BC-raised, Ontario-and-Quebec-bred, roadtripping heart, all four and a half time zones of it, and I love every miserable film set in Cape Breton and every grand novel set in Victorian Toronto just as much as the next girl, but there is a whole lot of country west of Lake Huron -- some of it the most beautiful in any hemisphere -- and it's nice to see it for a change.
Anyway. The story. Yeah, it -- I can forgive that it was kind of contrived, because, okay, it's epic drama; it's an illustrative tale; the point isn't for it to be plausible. I can even forgive at least some of the convolution, because it kept things interesting and engaging, and it's an understandable way to build emotional resonance when you're trying to tell a lot of story in a relatively short period of time. The script even supports the wild claim I was making to exstasis the other night, which was that any Canadian film, no matter how depressing, is at least occasionally hilarious³. What bothered me the most -- we'll forget the melodrama, because let's face it, I watch Gone With The Wind over and over, I'm in no position to pass judgement on that score -- were some of the actual nitty-gritty writing choices. In particular, the diction, which was sometimes so period-inappropriate as to actually throw me out of the scene (although Paul Gross' character was, to my considerable hilarity, note-perfect Benton Fraser almost the entire time); and you guys, some of the lines. I mean. I don't even. I'd quote the one really egregious one that's coming to mind, but in order to set it up properly I'd have to spend three paragraphs explaining who and what, at which point this would turn into one of those stories my sister tells which go absolutely nowhere until she just trails off and looks sheepish? Kind of like that sentence right there?
So, okay, maybe I didn't even have that much beef with the script. (Although, that one line, oh my god. People who've seen the movie, you know what I'm talking about.) I think I did in the middle, but it redeems itself enough by the end that I was forgiving past transgressions even as I was sitting there. (Also I was kind of on a date so I didn't want to go full-on dork squad and whip out my notebook to take notes during the movie, like I'd normally do? So it's possible I'm just, you know, repressing.) And again, some of the imagery toward the end is almost painfully heavy-handed, but then, conventions of the epic, blah, blah.
... Also, let's face it, I would totally let Paul Gross put the bricks to me, outdoors, in the pouring rain, in the middle of a rubble-filled swamp full of soldiers. So, once again: not in any position to pass judgement.
Anyway. It was good. Questionable moments, yes, but worth it on the whole. Maybe the only thing it lacked was -- I'm trying to avoid major spoilers here, but what I'm thinking of is, again, Gallipoli (I mean the film, here, with a very young Mel Gibson (no, I know, but seriously)? Australians, you'll know what I mean, and if the rest of you haven't seen it, you really, really ought to), and how the last five minutes of it are basically the most heartbreaking thing in the world -- I don't know. Passchendaele looked like it was coming close, but then it sort of squandered all that emotional capital with a pivotal scene that reached just a little too far, at least for me. The gut-punch in Gallipoli comes because it's so heartbreakingly ordinary. It's not the Christmas Day soccer match, which was what I found myself thinking of during the climactic scene of this film -- which is a great story, and an interesting thing to reflect on, but it's also -- singular, and iconic, in the same way that this scene was. And singular is great, and moving, but the thing that's actually heartbreaking about war is that it isn't singular, it is in no way singular, it is not at all singular -- it's the ordinary deaths and the ordinary dismemberments and the ordinary tears of the ordinary mothers. This is where the end of Gallipoli hits me -- with the sick shock of how many thousands of thousands of thousands of times that very ordinary tragedy played out. So it was in elevating the ordinary and specific to the grand and symbolic, I guess, that Passchendaele lost some of its resonance for me.
So. I won't say it's for everyone, but it definitely managed to push a good half-dozen of my personal buttons, and if you've thought about seeing it but just haven't bothered -- as opposed to, say, because you honestly have zero interest in war movies/Canadian movies/Paul Gross' baby blues⁴ -- do go and see it.
________________
¹ The British Army (including, you know, those funny-talking colonials, who didn't get to have their own armies until WWII) suffered upwards of 57,000 casualties on a single day at the Somme. For comparison: that's also the number of American soldiers killed in Vietnam over the entire course of the war. Total casualties at the Somme: 1.2 million.
² Obviously, there's another (arguably more important, certainly far more marginalized) narrative dealing with aboriginal experience of the Great War -- something this movie nodded in the direction of, but not much more -- but this is getting back to the more traditional idea of the post-colonial narrative, which, while valid and important, is different from the one I'm trying to articulate here.
³ That said, the same night (or maybe the night after) I downloaded and watched Suspicious River, on her recommendation, and I think this may have actually broken the rule. I don't remember for sure, and I'm not going to watch it again to find out, because HOLY NIGHTMARE-INDUCING MOTHER OF FUCK -- (vague spoilers: I was prepared for Callum Keith Rennie, because I've been seeing him do "creepy motherfucker" for four seasons of Battlestar Galactica, but AHHHHHHH, MICHAEL SHANKS. WHYYYYYYY. I'm not even lying: I had a literal nightmare. :((().
⁴ Please direct yourself to your nearest emergency room; it's possible that you are clinically dead.
(Verdict on the date~~ aspect of the evening, for those actually following my sad-sack ways: probably about as well as it could have gone, considering the whole issue where I had no desire to actually, you know, romantically interact with this otherwise totally pleasant individual. One or two awkward moments, but nothing I wasn't able to talk my way out of, and all in all, I'm glad I went, particularly since not going would have (1) postponed seeing a movie I'd been dying to see and (2) created much greater and longer-lasting awkwardness. Not that the second disincentive has ever worked before, but maybe I am -- uh -- learning how to function like an actual adult with, like -- social skills? Est-ce que c'est possible?)
IN CONCLUSION, I think I'm going to like the winter here, but I really goddamn miss London Drugs.
Paul Gross' directing abilities: ten out of ten. Paul Gross' acting abilities: ten out of ten. Paul Gross' fine, fine, fine ass: thirty billion out of ten, and Jesus Christ, what devil do I sell my soul to in order to be that pretty at 50? I'm not even that pretty now, guys. Paul Gross' screenwriting abilities: uhhhh.
Okay, let me be fair. I really, really enjoyed the film. Passchendaele is probably the single battle which lives in my head and in my heart as the icon of war. Vimy Ridge is all well and good, but somehow I just never got that jazzed about Canadian victories per se; Verdun and the Somme both come close for sheer enormity¹; but the image of Passchendaele is the one that's been indelibly stamped somewhere deep since I was 15 -- and, once again, ten out of ten for bringing it to life in, I swear to Christ, the most stunning battle scenes I've ever seen. Saving Private Ryan, eat your heart out; this was really phenomenal stuff. And by "phenomenal" I mean "grim as all get-out." Which is, of course, the reason Passchendaele's stuck with me all these years -- I couldn't even remember much about the details of the battle itself when we sat down; what I remembered was the word duckboards, and the struggle to conceptualize the idea of actually drowning in mud.
(It's odd, too, because I tend to be more interested in WWII, in general -- but when I think of war in the abstract it's this one, the Great one. I think I have, maybe, a tendency to identify with it through some weird kind of colonial pride, and I know this, again, comes mostly from where and how I learned about these battles, age 15, from a teacher whose angle on this war was more or less -- the colonial tragedy, I suppose, is a good way to put it? Like, the other huge iconic thing I remember from those discussions was Gallipoli, and specifically Gallipoli as the ANZAC tragedy, and as (excuse me) the birth of a nation -- and that's no coincidence. And I know, it feels strange to talk about post-colonial narratives when the colonials are -- let's be blunt -- white²? But I do think it is, in many ways, as valid a lens for viewing Canadian history (and Australian history, and New Zealand history) as for, say, Indian history. And that's, maybe, where Passchendaele -- where World War I in general -- hits me. Right there in the solar plexus of colonial outrage.)
I don't know. I have a lot to say about Canada all of a sudden, and a lot of that's another post for another night. I have a lot to say about Toronto, but that's another post, too. I have things to say about Calgary -- I really liked the choice to centre the film there, that Calgary got to be Canada for once. It seems to me, and maybe I'm just defensive now that I'm living in the centre of the universe (ha! ha! insert thigh-slap here, because that joke never ever gets old, am I right?!), but it seems to me that the West doesn't, by and large, get to be Canada very often in Canadian media -- and it bothers me, because, guys, I love this country with all my Maritime-born, BC-raised, Ontario-and-Quebec-bred, roadtripping heart, all four and a half time zones of it, and I love every miserable film set in Cape Breton and every grand novel set in Victorian Toronto just as much as the next girl, but there is a whole lot of country west of Lake Huron -- some of it the most beautiful in any hemisphere -- and it's nice to see it for a change.
Anyway. The story. Yeah, it -- I can forgive that it was kind of contrived, because, okay, it's epic drama; it's an illustrative tale; the point isn't for it to be plausible. I can even forgive at least some of the convolution, because it kept things interesting and engaging, and it's an understandable way to build emotional resonance when you're trying to tell a lot of story in a relatively short period of time. The script even supports the wild claim I was making to exstasis the other night, which was that any Canadian film, no matter how depressing, is at least occasionally hilarious³. What bothered me the most -- we'll forget the melodrama, because let's face it, I watch Gone With The Wind over and over, I'm in no position to pass judgement on that score -- were some of the actual nitty-gritty writing choices. In particular, the diction, which was sometimes so period-inappropriate as to actually throw me out of the scene (although Paul Gross' character was, to my considerable hilarity, note-perfect Benton Fraser almost the entire time); and you guys, some of the lines. I mean. I don't even. I'd quote the one really egregious one that's coming to mind, but in order to set it up properly I'd have to spend three paragraphs explaining who and what, at which point this would turn into one of those stories my sister tells which go absolutely nowhere until she just trails off and looks sheepish? Kind of like that sentence right there?
So, okay, maybe I didn't even have that much beef with the script. (Although, that one line, oh my god. People who've seen the movie, you know what I'm talking about.) I think I did in the middle, but it redeems itself enough by the end that I was forgiving past transgressions even as I was sitting there. (Also I was kind of on a date so I didn't want to go full-on dork squad and whip out my notebook to take notes during the movie, like I'd normally do? So it's possible I'm just, you know, repressing.) And again, some of the imagery toward the end is almost painfully heavy-handed, but then, conventions of the epic, blah, blah.
... Also, let's face it, I would totally let Paul Gross put the bricks to me, outdoors, in the pouring rain, in the middle of a rubble-filled swamp full of soldiers. So, once again: not in any position to pass judgement.
Anyway. It was good. Questionable moments, yes, but worth it on the whole. Maybe the only thing it lacked was -- I'm trying to avoid major spoilers here, but what I'm thinking of is, again, Gallipoli (I mean the film, here, with a very young Mel Gibson (no, I know, but seriously)? Australians, you'll know what I mean, and if the rest of you haven't seen it, you really, really ought to), and how the last five minutes of it are basically the most heartbreaking thing in the world -- I don't know. Passchendaele looked like it was coming close, but then it sort of squandered all that emotional capital with a pivotal scene that reached just a little too far, at least for me. The gut-punch in Gallipoli comes because it's so heartbreakingly ordinary. It's not the Christmas Day soccer match, which was what I found myself thinking of during the climactic scene of this film -- which is a great story, and an interesting thing to reflect on, but it's also -- singular, and iconic, in the same way that this scene was. And singular is great, and moving, but the thing that's actually heartbreaking about war is that it isn't singular, it is in no way singular, it is not at all singular -- it's the ordinary deaths and the ordinary dismemberments and the ordinary tears of the ordinary mothers. This is where the end of Gallipoli hits me -- with the sick shock of how many thousands of thousands of thousands of times that very ordinary tragedy played out. So it was in elevating the ordinary and specific to the grand and symbolic, I guess, that Passchendaele lost some of its resonance for me.
So. I won't say it's for everyone, but it definitely managed to push a good half-dozen of my personal buttons, and if you've thought about seeing it but just haven't bothered -- as opposed to, say, because you honestly have zero interest in war movies/Canadian movies/Paul Gross' baby blues⁴ -- do go and see it.
________________
¹ The British Army (including, you know, those funny-talking colonials, who didn't get to have their own armies until WWII) suffered upwards of 57,000 casualties on a single day at the Somme. For comparison: that's also the number of American soldiers killed in Vietnam over the entire course of the war. Total casualties at the Somme: 1.2 million.
² Obviously, there's another (arguably more important, certainly far more marginalized) narrative dealing with aboriginal experience of the Great War -- something this movie nodded in the direction of, but not much more -- but this is getting back to the more traditional idea of the post-colonial narrative, which, while valid and important, is different from the one I'm trying to articulate here.
³ That said, the same night (or maybe the night after) I downloaded and watched Suspicious River, on her recommendation, and I think this may have actually broken the rule. I don't remember for sure, and I'm not going to watch it again to find out, because HOLY NIGHTMARE-INDUCING MOTHER OF FUCK -- (vague spoilers: I was prepared for Callum Keith Rennie, because I've been seeing him do "creepy motherfucker" for four seasons of Battlestar Galactica, but AHHHHHHH, MICHAEL SHANKS. WHYYYYYYY. I'm not even lying: I had a literal nightmare. :((().
⁴ Please direct yourself to your nearest emergency room; it's possible that you are clinically dead.
(Verdict on the date~~ aspect of the evening, for those actually following my sad-sack ways: probably about as well as it could have gone, considering the whole issue where I had no desire to actually, you know, romantically interact with this otherwise totally pleasant individual. One or two awkward moments, but nothing I wasn't able to talk my way out of, and all in all, I'm glad I went, particularly since not going would have (1) postponed seeing a movie I'd been dying to see and (2) created much greater and longer-lasting awkwardness. Not that the second disincentive has ever worked before, but maybe I am -- uh -- learning how to function like an actual adult with, like -- social skills? Est-ce que c'est possible?)
IN CONCLUSION, I think I'm going to like the winter here, but I really goddamn miss London Drugs.