Rémy
(played by Rémy Girard), a history professor in
Montréal, is dying of liver cancer. How will he
spend his last days? The Barbarian Invasions
(Les Invasions barbares), directed by Denys
Arcand, provides an upbeat scenario to answer that question.
His spouse Louise (played by Dorothée Berryman),
who has been living apart for some years because of his
philandering, calls his son Sébastien (played by
Stéphane Rousseau) in London, begging him to visit
his father before his death. Sébastien, an arbitrage
millionaire, dutifully responds, though father and son
have not in the recent past been on friendly terms. Upon
arrival, Sébastien realizes that his father is not
receiving the best of care. In a critique of the Canadian
health care system, he learns that his father is in pain,
cramped into a room with two others, and attended by doctors
and nurses who do not even have charts with his correct
name. Although the hospital administrator cites various
government regulations and union restrictions as reasons
not to provide decent care, he nevertheless transforms
his father's situation (and unhappy disposition) with wads
of cash. Soon, his father is in a room of his own, surrounded
by academic friends and former mistresses. As the pain
increases, his son even arranges for a daughter of a friend
to provide heroin for the dying man while police pay little
attention. And, with the end near, he arranges to relocate
his father from the hospital to a house by the peaceful
St. Lawrence River. But the story operates on other levels.
Rémy reminisces about his academic career, which
he considers to have been a failure because he did not
publish his thoughts for posterity, but his former colleagues
help him to make light of the academic pretentiousness
in which they all indulged. Some of his most profound thoughts
are political. One observation is that more died in the
sixteenth century than in the twentieth, since the Spanish
are responsible for 200 million deaths in the Americas,
and the other colonial powers added 100 million indigenous
peoples to the death toll. He also notes that on 9/11 for
the first time the "barbarians" got inside the "empire," albeit
to slaughter much fewer than the 50,000 who died at Gettysburg.
As well, he recalls all the women in his life, not only
his flings but also the glamorous stars whom he loved from
afar. Most of all, he laughs, and others with him, though
the humor may be too subtle for many Americans. With only
a few days left, he realizes that he loves life itself
most of all. That he is dying, surrounded by so many loving
friends, is a model for us all. MH
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