Interview: Paul Gross on Passchendaele
October 17th, 2008 by Lia Grainger in The Haulout![[Post to Twitter]](http://web.archive.org/web/20090108112452im_/http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/tweet-this-small.png)
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“I liked it because it’s Canadian.”
Apparently this was the wrong thing to say about Paul Gross’s new film Passchendaele, or so I learned from one of my Walrus colleagues the other evening over beer and nachos. “Trust me,” one of them said, Heineken in hand, “there’s no more back-handed compliment than saying you like something because it’s Canadian.” Hmm. I pondered the statement, growing a little red in the face. “Girls say it to me all the time,” he added with a sigh.
Did I play the fool for admitting I liked something simply because it came from the same place I did? Was I judging this film using criteria that disregarded artistic merit, that paid no attention to script, cinematography, or even (gasp) acting? Do we, as Canadians, observe our own creations through maple-leaf coloured glasses?
Take Passchendaele. This is Paul Gross’s baby. He wrote, produced, directed, and starred in it. The protagonist is named after Gross’s grandfather, and the film was shot and set in his home town of Calgary. Gross has been dreaming about the project ever since his Due South days, when he snow-shoed onto the scene, Canadian flag in hand, husky dog on leash, pants billowing in the Chicago wind.
Since then, Gross has embraced the red, white, and red with unexpected and unchecked enthusiasm. His 2002 directorial debut, Men with Brooms, was a comedy about curling. Curling! The guy is really into his home and native land. He’s also emphatic about the role the arts play in the creation of national identity. “We are Margaret Atwood, we’re Bryan Adams, Avril Lavigne, we are David Cronenberg,” Gross told me at over coffee at the Alliance Atlantis offices in Toronto. I’d like to be a fly on the wall at that cocktail party.
With Passchendaele, Gross decided he was ready to turn over a bigger, more traditionally American (yet somehow still maple) leaf — the big budget Hollywood-style war epic. “We’re weirdly silent on the subject,” Gross says. “When you look at the US, there are obviously bags of films about their military adventures. In Britain, France, Germany, there’s tons of them, even our sister colony Australia has a number of films telling about their military legacy.”
And this military movie has everything: sexy ladies, drug addictions, rip-roaringly graphic battle scenes, all loud enough for you to walk out of the theatre saying “SPEAK INTO MY GOOD EAR!” The movie also has the largest budget of any Canadian movie ever, and it’s easy to see where the money went. It’s a good-looking picture. Gross deserves a pat on the back for making $20 million look like five times that amount.
And how did Gross come across such a sum? Simple. “I travelled across the country for years, it seemed, just having dinners with billionaires,” he says.
Apparently quite persuasive with Grey Goose in hand, Gross does have one regret: “I wish to hell I had a secret little digital camera because I could have a great little documentary called My Dinners with Billionaires. Some of them are completely mesmerizing. Some of them are absolute pigs. But they’re all interesting. And I don’t know if they’re interesting because they’re loaded, or they’re interesting because they are actually interesting.”
So we’ve established that billionaires are interesting (though we haven’t quite pinned down why). But is the movie? Well, the script is a little predictable. The love story, a bit cliché. But let’s get one thing straight — Gross was not trying to make Apocalypse Now. Yes, he wanted to show the horrors of war, but uppermost in his mind was giving Canadians a sense of pride in their military history.
Says Gross: “We have a very funny perception of ourselves, which is: ‘We’re peacekeepers.’ Well we are, and we’re extraordinarily good at it, we to some extent invented it, we teach the world how to do it. But, we’re also warriors. And we were the most feared fighting core in the British order of battle.”
This film is a CGIed reminder of the sacrifice that occurred at the very moment our country first stood on its own two feet. It is a celluloid testament to the heroic sacrifice of those few who gave so much for so many, a cinematic tribute to the many brave men and women who fearlessly —
How about that. Even I can’t help sounding sentimental about Canadian nationalism. It can’t be avoided. Gross does the same when questioned about his motivations for making the film: “I was interested in the intimate casualties of war, and what it does to families and innocence and neighbours, and love, I suppose. The casualties of love. And the only thing that can counterbalance something as implacably brutal as a cataclysm like the first war is all these individual acts of love and self-sacrifice.”
Yes, the movie is a bit heavy on the fromage. But what pilsner-drinking hockey fan wouldn’t fall for the following line, said in passing from one young soldier to another during a lull in battle: “How can you say you don’t like Peterborough? You’ve never even been there.” You won’t hear that in Black Hawk Down.
Illustration of Paul Gross by Sol Sallee.
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Posted on Friday, October 17th, 2008 at 4:32 pm. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.
October 18th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Mr. Gross has used the “Dinners With Billionaires” story all over his press tour for this film. I heard it at the TIFF premiere, read it in the VIA Rail magazine, and on this blog. He needs to get a new anecdote!!!! But it was a great film, and don’t be ashamed for liking it just because it’s Canadian.
October 19th, 2008 at 4:42 am
Sir J.G. Bourinot wrote in “How Canada is Governed(1895) under “Executive Power” with regards to the Dominion Government and the National flag, Quote” The Dominion of Canada has also authority to display on all public occaions a national flag; viz., the Red or Blue Ensign…The Red Ensign is displayed at the opening and closing of parliament, and on national occasions. The Blue Ensign is a distinguishing flag of the government vessels of Canada; the mercantile marine of the Dominion has a right to use the Red Ensign.”Sir John George Bourinot,(1837-1902)Canadian historian and political scientist. He is remembered as an authority on the Canadian constitution and government his “Local Government in Canada (1887), Manuel of the Constitutional History of Canada (1888,rev.ed.1901), How Canada Is Governed (1895, rev.ed. 1918),” and other books are still authoritative… It would be wise and only fair to make sure that it becomes common knowledge that with the passage of time the true perspective on the creation of the current national flag of Canada, and the great emotion and sadness that accompanied the moment has in many ways been purposly hidden, lied about, overlooked and in many cases forgotten. In June 1964 the Toronto Telegram wrote “The people of Canada should be allowed to decide whether or not they wish to live under the flag of thier forebearers or discard it in favor of a new emblem…Mr. Pearson has an enviable reputation for sagacity and diplomacy. Let him ask the people by referendum whether they want to replace the banner that carries the symbols of our nationhood by one that is mounted on the colour of surrender and would be most suitable for an arboretum.” The Vancouver Province wrote “Canadians who are outraged at the thought of abandoning a flag sanctified by lives and blood of thousands of our countrymen in two great wars - a flag of colour and character in every way superior to the glorified dish towel that Mr. Pearson seeks single-handedly to impose on this country.” No one can change these facts and many of us will always remember.
November 7th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
This was one of the most sadly laughable films I have ever seen. As a Canadian, I wanted to like it. Three of the six people in the theatre walked out. I stayed. The cast (the doctor, for instance, and the recruiter), gave embarrassingly awkward/stilted performances, and the immaculate Calgary street scenes screamed out “action!” as the rigid figures moved down dustless streets (Anne of Avonlea looked much more authentic), past just-built sets. Similarily, battlefield ambulances had mud on their tires, but polished mirror-like fenders. No tired or dying soldiers fell against them, or touched them with their bloody hands. I could go on and on and on. Never has an asthma attack been so hilarious. And all three of those “I will now try to say something profound” actors, there in the same company in France. The Alberta tourist bureau horseback ride! And the underwritten Gil Bellows part–what the heck was that for or about. Is the rest on the floor somewhere? The stilted “there was a man…etc” lines, written apparently to be remembered as something other than funny and improbable. The lines of the dying hero paraphrasing the last words of Stonewall Jackson! Where was the director’s eye and ear throughout? This is apparently Paul Gross, an otherwise most admirable man, gone middle-age crazy. Having said all this, the basic battlefield set was very well done. Notice that the best part of the film is the still photographs that accompany the closing credits.