“My job is very fragile. There’s no insurance. I never know the next
morning what I’m going to do. As long as they allow me to make movies there, I
will. But it’s one movie at a time. I’m making every movie like it’s my last
one, because you never know. I only believe I’m making a movie when I put my
eyes behind the camera.”
--- Denis
Villeneuve
I don’t believe in words that are alleged to be prophetic.
But, I can’t stop wonder how apt the name was for the first film competition
Mr. Denis Villeneuve decided to participate. It’s called “Destination World
Race” aka ‘La course destination monde’. May be he destined to transcend
national boundaries to make movies that raced around the world. Now let me not
get ahead and make a myth out of Villeneuve’s staggering rise to be one of the
important, contemporary film-makers. Born
on October 3rd 1967, in Quebec’s southern-side suburb, Trois
Rivieres, Denis Villeneuve abandoned science major at college to pursue
interest in film studies. He enrolled at ‘Universite de Quebec a Montreal’ and
at 1990, he made his first documentary short with Stephane Thibault for
‘Destination Worldrace’ under the tittle ‘La Course Europe-Asie). This short
movie series (1988-99) presented by Radio-Canada had participants traveling
alone around the world to make 4 minute movies. On the year 1990, Villeneuve
won the first prize in this competition. This early victory pushed him to make
similar low-budget, minimal running time projects. In 1994, he wrote and
directed his first short film titled “REW-FFD” (1994). In 1996, the budding
film-maker got a meaty chance to direct a segment in anthology of short films
called “Cosmos”. It was a showcase for young Canadian directors’ talent and Villeneuve
made the tense segment titled “Le Technetium”.
In 1998, he decided to make his first feature film “August 32nd on Earth”. The film was about a woman named Simone, a fashion
model, whose life goals changes when she miraculously survives a car accident.
She is now obsessed in giving birth to a life (to have a baby) and seeks the
help of her best friend Philippe. Despite bizarre nature of plot outline, this
film was an impressive effort for a first time film-maker. It was a
deliberately elusive work of a woman’s self-discovery (the remarkably arresting
performance of Pascale Bussieres was another strong aspect). The film was also
screened at 1998 Cannes Film Festival and received glowing reviews. The
follow-up feature film “Maelstrom” (2000) was equally elusive and confirmed
that Villeneuve is Canada’s burgeoning film-making talent. The marvelous French-Canadian actress Marie
Josee Croze played the central role of a depressed, substance abusing woman
named Bibi, who falls in love with a man whose father she believes to have accidentally
killed (a hit-and-run case). The bizarre & distinct aspect of “Maelstrom”
is that it is narrated by a fish, waiting to be cut off on a butcher’s block.
There was a narrative and visual maturity Villeneuve gained in this second film
itself, which continues to marvel us till now.
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| Pascale Bussieres in "August 32nd on Earth" |
Denis Villeneuve took a 9 year gap before the release of his
acclaimed drama “Polytechnique”, based on the shooting at Montreal’s Poly-technique School on December 6th, 1989 which claimed the lives of
14 women. One of the prominent works Villeneuve made in his 9 year hiatus from
film-making was the 11 minute short “Next Floor” (2008). Based on the original
idea bestowed by Pheobe Greenberg, the place of action in this short film was a
banquet table. There were quite a few moments in “Next Floor” we are left to
watch the events unfolding with bafflement and an open mouth. It was a vivid
portrayal of how over-consumption and uncontrolled appetites would forever
take control of our senses. Villeneuve’s “Polytechnique” left out all the
uniquely weird narrative & visual techniques to incorporate a very minimal,
but powerful visual style. This film swept seven major awards (including Best
Picture) at the Genie Awards – the Canadian equivalent of Academy Awards. Marc
Lepine, the shooter at Poly-technique School, specifically targeted woman,
noting down in a letter that woman (& feminists) had robbed him of
opportunities to lead a better life. But, Villeneuve doesn’t turn into a poster
boy for ‘feminism’ or shove in loud messages through ‘Polytechnique’. The way
he visualized the impact of violence and how his frames lingered in many of the
film’s distressing unspoken moments must be lesson for film-makers trying to
portray real-life morbid events on-screen.
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| A still from one of distressing sequence in "Polytechnique" |
In 2010, Villeneuve returned with a tale of a woman tracking
down her mother’s horrific past. It was the film you could say cleansed any
doubts in the mind of movie-lover about Villeneuve being one of the excellent
film artists. The film was titled “Incendies” and deemed to be one of the best
films to come out of Quebec cinema. “Incendies”, in many ways transcended the
set of limited themes dealt in Canadian films. It was said to be rare effort
from a Canadian film-maker to transcend national borders or detach himself from
national belonging, in order to make a universally acknowledged anti-war
tale. The beauty of “Incendies” lies in the way of how Villeneuve diffused his
favorite, pet theme of ‘female condition’ into this gripping drama. I mean, we usually
see a wronged man gathering up the courage to face what undid him. In
“Incendies” an old woman does that by compelling her daughter and son to make a
trip across the afflicted past. But, unlike a wronged man’s usual cinematic intention to wreak havoc, this woman character doesn’t want to twist the knife
inside. She just wants to obliterate the evil in a man’s soul by showing him
unbridled love. I never knew that a
simple act of reading a letter at the film’s climax would provide to be such a
cathartic, powerful moment. A letter to uproot the deafening silence [“I say
that you story begins with a promise that will break the thread of anger”, what
an unforgettable, resonating final words in the film!].
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| A still from the heart-wrenching climax in "Incendies" |
The great success of “Incendies” naturally gave Villeneuve
the chance to be part of big-budget Hollywood productions. Most of the emerging
film-makers by cutting corners often get crushed by the Hollywood machine. When
“Prisoners” made in 2013 with star actors Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal, I
didn’t have much interest in it. It was the first time Villeneuve to not have
female protagonist (script was not also written by him). Nevertheless,
Villeneuve used the highbrow technical prowess of American movies to make a
moderately profound and immensely entertaining crime/mystery. This film marked
the director’s first collaboration with ‘Master of Light and Shadow’ Roger
Deakins and musical composer Jonas Jonasson. Despite the intricate script
structure, “Prisoners” was pretty much a whodunit thriller. A kind of film you
don’t re-watch when its suspense elements is uncovered. But, thanks to Deakins
and Villenueve’s technical mastery, this film could be re-watched just for
those impeccable frames of menacing, rain-drenched, wintry landscape alongside
the faces of grieving, furious men. May be it was Villeneuve’s involvement that
vividly brought out the despair of women characters (played by Maria Bello and
Viola Davis) due to male violence.
Before shifting to Hollywood to make “Prisoners”, Villeneuve
was already embroiled in the making of twisted psychological thriller “Enemy”
(partially based on Nobel Prize winning novelist Jose Saramago’s “Double”) with
Jake Gyllenhaal. The film got released after “Prisoners” and got mixed reviews
due to its hard-to-crackdown narrative and thematic structure. The mysterious
nature of “Enemy” not lies in the set of activities done by characters, but
it’s all entangled within symbolism, which doesn’t have much of the cinematic
logic. “Enemy” tells the tale of a history professor Adam Bell leading a dull
life, coming across a person who looks just like him. Bell’s obsession with the
other person derails his life as well as that of the women close to them.
Villeneuve uses the thriller framework in “Enemy” to metaphorically explore the
twisted notions of masculinity (about how it finally hinges on the prospect of
‘sexually conquering women’). It is also a film about ‘self’ or inquires on
‘what makes an individual?’ If depicting the female condition, exploring the
position of women in the society plus reflecting on the cyclical nature of
violence are some of the director’s favorite themes, the other predominant
theme in his films are the presence of some form of doppelganger or a dichotomy
(which you could find in abundance in the works of David Lynch and David
Cronenberg).
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| Denis Villeneuve and Jake Gyllenhaal in the filming of "Enemy" |
The duality is not
just the usual cinematic good and evil one. The duality exist with in his
protagonists – be it the obsessive, suicidal protagonists in his first two
Canadian movies or in the loving-dad-embracing-violence characterization in
“Prisoners”. Even wen Villeneuve doesn’t pen the script, he chooses to zero-in
on this feature of dichotomy & duality. In “Enemy”, this theme was pretty
much obvious, but it was subtly ingrained in the visuals of his poetic tale of
evil “Sicario” (2015). Thanks to Roger Deakins, the duo once again designs an
atmosphere that is drenched in dread and duality. You see that brooding aerial
shot, moving through the landscape of one of the peaceful cities on Earth (El
Paso, US) to one of the most violent cities in the world (Ciudad Juarez, Mexico),
laying within few kilometers. With Johann Johansson musical score throbbing in
the background, you get to witness one of the most visually complex scenes in
contemporary cinema, as the American convoy from Texas passes Mexican border to
escort a prisoner back to their country.
Apart from the elegant visualization of the geographical
dichotomy, Villeneuve through Tyler Sheridan’s script, focused on the dualities
existing within human mind. It’s an aspect in the narrative, which makes the
actions of particular characters totally unpredictable. Both Emily Blunt who
plays the protagonist Kate Mercer and the magnificent actor Benecio Del Toro
keep their words to bare minimum and express their dual nature through
remarkable emotions. With “Sicario”, Denis Villeneuve also once again got the
chance to employ female characters as his protagonist (after “Incendies”). In
an interview, Villeneuve stated that he was drawn to this script mainly because
it featured a female lead (writer Sheridan was previously advised to change his
lead into a male by Hollywood studios). Whenever you think about tale of drug
cartel, you visualize men and their struggle against the ‘powers to be’. And,
whenever we hear that a film has a female lead, somehow we grossly relate it to
the bland term ‘chick-flick’. But, here is a sensible film-maker working within
the reach of mainstream, trying to engage wider audience by infusing something
potent and original female characters. Here is a film-maker traversing through
different genres, Hollywood studios are throwing at him, but still he is able
to make his own distinct path.
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| Emily Blunt as Kate Macer in "Sicario" |
I am now eagerly
waiting for his critically acclaimed hard sci-fi thriller “Arrival” starring
Amy Adams in the central role (based on Ted Chiang’s novella “Story of Your
Life”, which I tremendously liked reading). With the Blade Runner Sequel in
making, Denis Villeneuve will be one of the most vital film-maker you got to
watch out for in the next decade or two. He boasts the dream of adapting Frank
Herbert’s hard-to-adapt sci-fi epic “Dune”. I think Villeneuve has the superior
skills to succeed with such an adaptation (if it happens).
Here’s my personal ranking of Mr. Villeneuve’s films. It’s
very much a subjective endeavor. So I hope that the commenters will convey your
own ranking rather than decrying at mine.
1. Incendies (2010)
2. Polytechnique (2009)
3. Enemy (2013)
4. Prisoners (2013)
5. Sicario (2015)
6. Maelstrom (2000)
7. August 32nd on Earth (1998)
An excellent video essay on Villeneuve's oeuvre:
F For those who have missed watching Villeneuve's marvelous short film "Next Floor":
A movie essay breaking down the tense 'convoy scene' in "Sicario"
My previous write-ups on Denis Villeneuve's movies:
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