After having watched 32 international movies over 10 days during the Montreal Film Festival, where I was a member of the Ecumenical Jury, I came away with only the most banal observation: People are people, everywhere on the planet.
Even the places where they live are similar: Norway's Wolf and Rumba from Belgium were both set in neighbourhoods that looked like North Bay, Ont., or Edmonton. Condo/apartments in Tokyo (Nobody To Watch Over Me) or Buenos Aires (Rain) looked just like ones in Toronto.
In fact Rain had one of my favourite lines from my week of film festing: asked what folks do in B.A., the female protagonist replies that Argentineans do what people do anywhere in cities, stay in, go out, grab a meal, a drink, go clubbing. And, as it turns out, the majority of scenes in the majority of movies took place over a table of food or a table of drinks. 'Cause that's what people do when they socialize.
And, so a dinner party in Rain looked like dinner parties in my family, with way too much food, platters and platters of it, and lots and lots of warmth and friendship and conversation. Just like a dinner party in Mongolia (Nima's Women) or even during the civil war in Serbia (The Tour).
Of course the dishes were all different – when I retire it'll be my life's project to compile the million different ways humans cook chicken – and so, for the most part, was the way people dressed. But, there were as many similarities as differences and this banal thought (People are People) kept throbbing through my head all week.
Take Nima's Women, set in Mongolia, with people living in yurts, which are large permanent tents, herding sheep. That sounds exotic, different, a story of the other, but the plot has two daughters lying to their mother on her birthday because they don't want her to be disappointed in them. The Mongolians' sense of propriety and social mores makes Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxon Protestants seem effusive and emotionally open by comparison.
Workplaces in Barcelona (Welcome to Farewell – Gutmann) look just like modern day workplaces – even the photocopier is where the photocopier should be. And parts of Quebec glimpsed in En Plein Coeur and The Necessities of Life looked just like the rest of Canada. It was shocking.
The latter movie (en français, Ce Qu'il Faut Pour Vivre) is the story of an Inuit from near Baffin Island who, in 1952, is forced to come to a Quebec City sanitarium because he has tuberculosis. It was in a way the most exotic movie I saw because it introduces Canadians to a part of their own culture and landscape. My favourite moment is early on when he is first brought to the hospital. Of all the strange and wonderful sights in Quebec, the one that excites him most is to see a mature tree.
And what are the necessities of life? Love, family, community. People are people, after all. Several of the movies had folks off on spiritual quests to find themselves – Nowhere Man, Rain, En Plein Coeur, Four Chapters, The Stranger. How tiresome and boring the movie was, was in equal proportion to how well the protagonist was able to create or find love, family and/or community.
I'm actually very disappointed in myself – I think of myself as a deeper thinker than this, and perhaps by next month I'll have something really profound to say about my experience at the festival, but for now, I am left with only these banal thoughts: People and People and they crave Love, Family, Community. Don't believe me? I got a list of 32 movies proves otherwise.
The mandate for the Ecumenical Jury was to promote movies "that distinguish themselves not only by artistic merit but also by their exploration of the ethical, social and spiritual values that make life human."
