User reviews

"Wonderful" is the only word I can think of to describe this movie. Denys Arcand skewers the Quebec Provincial Government, the Federal Government, Socialized Medicine, Labour Unions, and just about everything else, but gently and wittily. (Rather more funny since there are a lot of Canadian tax dollars financing this effort). The aging and dying student radicals of forty years ago gather to give it all one last heave-ho and the dialogue (so much better than the sub-tiles can convey) is smart and witty and sad. They poke wistful fun at their younger selves while fearing the end as it comes for them and for us all. Love is thick on the ground as is self-loathing and anger and lust. These are rich, educated, privileged people who are still not all that far removed from their student days, at least in their own minds. They are something that many people may have trouble comprehending: wealthy Socialists.

It isn't necessary to have seen Arcand's previous work with these characters,( `The Decline of the American Empire') to appreciate this movie, but then, why would anyone deny themselves that pleasure?

A life of wine, women, and, no, not song, but left-wing causes, has left Remy (Remy Girard) pretty much alone and dying from cancer.

Writer/Director Denys Arcand gives us a film that dispels the myth that we will all die a happy death.

Remy's son Sebastien (Stephane Rousseau) lives in London and doesn't have anything to do with his father, who rejects him because of his capitalist ways, but he comes in and gets things done for his father. The Canadian hospital and the unions are not presented in a good light. Sebastian has to grease palms with money everywhere he turns. He also calls his father's old friends and associates to get them to visit. It really gets funny when he naively goes to the police to find a source for heroin as the morphine is no longer working to alleviate his father's pain.

It is not only the Canadian health care system that is pilloried, but the Catholic Church, and the imperialism of many nations. It is truly a thinking person's film. There are so many great lines throughout and some great thoughts on life and death.

While Nathalie (Marie-Josée Croze) helped him ease into death, his friends relieved their youth around him.

He lived his life on his own terms, and he went out that way.

I want more Denys Arcand.

In Montreal, Rémy (Remy Girard) is an atheistic professor of history and lover of women, who has a terminal disease. His wife calls their son, Sébastien (Stéphane Rousseau) to come from London, where he works as a successful investor. Sébastien arrives in Montreal with his mate, and using his money and corruption, he improves the condition of his father in a public Canadian hospital. He gathers his father's friends around him, and they stay together until the death of Rémy. This low budget movie is a touching story about friendship and farewell to life, alternating drama with acid dialogs about religion, history, life, political system, literature and many other themes. The cast has a great performance, flowing the story in a very natural way. At least twice, the characters say that they are not in the Third World, and I certainly agree with that. But I was really surprised and impressed with the way subjects like corruption, Canadian public heath system, labor union, ministerial of exterior, bureaucracy, police, drug dealers etc. are presented in this film. If what this movie shows is reality, then they are in the right way to join the club... My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): ` As Invasões Bárbaras' (`The Barbarians Invasion')

I have never been a fan of Canadian cinema because it was generally soaked with the sort of contrived politically correct sexual and social attitudes of which the conformist majority was already a proponent. Thus, Canadian films tended to be "pop-Canadian-culture" films about political correctness.

Of course there were exceptions: Atom Egoyan's "Exotica" or "The Sweet Hereafter," or some of Cronenberg's more experimental films like "Naked Lunch" possessed some of that existential starkness that attracted me to those films. Nonetheless my expectations generally remained low, which is why Denys Arcand's great "Barbarian Invasions" was such a pleasant surprise.

The film is about three things: the disillusionment with socialism, the growing disillusionment with capitalism, and the death of a man who happened to have been a socialist professor in Montreal, while his son a millionaire.

Remy is dying of cancer. He is dying in a Montreal hospital, which in a five minute scene is established as the horror of socialist Canadian health care. Remy's ex-wife calls upon his estranged, well-off son, Sebastien to come visit and take care of his dying father. What follows is both a comic and a touching critique of the achievements of socialism. The film also suggests that the increasingly nihilist capitalism, or money, seems to be the only way to get around in this world. Money gets Remy out of an overcrowded ward, it gets him the most accurate medical tests and the "painkillers" he needs to survive.

But "Barbarian Invasions" is critical of both systems: there is a beautiful scene where an auctioneer visits an old Montreal priest who takes her to the basement where he apparently has statuettes and chalices he wants to sell. The girl examines them and tells him that they would be of more value to the people at the church than on the world market. The priest remarks starkly: "In other words, they are worthless." Capitalism, consequently, is as anti-spiritual as socialism was.

However, there are far more levels to "Barbarian Invasions" than mere politics. In fact, the film's goal is really to scream "Politics Aside!" so that we can make room for the man who is dying. Because Remy is not a quiet, subdued man. He is a lusty man a la Sabbath from Roth's "Sabbath's Theater" who loves life, women, wine and radical socialism. But now, that all those things are distant from him, he is forced to question his life, his relationships with his friends and his estranged children.

What follows is a profound and touching elegy to the stupidities of youth, the mistakes in life, the regret and acceptance of old age - in other words of humanity. In the end, though Remy may be disillusioned with socialism, and definitely not all-too-happy with capitalism, facing death somehow robs politics of their significance. Not to say that politics aren't significant in life, because they pervade everything we do and see and so on, but bare, unadulterated life shines through for Remy. In the end, "Barbarian Invasions" is about death, and dying with dignity and how that dignity is achieved. While neither capitalism nor socialism offer it, it can be found at a more basic, human level.

It's ironic, as a side-note, that this film came out roughly at the same time as Bertolucci's "The Dreamers," which is essentially a contemplation on the idealism and romanticism of French socialism and the "free love" culture of the 60s. I found Bertolucci's film much less profound than his greater ones - it used an affair between two siblings and an American closed off in an apartment for several days as a metaphor for the sixties. It ended rather tragically, but unrealistically - it tried to convince us that people got out from their cloistered "apartments" (read mentalities) and went to the streets to protest. What "Barbarian Invasions" tells us is that the protesters on the street were still really in that apartment, cloistered from reality.

I recently watched this film and was very impressed. The screenplay, acting and directing were all top-notch. It was at times funny, sad, tragic and thought-provoking. It touches on everything from drug-use, Canadian medicare, the child-father relationship and of course, past intimate relationships- not all they were cracked up to be! Denys Arcand is so very astute on all these fronts and wrote a fantastic screenplay for the wonderful cast of characters.

It has to be one of my all-time favourite DVD's of 2004.

I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to see a riveting, quality film made in Canada. It deserved the Oscar!

The well-off oil futures trading son of a left-leaning '68 francophone Canadian professor returns to Canada when he learns that his father is dying. The film turns on the clash of values between the son and father as well as the father's questioning of his own worldview as he approaches the untimely end of his life (at 53). The talking heads aspect of the film is nicely muted by the emotional trajectory of the renewed father-son relationship and by the general humor that accompanies the ruminations of the father and his friends. The pace of the film is very relaxed, and while the father and son are clearly central characters, the director manages to maintain a strong ensemble feel. We see enough of the subordinate characters that they become something more than filler. They become embodiments of different strategies for facing the anxiety that accompanies the absurd project of trying to view a life as valuable. Two flaws make this film less than classic though: very leaden writing in the first half of the film, especially where the son is concerned, and a mostly unconvincing sequence toward the beginning of the film where the son uses bribes and street-smarts to procure a private room for his father. It's so poorly written and acted that it comes across almost as shtick. Nonetheless this is an excellent film in the way that it melds the intellectual and emotional trajectories of the story, and for its well directed and acted ensemble style.

There seems to be a lot of passion over the claim that the film is anti-American, anti-capitalist, etc. Many criticisms seem to dismiss the humanistic elements in this film - pain, death, reconciliation - because it has a vague intellectual, leftist, socialist face. My experiences in Canada tend to suggest that the Canadians have plenty of targets down south that deserve criticism. But does it matter? Whether the film included all these elements, the key theme was the preparation for death and reconciliation between those who will not see each other again.

Doesn't anybody cry over loss? Are we scared of those things after death? or do we fear the process of dying - the loss of the person, their presence? A person died in this film - right before us - 100 minutes of decline -and what a sigh of relief that there was reconciliation in the end! That there was time to speak, time to be present. Consider the contrast between the daughter on the yacht - stranded, distant - and the son near his father. The great pain that welled up in me to see that there was no opportunity for her left.

I don't cry in films, but I did here. I feared dying more than ever - other people's deaths, and mine - and I resolved to prepare for it.

Aaah, a film with wit, humanity, intelligence, characters to care about, philosophy, politics, social commentary and family dramas, all without a special effect in sight.

A film for adults. A film to make you think.

Wonderful script, gorgeous photography.

What's not to like?

Now I must seek out The Decline of the American Empire, which I always thought sounded too intellectual and pretentious for a pleb like me, but now I want to fill in all the back-story on the characters. (But I refuse to call it a "prequel")

I bought a DVD of "The Barbarian Invasions" on a whim because I'd enjoyed Arcand's earlier "Jesus of Montreal" and...well...I was in the mood for something French. I just finished watching it...and this movie is so...so lyrical and elegant, and in all the right ways. It's a story about people and not explosions and special effects. It's a tale of love (without the overwrought drama brought to the subject by most modern movies) and understanding (without the "Hallmark" syrup ALSO brought to the subject by most modern movies). It's about death and the realization that sometimes, even though you've lived that doesn't necessarily mean you've lived. It's about how you can know someone and not know them at all...yet still be influenced and overpowered by them, even as they do not recognize their influence. I'm still in awe at how Denys Arcand pulled it off.

The performances are magnificent. Not one false note (well...maybe the crazy woman who got in bed with Remy near the beginning; but she's in just the one scene). Remy Girard and Stephane Rousseau (as Sebastien) worked beautifully off each other, revealing a life's worth of resentment and irritation with each other in a shorthand style of interaction that is startling. And Marie-Josee Croze's Nathalie is alluring and scary and concerned and self-involved and aware all at the same time. Wow.

I'm not the sort who believes that just because someone's a stockbroker or oil trader, they have no soul, anymore than I believe that just because someone's a peasant or been a slave, they're spiritually pure. We are all, each of us, complex and enlightened and loving and hateful and vile and simplistic and stubborn and stupid and smart and flexible and open and closed and any other adjective you can think of...and "The Barbarian Invasions" embraces that humanity in us, even as it skewers how childish we can be because of it...and also celebrates how amazing all our contradictions can make us. It deserves every accolade it receives.

C'est formidable.

'Les Invasions Barbares' is a simple film about a man who is dying from cancer, and in his final days he and his family & friends reflect upon their lives.

I think that writer / director Denys Arcand manage to do something pretty impressive here through very small means. After the first 15-20 minutes of this movie I thought it was close to crap. I didn't like the pace, the way it looked or any of the characters. But as the story slowly moves forward, Arcand proves that he & his actors have the ability to change my mind completely. Simply by using intelligence, humor & compassion they turn the characters into human beings that I can recognize and relate to, and they show us that "people are people". Deep down we're not very different from each other, no matter where or when we live and die. And at the end I was left with the reinforced notion that even though we try very hard to fill our lives through various activities & distractions like work, sex, art, drugs, politics, religion ... when the final days are upon us there's only one thing that really matters, the relationship we have with our family and (if we're lucky) a handful of close friends.

My impression is that this is very much a movie for grownups. I don't think I could've appreciated it when I was in my teens or 20's. But if you're young today you could make a note to watch this when you reach something between 35-40. Maybe like me you'll get something good out of it.

This is a smart, charming and intelligent film about dealing with loss, love and ageing. On several deeper layers, the characters meditate on the socialist health system in Canada, mortality, their explorations of sexual relationships and the freedom and restraints that come with maturity.

This film effortlessly presents us with characters struggling to live in a system which aims to meet our personal needs but exists to serve capitalist benefits. It demonstrates the uncertainty of life circumstances and mortality. The son's transformation from corporate power-driven lifestyle into a battle against preserving his father's memory and dignity are heartfelt captured are genuine and sincere. The role of the faithful and courageous nurse is compassionately portrayed while indicting the system in which the patients struggle to maintain power of their lives. As a nurse myself, I found it tremendously affecting and a poem to the ideals impart to our patients who have been let down in some way either by the system or in their own personal relationships.

Superbly written, one may accuse the film of being to preachy or pretentiously highbrow for these complex characters. But I actually found it terribly poetic and concise, ranging the vast life experiences of the characters and their skepticism and maturity. At times, the dialogue flows like poetry, holding no preconceptions or vanities about these people, but displaying their desperation at the state of a socialist society their has providing them with an abundance of great literary wealth but failing to meet their basic human needs.

Sophisticated, smart, thought-provoking, tender, and mature, films like this are extremely seldom nowadays. Audience can only too shockingly relate with such vividness and irony to the themes; and we are never played for fools, confronting these issues as if it were a close friend divulging personal secrets over a coffee. Films like this truly show us that life is not for granted and serve to remind us what human qualities we deserve from each other and expect from ourselves.

"The Barbarian Invasions" (2003) is the rare sequel (more of a continuation, really) that not only surpasses its predecessor - "The Decline Of The American Empire" (1986) - in quality, but it enhances it; it makes it retroactively better. It is a philosophical, funny, moving, beautifully made film primarily about mortality, although - as usual - writer-director Denys Arcand expands his scope to include a wealth of subjects, from family bonds to the absurdity of bureaucracy. The old characters gain new depths, and the new characters make their own contributions, particularly the prodigiously talented Marie-Josée Croze. The finale is inevitable, of course, but it's still hard to hold back the tears. *** out of 4.

You know those movies where a group of friends get together and the film consists of a series of conversations between them regarding their lives, loves and many interminglings? Well, take one of those and make the characters completely unlikeable, thin and not remotely interesting and you've got The Decline of the American Empire. Now take those worthless characters, age them twenty years and make one of them dying and you've got The Barbarian Invasions.

Invasions is slightly more bearable thanks to a surprisingly rich, emotional performance by Marie-Josee Croze (surprising because someone of her skill shouldn't have the misfortune of being in a film like this), but both films are horrid experiences overall. You can feel writer/director Denys Arcand sitting behind the pages, writing these characters and smiling with delight over how witty and bold he finds their pattering on, but all that comes out is forced, pseudo-intellectual garbage.

There's a disturbing irony to it all because the film glazes over these dark, significant themes like infidelity and drug abuse but Arcand's approach is so flat and vanilla that none of it gets explored with even the slightest bit of depth or intelligence. I have no idea how this film received such high praise from critics foreign and domestic. You can't live in a world where a true auteur such as Arnaud Desplechin is crafting ensemble character dramas that are so vivid and fascinating, and then look at this garbage and think it's anything worth watching.

I rented this movie last weekend. Not having heard anything about it, I was prepared for a middling effort and some mild entertainment.

I have to say that I was happily surprised by the quality of this film. It is a very moving piece. It touched upon so many facets of every day life - love, death, sex, fidelity, family, ambition, religion, loyalty, forgiveness, and redemption. It was handled in an understated way that allows the audience to think about the themes introduced without hitting them over the head with a message. The cast was really terrific, too. I would definitely recommend this for an indie-foreign film aficionado.

I come from Quebec and just wanted to clarify some things.

• I cannot believe some people can give a rating below 5 for this movie. Were you looking for a Vin Diesel movie? This is a movie about real life, about human relationships. Its purpose is not entertainment, but reflexion. This is when a movie is considered art.

• Quebecers are not French. I'm speaking for myself but my ancestor came here in Quebec in the 17th century from France. We do speak french, though (more than 7 million of us). Are Americans British?

• The Chinese "woman" named before the movie is Arcand's adopted daughter.

• Yes the health care is that bad here. But then again where is it perfect? The population is growing old, hospitals are overcrowded, our government spends most of our tax money for it and its still not enough. But at least we don't have to pay for health care. I'm happy to pay taxes that help elders and sick people get treated.

I didn't think this is a masterpiece, but it's the kind of movie that stays in your mind for a couple of days and makes you think about where we were 40 years ago, where we are now and where we are going in the future. This is certainly one of Arcand's best movies with Jesus of Montreal and Le declin... He is an actor director and it shows. He deserved that Oscar if not for this movie for one of those 3 movies.

"The Barbarian Invasions," Denys Arcand's sequel to his 1986 film "Decline of the American Empire," is proof that a movie steeped in death can be life affirming. It's the bittersweet tale of a man who's dying of terminal cancer and his decision to end his life with dignity, surrounded by those he loves rather than wasting away to the terms of his disease. The film is frequently painful, but never in a pointless or gratuitous way; its purpose is not to simply make us feel bad. And for every scene that's painful, there's another that's funny, or touching, or sweet. Mostly, the movie posits that success is measured not by how many things one has managed to collect, but rather by how many loving and loved people he can share his life, and end of life, with.

Grade: A

After reading all the comments I will not comment on the directors career or the failure of the Canadian health sytem. Instead I would like to point out that US viewers probably didn't enjoy the film as much since they don't have a failing health system, communists, many unions or as big a number of left leaning professors as other countries.

The film is a lot about this generation that went through the sexual revolution and their quirky (to us) leftist ideals and a greatly intelectualized generation. My parents generation and the one before it are full of "characters" just like Remy the dying father of the film. Most of them still hold on to their principles and ideals just like Remy.

The film contrasts the different generations, the apathetic junkie to the dying professor, the warm blooded and lusty veterans to the son's cold and practical fiancee. The anguish of loss vs commemorating a life well lived. Parents that feel they weren't present enough and a Son that barely knew his father.

I heartily recommend this film... 9/10

"The Barbarian Invasions" builds its slice-of-death dramady around a college professor, Rémy (Girard), who is dying from cancer by using his imminent death as an excuse to bring together all sorts of central and side characters including relatives and friends and even a heroine addict who pushes the final pleasures into the dying man's veins. The result is a manipulative dialogue-intensive tale which distills to little more than a string of conversations running the gamut from past exploits to philosophies of life to jocular meandering to pedantic blathering, etc. Personally, I found Rémy a less than interesting bore and the film a very slick, well crafted, but unsatisfying contrivance. However, its respectable marks from critics and public including some major awards suggest this sequel to Arcand's "The Decline of the American Empire (1986)" may have value for some. (B)

The Barbarian Invasions film isn't anything that I was prepared for. The cast is superb and entirely French Canadian so I don't know anybody. They are very realistic in their performances as the friends and family come together to celebrate the life of Professor Remy Girard before he leaves them all. The film is a classic ensemble piece of great acting, directing, and writing. Still, Remy has to come to terms with his life and inevitable death. He is reunited with his ex mistresses, friends including a gay couple, his son and daughter-in-law, and his understanding ex-wife. I loved Dorothee Berryman's performance as Louise, his ex wife. The mistresses are also well-performed by veteran French Canadian actresses Louise Portal and Dominique Michel. The film has it's humor although dark but worth it. The friends and family are there to celebrate his life and will mourn his loss inevitably. The film is also an indictment on the Canadian health care system and it's failures as well as illegal drug use and euthanasia or dying with dignity as is the case. The film also suggests life's meaning especially Remy's legacy. The conversation can be offensive and critical of life in general. What is the best to follow and live?

The European style Medicare system, the fair medical practice, free for all good Canadians fostered upon liberal society, it kills patients' everyday. If you learn nothing else from The Invasion of Barbarians, you will learn that Liberalism, Socialism, and Communism in every form destroy society, killing the innocent, transforming the naive into the corrupt. Am I wrong? Isn't this the lesson we learn from our dying Liberal Social Studies Professor, Remy.

Poor Remy, he's as liberal as his young piers at Berkley; yet they have won the Socialist beauty prize, The Pulitzer. He's a Canadian, so no wonder those statues go to Americans. Those ugly Americans down there take everything from the poor French speaking Quebecians. Nevertheless, if you want a brain scan on demand, cross the St Lawrence because it ain't gonna happen in the new Canada of diversity.

Remy is a child of the 60's and as an academic propagandizing to empty-headed freshmen, he like his piers hate George Bush. That is to easy to exploit for a Righty like myself. I have always understood the Liberal Elite to be contemptuous of anyone that disagrees with the geniuses of Socialism. And Remy's Liberal pals rain down Al Gore platitudes and disdain for America, those pesky, over-fed capitalists. Remy's elitist pals tell randy stories of ribald action amidst their class, the class of divorce and infidelity. They offer lovely bromides right out of a swanky yuppie magazine. Their children, well, they could turn out as genius commodity millionaires like Remy's son Sebastian, or they could be heroin addicts like cropped-hair Natalie.

I can't help but wonder if the Barbarians the director lambastes may be his own political cast.

I rented the original film, Decline of the American Empire, before setting out to watch this and I must admit -- it was not very good. In the years since he made it though, Arcand has learned how to direct. Instead of obvious camera setups, there was a precision to what he did here. Instead of the ridiculous tracking shot at the beginning of Decline, Barbarians was in control of the screen at all times. Arcand took the thinnest of reeds -- a man dying -- and made magic out of it.

The story of a child reconciling with a dying parent is older than time. But this movie did it with unique touches of pathos and wit. No character was good or bad. They were both.

This is a movie that was made for family viewing. Not children, mind you. But grownup parents and their progeny. It will leave you with a lot to talk and think about.

The movie Les Invasions Barbares was one I had wanted to see for awhile. As with all good things, the anticipation was more exciting than the film itself. I truly enjoyed seeing the view of French Canada that is rarely seen by non-natives, such as the state run health care and the loss of Catholic religious feeling though the eyes Denys Arcand. But so many times it seems like the director was trying to fit too many things into the film and cluttering the storyline. The fade-outs in the beginning of the film were distracting and there are noticeably less of them as time goes on. The characters were at once amusing and irritating. They sometimes feel like caricatures of typical film characters, such as the saintly nurse, the perfect fiancée, and the lusty older woman. But there are moments of great compassion and feeling which is what kept me watching the film, despite my conflicting emotions.

This movie bears all the hallmarks of a manipulative melodrama; death, oppressive institutions, broken family, and drug abuse. Someone remind me if I missed anything. In any event, this particular melodrama fails to generate empathy for any of its characters, which is its death knell right there. The characters are bland and unreal. The dialogue is horrible. The plot is nonexistent. Lush cinematography and cleverly placed advertisements might deceive someone into believing that this is a sophisticated movie. Don't be fooled; its no more sophisticated than your average gore flick. The only difference exists in the target demographic. Simply put, this film sucks. I couldn't make it past the first half hour.