If we were to extend the metaphor across the 17 years since its prequel, The Barbarian Invasions is all about the inevitable result of the The Decline of the American Empire. Into this vacuum of intelligence and passion rushes the untutored and unenlightened, the unwashed hordes of a generation of children borne by the protagonists of The Decline of the American Empire, by now old enough to be successful businessmen or seasoned junkies. Having survived the broken homes of their philosophizing and philandering parents they have taken whatever route they can to the security their parents could never offer. But The Barbarian Invasions isn’t really about them, and it really isn’t about their parents. It is about an ungainly micro-culture of people at the deathbed of an elegant professor witnessing the unfolding of a generational exchange.


This exchange in Remy’s opinion is nothing less than a full-scale invasion. From Remy's hospital room we watch documentary footage of the 9/11 catastrophe as an historian on the screen explains how this terrorist attack was so much like the barbarian invasions that contributed to the fall of Rome. Things like the Korean War or the Gulf War only nibble at the edges of the empire. They are neutralized and contained. But even though many more lives were lost in wars such as these than in the World Trade Center, 9/11 struck America at its heart. This is Remy’s deathbed vision. The passionless life of his successful, technologically literate son is a deliberate attack on the heart, the idealism and romanticism of a dying generation.


Remy’s condition is terminal and we discover him in hospital packed with far more patients than nurses. Apparently the Canadian healthcare system isn’t the wine and roses Americans think it is, and Remy’s fate on this anonymous bed is a pathetic one at best. That is until his ex-wife Louise calls his estranged son in London to come help her deal with the misery of the situation. Her compassion for Remy is remarkable considering the adulterous lifestyle of her pretentious husband, and for some reason Sebastien does decide to come and be by his mother’s side during his death. Sebastien and his beautiful fiancee find exactly what they expect when they arrive at the hospital, an unrepentant and uncaring ex-father. From Remy’s point of view his capitalist son still has little or no understanding of what is important in life. Nevertheless, tossing around wads of cash, Sebastien has a room built in an unused wing of the hospital and sets about to find him a number of close friends to be with him as he passes away.


Sebastien’s business acumen takes over as he arranges for his father nothing short of a paradise in the socialized hospital until they take him to a cabin on the lake for his final days. At one point Remy sits with his friends by this lake discussing the “barbarians” and as Sebastien approaches he exclaims: “Their prince approaches!” One has a hard time feeling pity for a man who would characterize the unbelievable compassion of his son as barbaric, especially since it is Sebastien and his mother who have had to shoulder the effects of his philandering lifestyle treated so cavalierly in The Decline of the American Empire. But we feel pity nonetheless, a horrible tearful pity. Arcand really gets across the fact that death is always sad regardless of its subject.


Remy’s pain becomes so overwhelming that Sebastien hits the streets of Montreal looking for something stronger than morphine. His search for heroin ironically leads him to Nathalie, the daughter of his father’s ex-lover, who by now is seriously addicted to the drug. Though by this point the general storyline and the sordid complexity of the relationships of its characters could be enough to tilt the story into melodrama, Nathalie’s introduction to Remy and his plight begin to expose how truly sad and pointed Arcand’s tale is. In a heroin delirium his life winds down into a series of dialogues just as witty as those in Decline, but this time as serious as an assisted suicide. While Remy is the classic “man coming to grips with his failures,” his son is the sort of person we rarely see in life or on the screen. His inexplicable compassion for his father has no boundaries. In his father’s eyes, his soul-less generation of tech-savvy corporate acolytes is all analysis with no passion, all method and no truth. What we see in Remy on his deathbed is all passion with little or no moral reason. At one point Remy sits with his friends and they rattle of the series of movements and ideologies they aligned themselves with as trends rose and fell. It is their self-important history of idealism versus Sebastien’s successful financial history. (The one by the way which is bankrolling his father’s much more comfortable death than the one the Canadian healthcare system offers.) Somehow Arcand keeps all of these dramatic elements right beneath the surface of the film, letting the setting of the narrative take on a life of its own under the direction of his subtle visualization of Montreal.


The patience that Arcand’s delivery requires is well rewarded at every point of the film, but particularly in the final scene following Remy’s quiet death. This may be one of the most delicate moments of film I can think of, it is certainly the most potent scene this year’s crop of films has to offer. It is certainly akin to the waning moments of In the Bedroom, whose understated finality lends the film a dramatic genius. In this moment all of these unspoken emotions Arcand manages to uncover finally vocalize themselves between Sebastien and Nathalie. There in his father’s old house that he has just given to Nathalie he is forced to decide whether his or his father’s way of life is best, the most shocking turn of all here is who decides it for him. I can’t recall being more moved by this sort of social realism since Mike Leigh’s All or Nothing. This is cinema on an incredibly grand scale.