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Polytechnique

Canada

2009

76 Min
Black and White
2.35:1
French
  • Currently 3.4/5 Stars.
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DIR Denis Villeneuve

PROD Don Carmody, Maxime Rémillard, André Rouleau, Karine Vanasse

SCR Jacques Davidts, Denis Villeneuve, Éric Leca

DP Pierre Gil

CAST Sébastien Huberdeau, Maxim Gaudette, Karine Vanasse, Martin Watier, Evelyne Brochu, Johanne-Marie Tremblay, Natalie Hamel-Roy

ED Richard Comeau

PROD DES Roger Martin

MUSIC Benoît Charest

Cannes (Quinzaine des Réalisateurs), London (World Cinema), Oldenburg, Stockholm (Open Zone), Istanbul, São Paulo (International Perspective), Karlovy Vary (Tribute)

Synopsis

For seven long years he has been planning an attack against young women who want to become engineers, entering a world that in his mind is reserved only for men. Just when he is heading toward the building of the Montreal Polytechnique with a loaded gun, student Valérie is being interviewed for an internship; to succeed she must keep quiet about her plans to start a family. When the killer reaches the classroom, the professor is lecturing on entropy, explaining that every system subject to pressure from its external environment undergoes a conversion that results in imbalance and a transfer of energy. The violence that follows is a perfect illustration of this definition. While Valérie is going through hell, her schoolmate Jean-François misses his chance to become a hero. This black-and-white film, based on a real event and shot in the actual places where the massacre took place in December 1989, has a theme similar to Gus Van Sant’s Elephant, but diverges from it in many ways. Villeneuve does not explore what brought the unnamed killer to such misogyny but, like a documentarist, he first records his deeds and then asks the question we are used to hearing in connection with war and holocaust: how can the survivors continue their lives? In this unspectacular but very impressive film, in which Pablo Picasso’s Guernica also plays a symbolic role, people hardly communicate, the cheerless school corridors induce feelings of alienation, and the viewer, watching the snow falling endlessly, almost forgets that the setting is a big city. The film won nine Genie Awards. –KVIFF

Director

Original

Denis Villeneuve

Denis Villeneuve (born October 3, 1967 in Gentilly, Quebec) is a Quebecois film director and writer. He is a two-time winner of the Genie Award for Best Director, for Maelström in 2001 and Polytechnique in 2010. 

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Kate

24Aug12

The quintessential film on this subject. Terrifically realised.

Zach Closs and DT like this

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Cromm Crúaich

16Feb12

I read about the incident before watching it, I wasn't expecting nearly such a good film as this, really was superb.

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Mugino

4Jan12

I was in CEGEP studying for my own exams when news of the massacre came through friends and family. I don't remember hysteria, only communal shock and grief. It's a solemn, quiet memory much like the tone of Villeneuve's contemplative film. Many critics decried the labeling of that crime solely as an act of misogyny. The incident scarred men and women alike, taking lives long after the case was closed. Haunting.

Zach Closs and msmichel like this

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frank sgro

22Nov11

Glaciale

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W184

Notebook Reviews: Denis Villeneuve’s “Polytechnique” and John Carpenter’s “The Ward”

By Fernando F. Croce on July 15, 2011

Framed in a close shot, college students go about their business around a Xerox machine when a spray of bullets suddenly rips into the image

read article
W184

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Reviews

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Precision engineering

By DT on November 18, 2012

Fairly quiet a tableau, but a discernible human focus prevents it from also being seen as calculated, intimately delving into the minds and under the skin of its players – even that of the apparent…  read review

Too much concerned with neutrality, this film has no energy

By Henrik Schunk on May 24, 2012

A minimalist “film” about the Montreal Massacre of 1989. As much as I appreciate any artist who discusses crucial and controversial events via his discipline, I am not sure what the reason for making…  read review

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