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The Barbarian Invasions, directed by Denys
Arcand. Miramax Films, 2003, 112 minutes.
The Market for
Compassion by Jo Ann Skousen
Robert Hayden's poem "Those Winter Sundays" describes a
father who would rise on Sundays "in the blueblack cold" to bank the fires "with
cracked hands that ached" from weekday labor while the family remains burrowed
beneath blankets. Remem-bering with remorse this selfless and unthanked act, the
narrator reports,
. . . slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the
chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had
driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know,
what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?
| | Jo Ann
Skousen is a writer and critic living in New York
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What does anyone know of "love's austere and lonely offices"? This is one of
the themes of the Canadian film The Barbarian Invasions, where loving actions
speak more loudly than bitter words. The story opens as Sebastien (Stephane
Rousseau) flies reluctantly from London to his father's (Remy Girard) deathbed in
Canada, still "fearing the chronic angers of the house" that caused a 15-year
estrangement between them. "Speaking indifferently to him" at first, Sebastien
gradually grows to accept his father's life, as he helps ease the way for his
father's death.
But it is the backdrop of the Canadian economic system that makes this film
both funny and appalling at once. "The Barbarian Invasions" indicts socialized
medicine, unions, drug laws, police departments, and public education, while
subtly demonstrating the protection that can come from the private sector:
Sebastien is a successful commodities hedger who protects oil producers from
fluctuations in the market by taking on the risk himself — and making a tidy
profit in the process. With that profit, and a determined persistence, he calmly
bribes the hospital manager, union workers, security guards, nurses, a heroin
junkie, and even friends, to make Remy's final days as comfortable as
possible.
Anyone who favors universal health care should watch the first half hour of
this film. The camera follows a nun through the crowded corridors of the
hospital, panning past gruesome patients bedded in dim, paint-peeled hallways, as
she delivers the Eucharist to Catholic patients. More than once she arrives at
the wrong bed, the patients misidentified on their charts. (This is, in fact, a
recurrent problem for the doctors and nurses in this film.) "At least I'm not in
the hallway," Remy comments wryly as Sebastien surveys with disgust the tiny,
cluttered, crowded room in which his father will die. |
| Anyone who favors
universal health care should watch the first half hour of this film.
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Sebastien bribes a hospital manager to let him use an empty floor (yes, while
patients populate hallways, an entire floor lies empty due to "cost containment")
and bribes a union boss to paint and prepare a lovely, inviting room. He pays to
have Remy transported to the United States for tests (under socialized medicine,
Remy would be dead before doctors could even know what's wrong). He hires a
junkie to provide heroin for pain control, and even pays for friends and former
students to visit his father.
Unfortunately, most viewers of this film will probably identify the problem of
allocating scarce resources without recognizing the obvious solution. Indeed, the
first comment made in the discussion group held after the viewing I attended was
from a woman who complained, "Why should one person be able to help his father,
just because he's rich?" The consensus of this intellectual, and mostly well-off,
audience of New Yorkers seemed to be that money itself is ugly and vulgar,
instead of a proper medium of exchange, reward, and motivation. "Take the rich
guy's money away from him!" they demand. Then we can all be equal. Then we can
all wait in paint-peeled corridors to die, writhing in pain, the doctors writing
the wrong name as they cross us off their lists.
In French with English subtitles, "The Barbarian Invasions" is director Denys
Arcand's sequel to his Oscar-nominated 1986 film, "The Decline of the American
Empire." The four men and women of the original story are reunited at a point
when the barbarians of old age and illness begin to invade the body, but it is
not necessary to have seen the original in order to enjoy the sequel. Somewhat
sentimental and predictable in its conclusion, The Barbarian Invasions is
nevertheless, like life, a sad journey full of laughter, well worth the taking.
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