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The horror, the horror, said Kurtz in "Heart of Darkness". The horror that Marc Lépine unleashed with full force on December 6, 1989, within the Polytechnic of Montreal. Villeneuve, a Canadian, directed this "Polytechnique" (2009) starting from that event and dedicating the film to the families of the victims.
Lépine is against women, the "feminists". He wants to eliminate them. No frills. The goal is "to send to their maker the feminists who have always ruined my life". The chosen location is one of the great classics of North American mass murders. Villeneuve shadows killer and prey. Except for some short segments shot in the city, the director's camera is always behind and in front of the students of the polytechnic who flee from madness made flesh. A very lucid, calculating, precise madness, as cold as Montreal swept by snow, rendered glacial and poetically vibrant by a black and white that fondly looks at the European cinema of yesteryears.
"Polytechnique" is not Van Sant's "Elephant". Beyond the value of the two titles, beyond the inevitable likeness tout court, Villeneuve's film does not have an "anthropological" intent, it doesn't claim to explain the why of the action (as Van Sant tried to do), but stages, documents, brings the simple and pure action into the viewer's mouth. No "filters" to soften the vision but reality in its disturbing aseptic nature. As it is.
The linearity with which the assassin carries out his massacre is amplified by the geometric search for framing that obsesses Villeneuve, with mirrors multiplying images, lines intersecting, others running parallel. Indoor spaces that further oppress the viewer, bringing them into those corridors and rooms. Perceptive and spatial estrangement that leads the camera to transcend walls and perspectives, overturning ceilings and faces. Formality that becomes cinema even in the inevitable and equally perfect use of alternating montage. Times, spaces, lives that clash and brush against each other.
Bitter beyond all limits (follow the story of J.F.), "Polytechnique" is an extraordinary exercise in style, directorially courageous and not redundant, capable of combining great dramatic depth with its form from which the film moves.
Today Villeneuve is a known author, appreciated by many. Soon the science fiction film "Arrival" will be released, waiting for the new chapter of "Blade Runner" entrusted to him. If one day Villeneuve becomes one of the many names to have tossed his talent into the jaws of Hollywood, he can always say he directed "Polytechnique". Naturally never arrived in Italy...
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