Apocalypse
maintenant

>>Denys Arcand on the nasty Quebec
press and his dark new film L’Âge
des ténèbres (Days of Darkness)

by MATTHEW HAYS

The word among journalists is that Denys Arcand doesn’t like giving interviews. But sitting across from the man, you’d never know it. Chatting up his latest film, L’Âge des ténèbres (Days of Darkness), Arcand is relaxed, charming and gracious.

And you’d think the man would have reason to be nervous. His last film, of course, was Les Invasions barbares, the sequel to Le Déclin de l’empire américain, which netted him his third Oscar nomination and, at long last, a win. His new film rounds out the third in the loose trilogy, about a man (played by Marc Labrèche) who is slogging his way through a dreary existence as a Quebec bureaucrat in a dystopic future.

There, his mind wanders, taking him into the life of his fantasy alter-ego, a man who commands the attention of his wife and children and has multiple sexy girlfriends on the side (among them Diane Kruger). There are hilarious swipes at a modern, soulless Quebec, where laws dictate the use of language, government drones work in the Olympic Stadium (Arcand has finally found a use for it), and the only solution is found in escaping into fantasy. And Rufus Wainwright even has a cameo.

But equally dramatic is the making-of story of Darkness. It’s the latest in the strangely bipolar career of Arcand. For every Oscar-nominated hit the 66-year-old filmmaker has had (as well as the aforementioned, there’s the Oscar-nominated Jésus de Montréal, also considered one of the best Canadian features ever made) there are serious duds (Stardom). Waiting for word on what this film would be like put Quebec’s film critics in agony. What would Days of Darkness amount to? What is arguably the most anticipated follow-up in Canadian film history turned into a blood sport for the local press.

And the story grew stranger when the original release date for the film was bumped by Alliance-Atlantis, Canada’s largest film distributor. Then word that the film wouldn’t play at Cannes. Then word that it would be the prestigious festival’s closing film. All this bumping and moving for Darkness had critics writing its obituary before they’d even seen it.

Cannes do

Through all of this, Arcand was simply not commenting. But his wife and collaborator—and one of the most powerful producers in Quebec—Denise Robert, had a few things to say. “Honestly, you wouldn’t think that getting into Cannes was a bad thing,” she told me in April after the Cannes announcement. “We got a letter from Harvey Weinstein congratulating us on being the closing film. People can say what they like—we’ll be having fun on the red carpet.”

Days of Darkness would receive mixed notices at Cannes, but then suffer some harsher reviews upon its September release in France. But without a doubt, both Arcand and Robert have faced their harshest diatribes here, proving the Wizard of Oz adage that there’s no place like home.

“It’s strange,” Arcand says of his thorny relationship with the local scribes. “I don’t know what it is. You’d have to ask them. It flows. Sometimes it’s good, other times bad. It’s hard to pinpoint, really. With Barbarian Invasions, they were very nice, and very proud. But perhaps afterwards it was too much. Perhaps they felt it was time to cut him down.”

While the success of his last film is on everyone’s mind, Arcand points out that the publicity tour for Invasions is precisely what inspired his latest. “I did hundreds and hundreds of interviews for that film. One day, I was sitting in a limousine and I thought to myself, ‘Who would like to be in my shoes?’ I started to think about this obscure fellow, who nobody listens to. Not his wife, not his daughters, not his boss. And he has this fantasy life where he has sexy lovers and wins prizes and so on. I spent the year that I did publicity for Invasions thinking about this. I didn’t have time to write it, but I was making mental notes the entire time.”

Arcand is famous for making films that touch audiences worldwide, but remain distinctly Québécois. “I try to be as deeply local as possible,” he confirms. “Eventually, through digging, you will be universal. No one is more Swedish than Ingmar Bergman. He’s the ultimate Swede, but he’s also obsessed with death and God.”

Some might not get the film’s central gag, which is where much of the early action is set, the Big O—but Montrealers will get it loud and clear. For Arcand, the choice was the perfect symbol of incompetence. “I decided to shoot the film there. This is a building that will cost us one billion dollars. And the price is still going up. The roof needs fixing. And this building serves no purpose whatsoever. You can’t play a decent baseball game or decent football game there. They did a study and found that you can’t really demolish it. It would cost another billion dollars to get rid of it, because it’s made with reinforced concrete. It would take a nuclear device to take it down, and I don’t think people living in the neighbourhood would appreciate that.”

No pressure

Arcand says this is a reflection of the shock and awe he feels at the rather shabby state of things in la belle province. “Our bridges are crumbling, our lakes are polluted and the roads in Montreal are like the streets of Beirut. We never repaired the sewers or the water lines for years, because we had to have the Expo, the Olympics, the Gay Games, or what have you. There are lakes in Quebec where you can’t swim, you can’t even let your dog take a drink from it or it’ll die. It seems like the end of the world is coming and no one is doing anything about it. So that’s where the title, Days of Darkness, comes from.”

Despite the brouhaha in the local media, despite the funding squabbles—both Arcand and Robert were attacked by some in the filmmaking community for allegedly hoarding too much government funding for cinema—Arcand still appears remarkably laid back about this latest release. Indeed, this is the same man who looked downright lackadaisical as he accepted his Oscar for Invasions. I have to ask about the speech: why so short? “I’m a very bad improviser,” he explains. “But you know, it’s not my role. I’m a filmmaker, not a speech writer.”

But now, on the eve of the release of his follow-up film, it’s difficult to believe that its reception by critics and the public doesn’t concern him one bit. Come, come, Denys: no pressure at all?

“No, not at my age. I’ve won an Oscar. What, you want me to win another one? That’s it. I’ve won it. It’s the exact opposite of pressure, really. That win coupled with my age gave me a sense of freedom. I feel like I can do whatever I like. So let me alone. I’ll just enjoy myself, shooting Tarantino-like scenes of people chopping heads off [one of the fantasy sequences in Darkness]. That scene was fun to shoot.”

Ultimately, it all boils down to context, Arcand says. “When you’re 45, and you want to secure funding for your next feature, then that’s pressure. When I did Decline of the American Empire, that was my first feature in 12 years. The pressure was on then. If it hadn’t worked, I would have been condemned to television hell forever. Even Barbarian Invasions—I hadn’t had a successful film in a while, so there was pressure to have that work.

“I always said this was my second-to-last film. I wanted to finish the trilogy and then I wanted to do my own Fanny and Alexander. I want to do a film about memories now, something totally different than the past few films. That’s the next goal.”

L’Âge des ténèbres (Days of
Darkness) opens this Friday, Dec. 7