Nothing like a good french movie. This one begins with the typical french backdrop; no hurry, no great introduction of either the theme or the plot. Mother phones her son, and we infer that the movie is going to be sort of a family Reunion. French are real charmers; I say this, because, the movie establishes its playground, so to make things clear. Audience finds an indication or two, clearly delineating the plot. We are made aware that the old man is on his death bed and the forgotten son (who shares a truculent relationship with his father) is to rope in old pals. Although, the plot seems transparent enough, it doesn’t settle down silently on the floor of our collective minds. For, the seemingly apparent plot is about to implant, in the most sublime manner possible, trickle by trickle, something of great import.
The technique adapted by the makers of the movie is not seminal. It is cliche, for all I can care to comment on the backdrop. But the nagging versatility the french are known to deliver, claws at my feet, as I type these words. Yes, the movie is phenomenal.
“Now, concentrate. First time is the best. It’s the one you long for” she continues, lighting the foil with heroin over it “riding the red dragon” she concludes.
Now, that is not all. there is talk of “crude capitalism” and “sensual socialism”. The old man has all his old pals, mistresses and family with him. As audience, we seem to gaze at the slow crack of the dawn. The policeman who theorises on how he vainly attempted to put an end to the drug trafficking; the addict who dubiously asserts “never trust a junkie”; the son who sweeps the whole arena of possibilities to make it favourable for the dying man; old man’s tirade on civilisation’s barbarism- you are almost certain by now, this is no ordinary film.
“the rivers of sperms I spilled, dreaming of her thighs” reminisces the dying old man as he drops an eye of youthful endeavour on his days of puberty. The gorgeous women he spent night after night dreaming of; the shine of the milky white thighs of an actress from the sixties. The movie switches, not back and forth as it happens in a compromised script, but melodically, in great sweeps, alights as a flock of birds - on the ruminations, on the heroin snorting, on the titillating talks with pals, on the labours of his son, on the invasion of the barbarians. Its simply amazing.
With so many interludes and so many threads that snap at each other to make themselves accentuated in the plot that seems to disintegrate into well calculated paradoxical catharsis, the saving grace is the brevity of the conversations that the addict and the dying man have. In the hospital, the old man laments that he did not pen “The Gulag Archipelago” or “The Periodic Table”, and the addict, played with grace (by the star of ‘Diving bell’ and ‘Tell no one’) notes, you "you at least realise".
George Orwell once said that a writer has to communicate in as few words as possible, and avoid long sentences if he can. I think, “The Barbarian Invasions” has achieved that. It swathes the whole spectrum of a life lived in forgetfulness. In the helplessness of dying moments, one remembers, and wonders, if only, he had done something consequential than being just another individual.
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