Polytechnique opens with the startling sound of gunshots. We don't yet know their source, but we see their target – two female engineering students working at photocopy machines. The women clutch at their wounds, stunned, uncomprehending.
The burst of violence should hardly come as a shock. This is, after all, a movie about the 1989 shooting rampage at Montreal's École Polytechnique. Nearly 20 years on, the brutal images have lost none of their power to disturb.
Acclaimed Canadian director Denis Villeneuve is the first to tackle the massacre of 14 women at the Montreal engineering school in a feature film – and its arrival across Quebec this Friday is stirring up a mix of anticipation and unease.
Many have not forgotten the horrific sights of that cold December in Montreal: the ambulance workers frantically loading stretchers, the mass funerals, the face of a killer who spewed venom about “feminists.” An entire country watched in horror.
Some of the victims' families chose not to attend private pre-release screenings of the film; the thought of returning to that dark place was simply too difficult.
“They still feel fragile and don't want to repeat the experience. They didn't want to expose themselves to something so painful,” explained Sylvie Haviernick, whose younger sister, Maud, was killed at the Polytechnique.
The trauma also still lingers among the engineering school's staff. The Polytechnique trained department heads this week to be on the lookout for signs of moroseness among staff when the movie opens. Nearly half of the 300 professors and other employees worked at the school in 1989.
“Everyone remembers where they were at the moment of the drama. Imagine what it's like within the walls of our school,” said spokeswoman Chantal Cantin, who was one of eight school staffers to see the movie at a private
screening. “It's still very, very fragile.”
The $6-million movie, made with the help of $3.1-million in funding from Telefilm Canada, has also generated an emotional debate. Are the filmmakers picking at a scab, or offering up a vehicle for collective recovery? Should the tragedy be used as the subject of a movie for commercial release?
And, apart from the moral concerns, there's the question most crucial for the filmmakers: Will audiences want to go to see it?
For Villeneuve, the time to tackle the subject was overdue.
“For a society to grow up and become adult, it has to explore its shadows,” said Villeneuve, whose last feature was the award-winning Maelström. “I wanted to get to the heart of it. I wanted to explore the fear and rage that exist in men.”
Villeneuve's film tells the story of the tragedy through the eyes of students, and captures the ordinariness of the fateful day about to be destroyed. The kids are cramming for end-of-term exams and giving class presentations.
Actor Maxim Gaudette's depiction of gunman Marc Lépine – whose name is never uttered in the film – is a portrait of vacant-eyed alienation and nihilistic rage. The 76-minute film is shot in black and white, an attempt to put a distance between the viewer and the bloodshed, Villeneuve said.
“Yes, it's a violent film,” Villeneuve said. “But mostly psychologically. I wanted to make a film that would be watchable, digestible, not a turnoff.”
Still, the action is sometimes agonizing, with viewers witnessing the unspooling of a tragedy they are helpless to stop.
A certain amount of trauma was present on the set as well. The scene in which the killer enters a classroom, separates the men and women, and then shoots the women execution-style left some of the actresses in tears.
