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Original Title Polytechnique
Director Denis Villeneuve
Director Denis Villeneuve
Actors Maxim Gaudette, Sébastien Huberdeau, Karine Vanasse, Evelyne Brochu, Pierre -Yves Cardinal, Jonathan Dubsky, Marina Eva, Nathalie Girard, Pierre-Xavier Martel, Johanne-Marie Tremblay
Country Canada
Genre Drama, Historical
Year 2009
This film tells the massacre of fourteen women on December 6, 1989 at the Ecole Polytecnique Montreal.
The murderer, a student center, enters a classroom shooting at the ceiling and ordered that women be made to the left and right men. Men should go out leaving the women with him. These obey without saying anything (except one of them makes a hint of approaching the murderer to see if you can do) and go. To be alone with them tells them they are there because they are feminists and he hates feminists. One tries to protest but as soon as he opens his mouth he shot at close range and breaks down, does the same with the rest. Then leave the room and leaves. The murderer begins to walk around the school with his gun and still shooting exposed women who cross his path. Finally commits suicide.
is premeditated murder. As he tells himself, several years earlier had tried to enter the military service to gain access to a gun but did not succeed, so he continued to live with the sole purpose of getting a weapon and ultimately ending the lives of several women . Before the event write a letter explaining his hatred for women and another to his mother saying he loves. I wonder if we need to dump our anger at faceless women order to have the fantasy of wanting to see the only woman in all, our mother.
film is raw, hard and cold, both in terms of content and form. Is shot in black and white, and she just no room for any kind sound, musical or cozy, only silence filled with tension, dry shots, anguished vocals and choppy breaths. It is a brutal film.
Not having ever experienced a dramatic situation, which is personally connect with all cases of overt or subtle aggression that I have suffered by men throughout my life. It feels visceral, primitive. After the movie walk down the street and I feel hatred for the people I meet. At that time are all those people that before the attack on a woman close their eyes or look away in all the ways you do this, downplaying, hiding, doing nothing even when they sense the gravity of the situation. I have a feeling of unreality, and at the same time I think it's more real than reality my eyes. While I hate what causes the condemnation of the aggression, I identify with the murderer by the mere fact of feeling it as intensely as if it is a hatred associated with the "other" sex.
And in the movie when the men leave the classroom and leave women with the murderer will not really know what to do because when the camera came with one of them is that life at school as usual, public areas like the living room or dining room are filled with people smoking and talking animatedly and not see anyone running or sounding the alarm. This guy runs himself, down to the first floor where a security guard and tells him to call the police, he initially believed that this is a joke.
And I wonder how people who have left the classroom does not have shouted warning of what is happening, either we all rush out of the building to a possible attack of the aggressor or to do something in defense of women who have stayed with him. I find it really brutal feeling that something very serious is happening in a classroom building and the rest of the world continues as if nothing had happened. I feel helpless.
The film is told from three perspectives: that of the murderer, the one of the men who was in the classroom and the only survivor of the same. Three lives are affected forever by this event.
begins with the murderer. They are the moments before the murder in the apartment he shares with other students. Write a letter to feminists that goes against their hatred. I hate it considers causes of discrimination experienced by men today, justified by the social disadvantage that are perceived to suffer them. Then write a farewell letter to his mother leaving the house for this and finally addresses the polytechnic where the tragedy happen.
I do not know what to say about this young man. A loner, who by appearance could pass for a normal person (well if it exists, but at least half a neurotic, not a murderer). You see your relationship with your roommate where you get a list of little contact, some rather cold warmth hello and goodbye. And I wonder what the roommate will think when he finds out? I think I would ask how is that I never thought that something like this could happen.
And I can question my blindness to the behavior likely to lead to a situation of serious aggression. I sing in my work, a secondary education college, when I see aggressive behavior by describing to students denounced what they did, the consequences it has had and saying what I think about what happened (I'm usually very honest and hard on this.) However, I treat them with kindness because some want to believe that their behavior is due to a bad deal that they are suffering or have suffered at the hands of adults and treating them with utmost respect and trying to understand them can change. Watching the film I get to wonder if this way I have to relate to aggression is not wrong and if somehow I'm not contributing.
In my ethics class we talked a lot about love, aggression, human values, exploitation, individual and social responsibility ... and it is precisely these students the most is "wet" reviewing and contributing to their personal experience . Therefore, are the ones who get better grades in it besides being who more attention receive from me.
In the evaluation sessions, that is, when we gather to put the notes, almost all are critical to them and their rebellious behavior and "quasi-criminal" (drug use, bad answers, lack of motivation, ...) . So, what exactly is the subject of ethics which get top marks, and also they, the whole class, those who excel in this subject is at least contradictory. However, I appreciate what they do in my class and I can not fail to assess participatory and sincere attitude in them. However, if rationally seem right to me sometimes when I listen to the experiences some other teachers I can not help thinking if I could be wrong.
thing that calms me in this regard is that I have encountered several situations of bullying taking place at recess with younger children. Who did the bullying? If one of these guys, but along with several that are "good students" and those who do not say anything. What is a good student? Getting good grades and do not respond to the teacher. These same professors who are scandalized work answers that question, do not seem moved by the attacks that happen in the yard, or only if someone puts forward crudely. In fact, not even bother to look, they're too busy trying to catch who smokes and who does not.
not stand the situations in which a group of people with more strength exercises violence against a smaller number and / or weak, it activates something in me that puts me in defense of the attack even if this means going against myself. At school I feel that these students are Bullin in some way by some teachers and that puts me in a position to defend, and maybe be here my blindness, my obsession for her protection may not be seeing the rest of the students in the class, or you may not see the violent behavior they have in all dimension.
follows the vision of one man who left the classroom in which women are kidnapped. When the murderer tells them to divide a moment of confusion he uses to approach the murderer, it seems that to see if you can take the weapon or reduce in any way. But the murderer realizes and chides him to leave.
After leaving in a hurry to go downstairs where there is a security guard and tells him to call the police because a man with a gun is held to a group of women in a classroom. Get back. Along the way, is two women on the ground, one is still alive, So going for medicine to try something. When she returns she is dead. Realizing that the murderer has left the first room, go there to see what has happened. By entering, all women are lying on the ground motionless, including her two friends. When you exit there, runs the building. Now the atmosphere is different, everyone is running from side to side on the alert. At one point, he sees the murderer in a hallway and is sheltered by entering the first door is at hand, and enters a room with music at full blast and smoking and drinking students who are oblivious to everything that is happening outside. This scene I find tremendous it reminds me of a personal fear, be I calmly enjoying something happens something serious or even catastrophic as the movie and I was not aware of anything. It is a self enjoying the misfortune of others to external group.
man back. The next thing you see is going to visit his mother and committed suicide after the visit. Later we see how he finds that one of the friends who had given up for dead only wounded and carried on a stretcher while he apologizes. She tells him that he is not guilty. And certainly he is not guilty and does everything he can to help but he does feel that it is, and I, and even host of the movie, sorry, I guess that's the cultural role of protection that we attribute to men, that there is some guilt in him as a man who was there and did not protect women. Finally, it seems that due to the fault or perhaps other reasons, can not integrate what happened and rather die than to live with it. Therefore, we can say that the murderer, and protective responsibility society places on men, killing one man.
Finally a survivor tells us what he lived and how they live with it since. This young woman is studying to be an aeronautical engineer. The day of the event just had an interview Working for an intern position in a company aircraft. In the interview notes once again the issue of gender, the interviewer questioned his candidacy for the position by being a woman and be more likely than men to leave the job or disregard it to a family, ie children. Know what she responds to this observation, we know that finally get the scholarship.
Upon leaving the interview is your best friend and roommate who studied with her. Come into class with your partner and above all when it happens.
When the murderer left the classroom, she opens her eyes and see around. Her friend and another of women breathe. She is badly injured but can be moved, the other not. Limping out of the classroom for help, to reach the next door is the murderer and think he has seen. Back as fast as you can into the classroom and lies down to rest. The next thing I hear is someone walks into the classroom. It is thought the murderer but no, his friend who is seeing them think they are all lying dead leaves. Finally the other die.
Several years after the event is seen living with a partner and working in an aerospace company. That is when he learns she is pregnant. This news was stirred for so that feels the need to write a letter to the parents of the murderer of the polytechnic even when he knows that it is not sent. In terror she tells them that like to have this child, tells how everyone was saying after what happened and how strong he was said to be tired of being strong, he is thorough. Decides to have her baby and says that if you teach children to respect and appreciate life and girl if she can be whatever you want. Again, the gender difference.
Does it make sense that this woman who has suffered in their own flesh the terrible consequence of gender differentiation, ie to see before the sex of the person your quality as a person continues to have expectations based on gender differentiation? I dare say, at least without further thought about it, that the distinction itself is the cause of prejudice and hatred that comes from them, but the attitude of exclusion with which we approach this differentiation helps this hatred and in consequence, such acts of murder, to be permanently excluded.
ttal Lizarraga
