The Barbarian Invasions with Rémy Girard: DVD Cover
  • Cover Image

The Barbarian Invasions Director: Denys Arcand Cast: Rémy Girard, Stéphane Rousseau, Marie-Josée Croze, Marina Hands

DVD - Wide Screen / Subtitled Learn more

BUY THIS ITEM

  • $19.99 Online price
    $17.99 Member price
    Join Now
    • skip to cart
  • Add To List uiAction=GetAllLists&page=List&pageType=list&ean=786936242782&productCode=DV&maxCount=100&threshold=3

GET FREE SHIPPING ON ORDERS OF $25 OR MORE

DELIVERY & GIFT DETAILS:

Usually ships within 24 hours

Delivery Time and Shipping Rates

Eligible for gift wrap & gift message.

Enter a zip code

  • DVD Release Date: 07/13/2004
  • Original Release: 2003
  • Rating: Rated R
  • Sales Rank: 20,539

Viewer Rating: (3 ratings)

See All Detailed Ratings

 
  • Overview
  • Editorial Reviews
  • Scenes
  • Customer Reviews
  • Cast & Crew
  • Full Product Details

Features

Closed Caption; "'Inside The Barbarian Invasions" featurette

Full Product Details

Scene Index

Side #1 --
1. Mother's Calling [:28]
2. Burlington [7:57]
3. Setting Up the Room [5:52]
4. Barbarian Invasions [6:39]
5. Reunion [5:47]
6. Riding the Dragon [9:15]
7. Women of Fantasies [7:26]
8. Father and Son [4:34]
9. Reflecting on Life [5:17]
10. Looking for Nathalie [13:09]
11. The Cottage [6:34]
12. The Last Supper [3:38]
13. The Goodbye [1:59]
14. Credits [4:50]

Scene Index

Editorial Reviews

Director Denys Arcand’s sequel of sorts to his 1986 Decline of the American Empire includes many of that film’s characters, played by the same actors. This time, the focal point is Rémy (Rémy Girard), the cheerfully anarchic academic who -- after devoting his life to wine, women, song, and left-wing political causes -- finds himself dying of cancer. Having championed socialized medicine, he stubbornly remains in an overcrowded, inefficient Canadian hospital even though his stockbroker son (whom Rémy disdains) would love to bring the terminally ill professor to an American hospital. One by one, Rémy’s old friends reluctantly visit the former Falstaffian, now withering away but still defiant and domineering. Arcand uses his leading character’s hospitalization as a vehicle whereby the reunited comrades reflect on their youthful passions, idealism, and illusions. A few of the supporting characters are especially memorable, especially Marie-Josée Croze, portraying a drug addict who scores heroin for Rémy when the prescribed morphine no longer dulls his pain. Refreshingly, Arcand doesn’t expect us to look at the fiercely independent patient through rose-colored glasses: Rémy’s mistaken notions are revealed in all their vainglory; and we also learn that his son, Sébastien (Stéphane Rousseau, superb in a delicately written role), is bribing friends and health-care professionals to comfort him. But there’s something exemplary about the way Rémy faces his impending demise, and something very touching about the way those around him enable the fusty academic to die with his illusions intact. The script’s emotional complexity no doubt impressed Arcand's fellow screenwriters, who nominated him for the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award. Although Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation won in that category, the French-Canadian Barbarian Invasions was honored with the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar. Ed Hulse, Barnes & Noble

More reviews and recommendations

Customer Reviews

  • Viewer Rating:
  • Ratings: 3Reviews: 2

"The Barbarian Invasions" is deeply emotional and highly thought-provoking.by Anonymous

Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings

October 24, 2006: The most skilful attribute of “The Barbarian Invasions” is the clever way in which the film intertwines a personal story with our collective history. I don't remember another recent film that has managed to move and making me feel involved as much, and in both respects. The film is incredibly accurate in capturing a "moment", an undercurrent difficult to articulate and to put in words, of what it is happening in our world today. It does this with remarkable restrain and in small measures in the delivery of details, giving us few but quite powerful facts. The film centers on Rémy's estranged relationship with his son Sebastian (stand-up comic Stéphane Rousseau) a millionaire London businessman. When Sebastian comes to Montreal with his fiancée (Marina Hands), years of resentment against his father boil to the surface. Rémy apparently was not an exemplary father figure. He cheated on his wife, over indulged himself in hedonistic pleasures, and offered less than the support his children needed. Rémy, a socialist, considers his son a "puritanical capitalist" and one who portends the coming "barbarian" invasions. Sebastian resents Rémy for his womanizing and calls him "contentious". In spite of this resentment, however, he starts throwing money around to try and make his father's final days more comfortable, in a way subtly letting his father know that money can buy anything. “The Barbarian Invasions” is not a perfect film by any means but is one of the strongest Canadian films. Though some of the dialogue is strained, underneath there is a humanity that allows us to connect with our feelings about our own mortality and our relationships with those we care about. It is often hard to reconcile the robustly alive Rémy with our pictures of a man dying of cancer but Girard is powerfully effective in the role and I went from quiet distaste of his amorality to full acceptance of who he is by the end of the film. Though the conclusion is emotional, it is not trite or overly sentimental but allows us to access the deep place of silence within ourselves and embrace the mystery. This film is great. But you may have to be in the right mood for it. There are a lot of interesting, thought provoking lines in the movie and it makes you think about how you feel, stand and react to the issues at stake. I laughed, I cried and I felt very appeased after seeing it. It is exactly the kind of movie one can ponder for a long time.

As Satisfying a Film as Any Ever Made!by Anonymous

Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings

July 18, 2004: THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS is a miracle movie. As conceived and directed by Denys Arcand this film is a brilliantly entertaining story, full of hilarious dialogue and situations, full of intellectual stimulation, brilliant metaphors and similes, full of probing philosophy, while standing as the finest examination of our society as it stands at the moment. The beauty of the film is that for all of the intellectual wealth it contains, it never bogs down with cerebral weightiness. The mood is consistently entertaining: the infinite messages contained are left as after burn. Remy (and indelible characterization by Remy Girard) has lived a life of sexual freedom, intellectual pursuits (he is a Professor of History and defender of free thinking), and seems to have placed his family and wife in the periphery. Suddenly faced with a diagnosis of a rampantly aggressive and untreatable cancer, he rages against the world that no longer holds his tenets of civilization dear: he faces death having no legacy to leave the world he entered. His ex-wife notifies his worldly and wealthy Baby-Boomer generation son in his important office in London to return home, despite the fact that the son sees little point in rushing to the deathbed of a father who was never a father to him. The son Sebastien (in a sophisticated, engrossing performance by Stephane Rousseau) flies to Montreal and, in his manner of control, takes over, planning the exodus of this 'shameful father' in a manner that allows him to provide the best amenities while putting more emotional distance from his father. Money talks, and after Sebastien drives him to the USA for the best of scans and opinions only to hear that Remy will not follow-up by entering a US Medical Center, Remy is moved to a deserted floor of the hospital (grandly redecorated and staffed by Sebastien's conniving way with money bribes). Sebastien gathers the wildest assortment of Remy's friends, mistresses, and political/intellectual oddballs and gives Remy everything he could ask for - even satellite conversation with Remy's yachting-on-the-seas daughter. When the disease advances and terminal pain encroaches, Sebastien even arranges for heroin by coercing the addicted daughter of one of Remy's mistresses to supply the need. When it is clear that death is imminent, Sebastien arranges for the entire entourage to move to a beautiful house by a lake outside Montreal and there the group eats, drinks, philosophizes, entertains, and ultimately says goodbye to their old friend. At this point Sebastien and Remy are alone with their personal histories and disappointments and regrets and it is the playing out of how this is resolved that is the utter magic of this magnificent film. Though the ending of the film is implied from the outset, to spoil the final moments by revealing the actual moments of the story would be a disservice to the viewer An added attraction on the DVD (in French and English with subtitles) is a filmed dinner with the entire cast (and to a person, this is a cast of gifted, virtuosic actors), discussing the movies, their characters, and more importantly looking at the Montreal that was the dream of the future when all of these actors were young and idealistic and now faces a stagnation and void that each sees as a threat to the future. These are articulate actors and their words and thoughts are intensely sensitive and informative. This added feature adds yet more depth in accompaniment to the film. THE...