‘Polytechnique’ Is a Haunting Portrait of a Real-Life Canadian Tragedy [Maple Syrup Massacre]

Maple Syrup Massacre is an editorial series where Joe Lipsett dissects the themes, conventions and contributions of new and classic Canadian horror films. Spoilers follow…

One of the darkest moments in Canadian history happened on Dec 6, 1989: a male shooter walked into the École Polytechnique de Montréal with a semi-automatic rifle. He had written several letters outlining an anti-feminist agenda and he specifically targeted women in his shooting spree, eventually killing fourteen.

For thirty-one years, the “Montreal Massacre” was Canada’s worst shooting.

Denis Villeneuve’s 2009 film Polytechnique, co-written with Jacque Davidts, recounts the events of Dec 6. The film is shot in stark black and white and takes place partially in real time during the shooting, with time jumps and other strategic technical decisions to avoid being sensational or exploitative.

The film opens with a brief burst of violence as two women are shot in a photocopy lab by an offscreen shooter. Polytechnique then jumps back to the beginning of the day to follow three individuals: engineering student Valérie (Karine Vanasse), her classmate Jean-François (Sébastien Huberdeau) and the killer (Maxim Gaudette), who is unnamed.

When it was released, many critics compared the film to Gus Van Sant’s 2003 film about the Columbine massacre, Elephant. The comparisons make sense: both films adopt a documentary-like narrative that grounds the events in reality; they refuse easy answers about the nature of the violence; and they both adopt a non-linear timeline that reframes and refocuses events from multiple characters’ points of view.

Villeneuve was respectful of the national tragedy, not only in his decision to shoot the film in black and white (to “avoid the presence of blood on screen”), but also refusing to shoot on location at the Polytechnique. Star and producer Vanasse, who convinced Villeneuve to make the film, also spoke with the families of the murdered women to capture their story.

One of the film’s most successful creative decisions is how it eschews simple moral judgments and emotional triggers. The film was criticized upon release by some critics who wanted the killer’s psychology and history explored in greater detail; in the intervening decade, however, society’s relationship to true crime has shifted in favour of telling the victims/survivors’ stories* rather than profiling the killer. In this capacity, Villeneuve and Davidts were clearly ahead of the curve in 2009 when they refused to name the killer.

*It should be noted that the film opens with an acknowledgement that while Polytechnique is based on the Montreal Massacre, it is a work of fiction and the names of the women have been changed.

What’s fascinating about Polytechnique is how covertly it develops audience investment in its characters. Following the violence of the opening scene, the film focuses on Val and her roommate Stéphanie (Evelyne Brochu of Orphan Black) who helps her prepare for an interview. Watching Val deliberate on her choice of wardrobe, struggle to walk in heels, or warn Jean-François that she needs her notes back before class are all simple, but deeply human moments.

Vanasse’s performance is restrained, but emotive. It’s a nearly silent role, but the French Canadian actor’s deeply expressive face draws the audience’s empathy. After Val is confronted by sexist rhetoric about women (engineers) giving up their careers for family in the interview, she locks herself in the bathroom to cry. When Stéphanie asks if she got the job, Val confirms that she did; what has upset her is the suggestion that her studies, and, by extension, all her hard work, will always be scrutinized because of her sex.

The bait-and-switch reveal of why Val is crying anticipates two other significant moments of narrative subversion in the film. The first is how François – and by extension we – believe that Val has been killed with the other female engineering students. Following the shooting, Polytechnique shifts focus to follow François in the weeks afterwards before he dies by suicide.

Only after François is dead does the film return to the day of the shooting to reveal that Val survived. The second subversion is that François ends his life not because he misses Val, but out of shame for abandoning her when the killer ordered all of the men out of the classroom (this apparently occurred several times in real life as individuals struggling with survivor’s guilt took their own lives).

Is the reveal that Val not only survives, but gets a job in aeronautics and learns she’s pregnant emotionally manipulative and hopeful? Yes…but is also works to contract the explicitly gendered violence that the film is exploring and critiquing.

Polytechnique includes a voice-over of the killer’s manifesto, which espouses an anti-feminist agenda (fabricated for the film, but based on real life content). It’s startling because, as an audience, this voice over gives an extended platform to a specific breed of hatred.

On a first watch the impulse is to question why is this man’s hate being given such a prominent platform? Upon reflection, however, Polytechnique is doing so in order to address the reality of the situation head-on.

In the aftermath of the massacre, some real-life politicians and thought leaders argued that the dialogue around the shooting shouldn’t be reduced to the sex of the victims. This, of course, negates the fact that the attack was specifically on and about women: all of the victims were women and the killer deliberately let men flee without firing on them.

Villeneuve and Davidts clarify their own feelings with the reveal of the killer’s body, his blood spreading out to join the nearby pool of blood from a female victim, confirming not only that they are joined, but one and the same.

In the wake of the shooting, a federal government sub-committee on the Status of Women was created and a dialogue about violence against women swept the country. Stricter gun laws were also introduced in the Firearms Act of 1995, which included “requirements on the training of gun owners, screening of firearm applicants, 28-day waiting period on new applicants, rules concerning gun and ammunition storage, magazine capacity restrictions,” and the creation of a federal gun-registry that lasted until 2012 (and reinstated in 2018).

Each year on December 6, Canadians remember the Montreal massacre with a National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. Thankfully we also have Villeneuve’s gorgeous and haunting film.

I have deliberately chosen not to name the shooter, but let us never forget the fourteen women who lost their lives: Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte, and Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz.