With so many cinematic projects gaining traction in production or being either rumored or about to release in the future, there are some names that have taken the film industry by storm, and one of those names happens to be none other than Denis Villeneuve, who has made a name for himself in the past years as one of the most talented filmmakers in the industry.
With so many rumors that the director might become part of some very high-profile films and franchises in the future, there are a lot of expectations from him when it comes to the future of cinema. But looking at his life in retrospect, he remembers this one incident that made him feel like the work he had put into this one film might’ve caused his community to turn their backs on him.
Denis Villeneuve Felt Like His Hometown Abandoned Him After He Made A Film On A Real-Life Tragedy
Most popular for some of the most impressive cinematic experiences with films like Arrival, Sicario, and his most recent masterpiece Dune, award-winning filmmaker Denis Villeneuve is on a trajectory to become one of the greatest directors of all time. Even with some of his earlier projects, he was able to make a staggering impact on the film industry, which led to his rise in fame and recognition. But one of those early films was also the reason why people from his hometown had very strong opinions about it, which ultimately led to them almost shutting him off.
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In a past episode of Full Director’s Roundtable, the Blade Runner 2049 director was in conversation with other high-profile directors who were sharing their directorial experiences with each other. Here, Villeneuve opened up about the time when he made one of his early films titled Polytechnique, which was about a school shooting in Montreal in 1989, which also happens to be his hometown. After he made that film, he noticed that many people from his community had very strong emotions about the film, which ultimately led them to shut the director off in their state. He said:
“I made a movie once about Montreal, In Montreal, in my hometown, about a school massacre. It was one of the first one that happened in the history. And it was a mysoginist, a young man, crazy, that went to a school Polytechnique, and killed only women. And that was very horrifying in 1989. And I decided to make a movie about that, because personally, I have a lot of things to say about that. A lot, I will say anger, sadness, and strong emotions. And it was a trauma, and sometimes trauma, I think cinema can be very powerful to revisit a trauma and try to let emotions out of it. I felt resistance from my community”
Just goes to show the power of cinema and all the bottled-up emotions and reactions that it is capable of bringing out from the people.
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What Was Polytechnique About?
The dramatic retelling of the 1989 Polytechnique Montreal Massacre, the film tells the tale of a mentally unstable young man who gets his rifle and goes on his way to the aforementioned engineering school with the intention of killing. Once he reaches there, he enters a classroom and tells all the male students to exit quietly and the female students to stay there.
When only the female students remain, he confesses that he hates feminists and feminism in general, even when the students reveal that they are not feminists. He proceeds to gun down everyone of them and then repeats the process until he kills himself in the end.
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Polytechnique, available on Apple TV.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
