In the lead up to the 7th Canadian Film Festival in Australia (August 2012), join us as we countdown the Top 100 Canadian Films of the past 30 years. We'll be posting one film a day leading up to Canada Day on July 1st 2012. Do you agree with our team favourites? Let us know your thoughts!
The 4th film by Quebec’s master playwright and filmmaker Robert Lepage - his first in English – holds a special place in our heart since it is the film that gave our film festival its name. Based on the stage play by Canadian writer-actor John Mighton and adapted to the screen by the author, it’s a labyrinthine foray into human consciousness disguised as a procedural thriller.
George Barber (Tom McCamus) is discovered dead with $1000 in his pocket but with his brain missing. Possible Worlds charts on the one hand the police investigation into his murder, and on the other the rest of George’s lives as they unfold in parallel universes.
We discover that George is aware that people lead different existences in parallel worlds. He is able to experience several of his alternate lives simultaneously. This is as much of a curse as a blessing for George, who is forever meeting and losing his wife Joyce (Tilda Swinton), a woman with a different personality in each alternate reality.
Moving slowly so as not lose the viewer, Lepage navigates this increasingly complex narrative labyrinth with exquisite style and visual poetry. As is the director’s trademark, Possible Worlds is both cerebral and lyrical…and in asking more questions than it is willing to answer, is not everyone’s cup of tea.
McCamus and Swinton are the perfect guides through this multi-dimensional maze. Swinton in particular is charismatic as ever, effortlessly threading together several differentiated performances.
The police investigation is a red herring of course, the real investigation is existential. Lepage invites us to throw away narrative expectations and structural conventions. He is a master at drawing connections between events using the logic of dream, memory and free association, opening a trap door into the subconscious without fear of what may emerge.
Is the film cold and pretentious, as some have been quick to declare, or poetic and complex? You be the judge.
- Matt Ravier
“Allusive, mysterious and moving, with the ambition of its assembly amplified by the calm beauty of its surface, the film shows Lepage at the peak of his art.” – Time Out London
To see the other films in the countdown so far, click here.