Personal tragedy and trauma in the films of Denis… | Little White Lies

Per­son­al tragedy and trau­ma in the films of Denis Villeneuve

07 Nov 2016

Words by William Carroll

Individual in orange hazmat suit holding a sign that reads "HUMAN"
Individual in orange hazmat suit holding a sign that reads "HUMAN"
The Cana­di­an director’s lat­est, Arrival, explores inti­mate themes present in his ear­li­er work.

With a sol­id fil­mog­ra­phy built on per­son­al tragedy and exis­ten­tial crises, it’s fair to say that Denis Villeneuve’s films don’t hold your hand. In fact, any hand offered is like­ly that of a dop­pel­gänger, a mirage, or sim­ply a fig­ment of your own unqui­et mind. In antic­i­pa­tion of his upcom­ing sci-fi dra­ma Arrival, we’ve com­piled a list of five key moments in Villeneuve’s pre­vi­ous films where human trau­ma is at its most vul­ner­a­ble, stark and disturbing.

Close-up hands of person covering their face, monochrome image.

Of all the blood­shed and death in Villeneuve’s third fea­ture, a retelling of the Mon­tréal Mas­sacre’ shoot­ing at L’Ecole Poly­tech­nique in 1989, it is the sui­cide of hero­ic Jean-Fran­cois that speaks the loud­est about the fragili­ty of the human mind. The trag­ic mur­der of 14 women at the hands of The Killer’ (unnamed in the film, though the char­ac­ter is based on real-life killer Marc Lep­ine) ren­der Jean’s life void of any light. His failed attempts to save the lives of some of the vic­tims, and his regret at aban­don­ing oth­ers, leads him to a final moment of con­tem­pla­tion on a win­tered shore­line some months lat­er. Jean’s inabil­i­ty to exist after the inci­dent is the film’s final tragedy. His death comes as qui­et­ly as the snow that fell on the school that day, and is the only offer­ing of catharsis.

Close-up of a young woman with a pensive expression, gazing into the distance as a fiery background is visible behind her.

Incendies is, at its heart, is a mys­tery-thriller that finds its stage in an unspec­i­fied civ­il war in the Mid­dle-East. The two main char­ac­ters, twins Jeanne and Simon, are on the hunt for their father and broth­er as request­ed in their late mother’s will. They had been raised believ­ing their father was dead, and the exis­tence of their broth­er was sim­i­lar­ly unknown until the read­ing of the will. It is these rev­e­la­tions of lin­eage, poi­soned blood­lines and the sense­less hor­rors of war that make Villeneuve’s break­through fea­ture so com­pelling and dev­as­tat­ing. No scene is more fright­en­ing in its impli­ca­tions than when Jeanne and Simon dis­cov­er the truth about their father/​brother. As Jeanne and Simon, in the present day, slow­ly piece togeth­er the puz­zle of the past, the tragedy of Villeneuve’s film becomes almost unbear­able. One plus one makes two, it can­not make one,” is Simon’s rea­son­ing to Jeanne when they sit alone in a hotel room. One plus one, can it make one?” Vil­leneuve wants us to see clear­ly how frag­ile the human mind is, to lose sight of what we know and have it replaced with implaca­ble darkness.

A man with a beard wearing a white shirt, looking pensive and gazing out of a window.

This art-house work of voyeurism, dop­pel­gängers and schiz­o­phre­nia is Villeneuve’s strangest, most ephemer­al film to date. There is lit­tle with­in the urban, clin­i­cal exis­tence of lec­tur­er Adam Bell’s (Jake Gyl­len­haal) life to war­rant dis­tinc­tion but as the film – and his mind – unrav­els, Ene­my becomes a dark com­men­tary on the eas­i­ly-blurred bor­ders of per­son­al­i­ty. At the end of the film, Adam, strug­gling to place his exis­tence after dis­cov­er­ing a man who is phys­i­cal­ly iden­ti­cal to him, walks slow­ly down the hall­way of his counterpart’s house. Why is he there? Why is he about to go to bed with the wife of a man who looks exact­ly like him? Why, when he beholds a giant, cow­er­ing taran­tu­la in the cor­ner of the bed­room does he look on with pas­siv­i­ty, almost bore­dom? Gyllenhaal’s bril­liant per­for­mance is a study in com­plex­i­ty, as Vil­leneuve shows us how a bro­ken psy­che can reform with key parts missing.

A man in a black jacket crouching down and comforting a young boy sitting in a car.

Hugh Jackman’s out­stand­ing per­for­mance in Pris­on­ers is drawn from the help­less, des­per­ate Keller Dover who is slow­ing com­ing apart after the kid­nap­ping of his daugh­ter. The only lead in the case, the reclu­sive, men­tal­ly hand­i­capped Alex (Paul Dano), becomes Keller’s dark obses­sion. He stalks him, impris­ons him in an aban­doned house on the edge of town, and plunges the depths of human deprav­i­ty. Franklin, his neigh­bour whose daugh­ter went miss­ing along­side Keller’s, is coerced by Keller’s sick, beguil­ing log­ic that hurt­ing Alex is their only chance to get answers. Franklin’s col­lapse is vis­i­ble both phys­i­cal­ly, in the way he holds him­self and strug­gles to main­tain Keller’s gaze, and men­tal­ly via his con­fes­sion to his wife. Vil­leneuve asks the age-old ratio­nale of the trou­bled: can eye-for-an-eye jus­tice ever be justified?

A woman with dark hair in a bun, wearing a black coat, looking sideways with a serious expression.

Emi­ly Blunt’s duti­ful, vir­tu­ous FBI Agent Kate Mac­er is in the throes of PTSD by the end of Villeneuve’s 2015 crime-thriller, hav­ing seen IED-rigged corpses in the walls of a car­tel safe house, a vio­lent shootout on the bridge into Jau­rez, and a skewed per­cep­tion of moral­i­ty via the film’s very own Colonel Kurtz – Ale­jan­dro (Beni­cio Del Toro). It’s in the clos­ing moments of Sicario, how­ev­er, when Vil­leneuve makes us ques­tion author­i­ty, the law, and how close­ly jus­tice and revenge sit on the judi­cial Venn dia­gram. Kate holds a gun over the bal­cony, know­ing that a sin­gle pull of the trig­ger will throw her to the same demons that claimed the hearts of those she fought against and along­side in Mex­i­co. But know­ing the trau­ma she has endured, the audi­ence read­ies itself for the report of gun­fire. They almost invite it.

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