Of Warm and Sunny Tragedies: AN INTERVIEW WITH DENYS ARCAND

Over two decades Denys Arcand has gone from a controversial documentary fllmmaker whose work was suppressed by its sponsor, the National Film Board, to the most prominent feature film director of his generation working in Canada. After suffering for years from Canada's benighted film financing policies, which supported making schlock Hollywood genre pictures in anomalous Canadian locations rather than indigenous production, Arcand reemerged in 1986 with the internationally acclaimed The Decline of the American Empire see interview in Cineaste, Vol. Arcand's manner as a writer-director is to make 'personal' films arising out of his own, and his characters', feelings, but which open up to comment subtly on the larger political and social concerns of his Quebecois culture in its North American setting. To me, the ending of The Decline of the American Empire, at the breakfast where all the people are completely lost and don't know where to go, what's going to happen the next day, leads into reflection on the meaning of religion.