What the Film Industry in English Canada can learn from French Canada to Create Universally Appealing Films.
Of the many complications that occur in deciphering whether a film can truly be considered “Canadian Cinema” or not, what might cause the most confusion is perhaps the general moviegoing audience’s disengagement with national cinema. English Canada has fallen such a victim to Americanization in many social and cultural aspects that many English speaking Canadians are completely unaware of the commercial and critical success of French language Quebecois films. Although this is potentially a daunting reality for English Canadian filmmakers who have a harder time separating themselves from the massive American market and entertainment capital to the south, there could be an opportunity to succeed by looking to French Canada’s ability to universalize the stories of very specific settings, and the ability to highlight cultural nuances and embrace the setting’s distinctive attitudes and environment.
This notion is mentioned in the article by Leach “In-Between States: Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz and Xavier Dolan’s Laurence Anyways”, as the English language, Toronto based Take This Waltz exemplifies the completely self-aware and confident incorporation of the region’s culture, community and historical iconography in a very similar way to Laurence Anyways in respect to the French speaking Montréal community that the film was produced and exists in. The influence and hegemony of Hollywood means that English Canada’s painfully similar culture, language and attitudes presented on screen lead to many of its films getting lost in the sea of mass media and content coming from the United States. Due to Canada’s strive to differentiate itself from the United States by referring and considering the country to be a mosaic rather than a melting pot, there could be a way for Canadian filmmakers to find a wider audience than simply trying to adhere to American standards.
An example of this is in Kim Nguyen’s War Witch, where the director was able to venture into international stories of human conflict and tragedy, loosely based and inspired by his family’s ancestry in Vietnam, and present a story that remains authentic to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Africa at large, yet from a culturally diverse Canadian perspective. This idea is reflected in depth in the article “Canada Once Again at the Oscars: Kim Nguyen’s Rebelle, the Tale of an African Girl Child Soldier” by Gilbert and Green, and details how Nguyen found himself ambitiously tangling Canadian cinema in with the international community, in this case the Congo specifically, a former French colony, just like Quebec, and the results unravelled in an incredibly successful way. Canada’s identity as a mosaic and the need for Canadian films to be distinctive enough from American films to ironically become noticed in the United States, which is an undeniable, but often unexpressed desire for any filmmaker from Canada, can be noticed in both films like Enemy and Blood Quantum, although through opposing techniques.
The film Enemy, similar to Take This Waltz, cleverly brings in a Hollywood face to appeal to a wide audience, but proudly embraces its Canadian setting, landmarks, attitudes and culture by being shot and set in Toronto, and in the hands of Quebecois director Denis Villeneuve. Beyond this, the Canadian production companies that funded the film also linked up with producers from Spain, which is appropriate considering Canada’s pride in multiculturalism and the welcoming of new perspectives from other countries and cultures, whether in the form of immigration or international collaboration, in almost every facet of Canadian diplomacy. The film then takes on an identity of its own, differentiating itself from American cinema, and instead embracing the stylistic tones of the European art-house meets Quebecois cinema, with the star power and presence of a Hollywood film in the use of Jake Gyllenhaal as the main figure of the film.
In Take This Waltz, director Sarah Polley’s down to earth setting in Canadian settings and embrace of the country’s beloved cultural quirks contrasted with the casting of hugely famous American actors like Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen and Sarah Silverman, allow for a film as serious and expensive as any American indie film to flourish in a uniquely and proudly showcased Canadian setting.
In Blood Quantum, director Jeff Barnaby immerses the audience in a uniquely Canadian setting and historical context and creates a film that is properly represented by First Nations people and perspectives, which in itself creates an impact on a potentially bigger international scale than the average English Canadian film that tries to disguise itself as Hollywood. In all of these cases, however, there is a strong Canadian artistic attempt to make a statement as “Canadian Cinema”, finding funding from within the country, setting the film in a real life Canadian locale, and embracing the cultural nuances that are evident in Canada when compared to the United States or elsewhere.
Maybe if this sort of boldness in the Canadian film industry was done more frequently, less people would mistakenly assume The Revenant as a Canadian film, in which by most definitions it simply cannot be considered one, despite clearly presenting on-screen the Canadian environment and landscape that citizens of the country are so proud of living within close proximity to.
Sources
Leach, Jim, “In-between states: Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz and Xavier Dolan’s Laurence Anyways”, 2013, In-between states: Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz and Xavier Dolan’s Laurence Anyways (muni.cz)
Gilbert, Paula Ruth & Green, Mary Jean, “Canada Once Again at the Oscars: Kim Nguyen’s Rebelle, the Tale of an African Girl Child Soldier: American Review of Canadian Studies: Vol 45, No 4”, 2016, Canada Once Again at the Oscars: Kim Nguyen’s Rebelle, the Tale of an African Girl Child Soldier: American Review of Canadian Studies: Vol 45, No 4 (tandfonline.com)
