Given the brain drain Hollywood has doubtlessly imposed on the country’s talent pool, it’s gratifying to see quality films being made in and about Canada. Although diverse, the films featured in the Harvard Film Archive’s series "Northern Exposures: New Films from Canada" are more or less studies of individuals and their efforts to better know themselves and their places in the larger world. That’s interesting, coming as they do from a nation whose own identity seems often to be eclipsed by its neighbor to the south.
Terrance Odette’s Heater (1999; screens Friday, February 22 at 9 p.m. and Sunday, February 24 at 7 p.m.) tells the story of two homeless men trying to survive Winnipeg’s frigid nights on the outside (literally, figuratively). Not much happens: they try to return a stolen space heater for the refund and the two come off like Midnight Cowboy’s Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo exchanging the clipped absurdities of Waiting for Godot. Perhaps it’s in homage to Beckett’s austerity, then, that the pair’s relationship never develops. But Heater succeeds as an unflinching depiction of hardscrabble life on the cold streets. View lingering shots of one man’s mangled and frostbitten feet, then try talking about the Great White North.
Peter Lynch’s Cyberman (2001; screens Friday, February 22 at 7 p.m. and Saturday, February 23 at 9 p.m.) is an engrossing look at Steve Mann, true-life cyborg. This likable, lank-haired nebbish has equipped his body with all manner of gadgets — cameras, recorders, an Internet server. (The gizmos seem so integral to him that it’s jarring when the camera gets a glimpse of his bare, "human" face.) Geek? Sure. But Mann sees all this as a response to a world adrift in meaningless media and intrusive surveillance. His accouterments are "a way to tame the monster with a piece of itself." More intriguingly, he explains that with his inventions, "one day my grandchildren will be able to put on my glasses and experience life as I saw it." Mann is a visionary eccentric, exerting control over his environment rather than engaging reality as it’s presented to him.
Another documentary, presenting an arid counterpoint to the techno-dazzle of Lynch’s approach, is Frank Cole’s Life without Death (2000; screens Saturday, February 16 at 9 p.m. and Tuesday, February 19 at 9 p.m.) It’s a harrowing travelogue, chronicling his record-breaking solo camelback journey across the Sahara desert. Jarred by the death of his grandfather; Cole tries to confront mortality in an extreme way. "It was my fear of death that had summoned me, like a calling, to the Sahara," he says. The production values here are lo-fi to a fault, but a lack of gloss might be expected since it’s Cole filming himself as he trudges — emaciated and exhausted, pursued by bandits — across the punishing sands. Despite lapses into solipsistic truisms and a fetishistic reliance on shots of decaying desert animals, Life is powerful. Cole’s "cinematography" manages to make even vast swaths of empty desert seem claustrophobic.
In contrast to Cole’s single-mindedness, Robin Schlaht’s glacial Solitude (2001; screens Friday, February 15 at 9 p.m. and Saturday, February 16 at 7 p.m.) seems aimless. A monastery, for some reason, plays host to a contemplative young woman and a rebellious teenage girl. Brother Bernard (Lothaire Bluteau), contemplating the nature of beauty, fails to note that the teen is hot for him. I think Solitude intends to be about faith and identity, but with all the film’s interminable, silent tracking shots, you can’t really tell. Bluteau was the title character in the Oscar-nominated Jesus of Montreal, but he’s wasted here.
Guylaine Dionne’s The Three Madeleines (2000; screens Saturday, February 23 at 7 p.m. and Tuesday, February 26 at 9 p.m.), on the other hand, is deliberately paced, but still enthralls with its luminous, windswept black-and-white imagery. Three generations are traveling to the coastal town of Côte-de-Gaspé, Quebec. The grandmother, Mado, had given up her daughter Marie-Madeleine for adoption years ago and is only now reconnecting with her. Marie-Madeleine, in turn, is connecting with her daughter, trying to give her a sense of the father she never knew. A trite subject gains emotional resonance thanks to a poetic script and some nifty narrative tricks. And maybe it’s just the French narration, but the film’s probing of time, memory, and the changing of relationships over a lifetime recalls Proust, just as the playful threesome — their relationships slowly evolving — evoke the central trio of Truffaut’s Jules et Jim.
