Review of Polytechnique (2009) by Karine C — 26 Aug 2009

Incredibly disturbing fictionalized account of the 1989 massacre. None of the characters in the movie are real people, except maybe the killer, Mark Lepine, but the movie probably doesn't want you to think of the killer as him either.

The movie is disturbing. That's fitting because who would have predicted such an incident back then when school and university shootings were hardly the norm? What made this incident even more disturbing was that the killer had a sexist agenda. He killed 12 women and no men.

The movie give focus to the killer, a male classmate of the female students at Polytechnique as well as some of the female students. The killer is shown as disturbed man who at the beginning tries to kill himself, gives up, then visits his mother, before going on his rampage. He's calm and focused as he walks around the halls shooting women. Apparently this is how it really happened according to interviews.

The movie also shows a male classmate who has female friends in the classroom where the killer originally starts the massacre. The incident obviously affected women gravely but I'm glad it showed men as well. This character was intended to show that not all men are as brutal and insane as the killer (obviously). But it also shows his pain in survival and how helpless he felt being separated from the women. There's always survival guilt in school shootings but there was obviously a lot of survival guilt for the men here. That's shown, I'm glad it was.

The incident is also shown again from the women's perspective. It's plain disturbing. I don't think the movie ever crosses the line into sensationalism. The whole movie is in black and white which makes it more like video surveillance footage from 1989. It also tones down the more graphic parts of the movie where there's blood.

The movie isn't for the faint of heart. I think it is a story which should be told even 20 years after the original incident. I was 9 when the incident happened and I don't remember much besides the white ribbons on the anniversary and I didn't even know what it was about really except that women were killed in Montreal. I think that people who were kids when this happened or born after it should watch it to know what happened.

December 6th is officially National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women in Canada. A white ribbon campaign was started by men in 1991.

The movie also begins by showing how tough it was for women engineers in 1989. I'm sure it's still difficult, probably less than it was in 1989, but still difficult nonetheless.

The film doesn't try to understand the incident or why the killer murdered 14 women. It's kind of like Gus Van Sant's "Elephant" that way (a movie about the Columbine massacre). As long as there's deeply disturbed individuals who aren't getting help and lots of cheap guns and ammunition, incidents like this will persist. Changes have been made since 1989 and despite there being shootings like the one at Dawson college, I think progress has been made.