Denis Villeneuve's Most Controversial Movie Is Free to Watch – ryan

Canadian director Denis Villeneuve is one of the most critically and commercially successful filmmakers working today. He is particularly known worldwide for his sci-fi epics, including Arrival (2016), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), and the Dune series, as well as his gritty thrillers like Prisoners (2013) and Sicario (2015). However, before his arrival in Hollywood, Villeneuve directed four feature films in his home province of Quebec that have since been largely overshadowed by the success of his Hollywood blockbusters.

The third of these films, Polytechnique (2009), is arguably Villeneuve’s most disturbing work. Unlike Prisoners and Sicario, the horrific crime depicted in Polytechnique is directly based on a true story: the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre, in which 14 young women were murdered by a misogynistic shooter. The film, which was released in both English and French, sparked controversy in Quebec, with some viewers finding the cinematic recreation of a real-life tragedy disrespectful and insensitive. Nevertheless, other critics praised Polytechnique for its nonsensational depiction of the massacre, empathy for the victims, and social commentary about the relationship between the killer’s hatred of women and broader systemic sexism.

A Non-Linear Recreation of a Tragedy

Polytechnique

Release Date: February 6, 2009
Runtime: 77 minutes
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Writers: Jacques Davidts, Denis Villeneuve, Eric Leca

Cast

Studio(s): Remstar
Distributor(s): Remstar, Alliance Films

Polytechnique is a dramatized recreation of the shooting from the perspective of two fictional engineering students: Valérie (played by Karine Vanesse, who also co-produced the film as a long-time personal passion project), and Jean-François (Sébastien Huberdeau). Although the killer (Maxim Gaudette) is never named, the film opens in his apartment as he prepares his rifle and narrates a suicide note professing his hatred of “feminists.”

The film proceeds to follow Valérie and Jean-François as they go about their engineering studies prior to the shooting. The massacre begins with the killer storming into a classroom, in which both Valérie and Jean-François are present, and demanding that the men leave the room while the women stay inside (which is indeed how the shooting began in real life).

From this point on, the film’s narrative becomes non-linear. First, it follows Jean-François as he scrambles through the school trying to alert the police and help wounded students — all while trying to avoid the killer as he prowls the building — before the film jumps forward to look at his life after the shooting, during which he struggles with PTSD and guilt. Then, the film rewinds to Valérie’s perspective, where she survives the onslaught of gunfire inside the classroom but is afraid the killer might return. The film ends with a glimpse of Valérie’s own life after the incident.

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A Movie About Misogyny

Alliance Films and Remcorp

Despite its short runtime (77 minutes), the film’s commentary on society’s mistreatment of women is not limited to the massacre either. Before the killer arrives, Valérie sits down for a job interview in hopes of getting an aeronautical engineering internship, only for the (male) interviewer to express incredulity about a woman wanting to work in aeronautical engineering rather than have kids. Furthermore, the film shows Jean-François asking Valérie for her notes before class.

As Paul Ridd of the British Film Institute points out, “(Jean-François is) happy to coast along on a female peer’s work, oblivious to the concerns that are part of her daily life.” As a result, Ridd continues, the film establishes that the killer’s ideology is aligned with, rather than at odds against, the status quo: “The bloodshed that follows…therefore plays out as an extension of male entitlement and the world at large.”

The World Is Spinning

The film’s defining stylistic element is its cinematography. The film is shot in black and white, which critic Brendan Kelly of The Montreal Gazette attributes to Villeneuve’s desire to dilute the shock value of the substantial on-screen blood. Ridd, meanwhile, suggests that the inherently mundane black-and-white palette makes the film’s depiction of the atrocity seem “brutally matter-of-fact.”

In addition to the color palette, the camera itself can be described as a character in the film. Villeneuve films some of the massacre sequences with a handheld camera that, according to Ridd, “cent(ers) the experience of the terrified students as they run, duck and hide from the killer’s bullets,” allowing the audience to empathetically share their terror.

But Villeneuve also sometimes employs the Steadicam, a camera that smoothly glides along a mechanical track on the ground. Some Steadicam shots are filmed perpendicular to the floor, making it seem like the characters are walking straight up or down, and some shots are even filmed upside-down. Ridd argues that such unnatural and disorienting cinematography has the effect of transforming an ordinary campus building into a “hellish metaphorical plane to express the experience of women in the world at large.”

Despite Villeneuve’s intentions to not sensationalize the violence and to humanize the victims of the shooting, the production and release of Polytechnique was greeted with a mixed reception. According to Kelly, École Polytechnique refused to comment on the film while neither encouraging nor discouraging its release. Kelly himself criticized the film in an interview with CBC, claiming, “I don’t think the film has a point of view; it just recreates the event and throws that back at us…and I find that disturbing.”

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On the other hand, columnist Nathalie Petrowski of La Presse, in the same CBC interview, described Polytechnique as “terrible,” “beautiful,” “necessary,” and “powerful” while disagreeing with Kelly about the film not having a point of view: “The whole pattern of the film is this rage, this madness that has no purpose, nothing, and it’s a war zone and everybody is a victim.” The Québécois public seemed to largely agree with Petrowski, as the film grossed more money at the box office in its first weekend than any other film in the province. Furthermore, Polytechnique took home nine Genie Awards (which are essentially Canada’s Oscars), including Best Motion Picture.

All in all, despite the lasting trauma of the mass shooting and the widespread unease towards making a film about it, Villeneuve managed to convince enough people in Montreal and beyond that his film’s existence was justified and was meant to humanize and honor the 14 young women who lost their lives (and the many others who survived), not to disrespect them. Villeneuve also proved with Polytechnique that he was more than capable of handling heavy subject matter with the right balance of tenderness and grittiness — something he would successfully repeat again and again in the following years.

The English version of Polytechnique is available for free streaming on Amazon Prime Video and on Tubi through the link below:

Watch Polytechnique