The release of Big Little Lies out now on Blu-ray is a
reminder of what’s lacking so much in Canadian cinema: beauty, generosity and
spirit. The community of and around these three mothers and their children is
going through many challenges and problems but there’s a resilience that holds
everyone together. The interior emotional world of these characters oscillates
between anger and joy, sadness and humor. It’s by this fine balance,
accentuated by a powerful soundtrack, that Big
Little Lies captures a truth of the human spirit today. The image that
comes to mind is that of Madeline telling people to fuck off with a smile as
she has the best interest of her family and friends in mind. That is to mean
well and to fight for it. In Big Little
Lies everyone are themselves: they are complex characters that have
experienced challenges, they are beautiful and full of emotions, they need to
be loved and are loving, and at the end they get what they need (to cite the
Rolling Stones song that plays during the end credits). If Jean-Marc Vallée is
still the best working Canadian director it’s not because he has gone stateside
and has more resources (though this is obviously a plus as it has given him
more freedom), it’s because he proposes a cinema of three things: dreams,
imagination and winning.
So to repeat these three terms,
since they are so necessary though actually scarce: dreams, imagination and winning. Dreams as it’s so important to
believe in a future or another world where so many of today’s problems are no
longer prescient and happiness is possible. Imagination as it’s necessary to
believe, to imagine these
possibilities and relationships to make them real. And finally winning as it
through these wishes coming true and perseverance eventually paying off, which
gives meaning to the struggle that it took to get there. Humanist beliefs for
sure, but why have they become so hard to find and rare in an English Canadian
cinema? Why is it when so many Canadian directors finally get a chance to make
a film the end result is usually the opposite: reality, oppression and defeat?
A collective imagination doesn’t have to essentially rely on social reality and
its problems, an individual defeat that’s a symptom of institutional malaise.
Why instead of dreaming success and victory that instead so many of these
directors put forward defeat and failure? I know that the world is and can be a
shitty place but this only makes the potential for imagination and victory even
more important: at least in art it doesn’t have to be.
Jacques Rancière can be valuable
here as he has a novel manner to articulate the link between art and democratic
politics. His concept of the distribution
of the sensible refers to the communal forms of naturalized perception
within a particular social order. For Rancière social formations are naturally
oligarchic therefore the powers of artistic operations are capable of
reconfiguring hegemonic perceptions of reality. Art is able to dispute any
sense that existed meanings of socio-cultural life is inevitable. This can be
seen in his two favored regimes of imageness: the artistic image for Rancière, which creates discrepancies within a
given order of expectation of reality as it attempts to dismantle normalized
standards of representation; and symbolic
montage that connects disparate elements to create affinities, whose
co-belonging shows these elements as being part of the same world, as it blends
familiarity with mystery. Two other important terms are politics which for Rancière is anything that reframes the sensory
community and police which is anything
that reinforces the status quo.
Through a Rancièrien perspective the
positive qualities of this idea of an English language Canadian Cinema of the Imagination becomes political, in that they imagine a world of co-habituation
while also troubling the apparatus, the institutions that circulate in the
financing and distribution of these works.
The current genre of the English Canadian miserablist drama seems to be have been solidified by the institutionalization of the discourse formations of and surrounding the work of Atom Egoyan – whose films regularly denounces the problems of society and shows the effects of alienation, while routinely being celebrated for it – as this model, and themes about Canadian fiction like the garrison mentality and weird sex and snow shoes, has ended up creating a collective imagination of individuals being separated instead of finding a place within a larger social community. This ossification might have its roots in the creation of a state-sponsored fiction film industry in favor of social portrayals and in opposition to the communal popularity of American films. It can even be seen as disseminating into current CBC television productions like the reboot of Anne of Green Gables that focuses more on sensationalism and violence than the earlier joyous moments and accomplishments of its original. In this context programming can be seen as supporting this industry and curation favoring those that work within this system.
The current genre of the English Canadian miserablist drama seems to be have been solidified by the institutionalization of the discourse formations of and surrounding the work of Atom Egoyan – whose films regularly denounces the problems of society and shows the effects of alienation, while routinely being celebrated for it – as this model, and themes about Canadian fiction like the garrison mentality and weird sex and snow shoes, has ended up creating a collective imagination of individuals being separated instead of finding a place within a larger social community. This ossification might have its roots in the creation of a state-sponsored fiction film industry in favor of social portrayals and in opposition to the communal popularity of American films. It can even be seen as disseminating into current CBC television productions like the reboot of Anne of Green Gables that focuses more on sensationalism and violence than the earlier joyous moments and accomplishments of its original. In this context programming can be seen as supporting this industry and curation favoring those that work within this system.
Part of this problem is that there
are so few directors with a clear, personal vision of hope. Instead of
believing in coherence and breath the reigning model is that of fragmentation
and group-consensus. Feeding social expectations and stereotypes instead of
exceeding them.
If
there’s a noble tradition in English Canadian cinema its roots can be seen in
the work of Don Owen and Allan King: the documentary tradition, focusing on the
people and streets of Toronto and elsewhere, as it hesitates towards fiction.
In this middle-ground there is room for imagination to appear where through improvisation
surprises can occur to show off what makes us unique. This tradition can be seen as
continuing in the work of Kazik Radwanski (Scaffold)
and Matt Johnson (Nirvanna The Band The
Show). But there’s also a more imaginative Canadian film history hidden
behind this: I’m thinking about the line that traces John Paizs’ Crime Wave to Matt Johnson’s Operation Avalanche in English Canada,
and Gilles Carle’s La vie heureuse de
Léopold Z to Vallée’s C.R.A.Z.Y.
in Québec. A leap to dreams, imagination and winning is possible and nobler. And
there’s a history of these works in Canadian cinema that shows it has been done in the past. Some examples that come to mind includes King’s Who Has Seen the Wind?, Peter Mettler’s
The Top of his Head, Donald
Brittain’s Family: A Loving Look at CBC
Radio and Terrance Odette’s Saint
Monica.
So
how to break the mold? How to combat individualism and cynicism? The answer, to
restate it, is quite simple (though hard to achieve): find the possibility to
dream, imagine and find success (how ever intimate it’s defined: it can be as
small as two friends high-fiving after a rough day). Some recent examples that
come to mind that strive for this includes Pierce Csurgo and Mitch Greenberg’s La Chasse and its fantasy narrative to recover a stolen painting; the
expanded cinema route of Rebeccah Love’s live readings of short stories and
plays and the over-ambitiousness of the longer short film Acres; or finally Mark Cira’s work that’s oversaturated with
symbolism whether through the story of a young girl being diagnosed with
diabetes (Sweet Yoyo) or an out of control Instagram short.
This Cinema of Imagination in English Canada would be one that’s loyal
to one’s emotions and intellect. It would need to be faithful to one’s personal
history and the people that have crossed it. It’s currently what’s so
exciting about Canadian cinema and it might just have to take place at the
margins: A small group of friends making work, coming together and dreaming that
happiness and success is possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment