Perils of the Unsaid in Michel Brault’s Film Les Ordres

DAVID CLANDFIELD vouiu faire les evenements d'Octobre. Je malgn:etC)ptlOI1le et recueilli des de personnes soi-disant pour den. Mais ce ont vern Ie. est vraiment pa19slc:ml:larLt. Je me suis fait raconter par personnes leur fait transcrire eela. tout Iu en extirpiant tout recompOEie sur trois ou personnages. Done, fait un scenario en (,,'11if1n~ntt:> scenarios. C'est de Ia fiction tiree de la realite Faire ce c'est merveilleux car des choses que je vais transmettre aux autres. Et ce que Ie vivre aleur tour. Comme on dit souvent, c'est donner la the film .....-'-.~~....F............ in what for many '-'.....~v.Jo;;;A. crisis of 1970. It would more than first on a cinema screen.2 aO,01[1011, it won the first ,-,~...o;:.Lf'''''1"',•.0(> to support UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 63, NUMBER SUMMER 1994 LES ORDRES 615 Solidement documente done, magnifiquement photographie, monte et maitrise dramatiquement, d'ou vient que ce film qui nous prend aux tripes n'arrive pas par ailleurs aVTaiment evoquer Octobre, avraiment nous remettre dans Ie bain? Fondamentalement, d'une absence, absence inadmissible qui nous enferme emotivement. Abordant un sujet on ne peut plus politique, Brault a choisi une approche essentiellement humaniste: denoncer les atteintes aux droits de la personne provoquees par un abus du pouvoir. ·Et certes devant tant d'innocence bafouee, on ne peut que s'indigner. On n'a pas Ie choix. Or c'est precisement cette absence de dilemme politique - dilemme auquel pourtant la majorite des Quebecois a ete confrontee, qu'elle a profondement ressenti et vecu achacune des etapes (enlevement de Cross, lecture du manifeste, mort de Laporte) de ceUe 'crise' - qui est la faiblesse des Ordres.9 By dwelling exclusively on the experiences of detainees who were not invo1ved in the independence movement or by muting any such involvement , Brault disembedded the event from its historical setting and effectively depoliticized it. In the words of Pierre Vallieres: la fiction des OrdTes n'est pas plus quebecoise que libanaise ou senegalaise. Elle est plus proche des enigmes ala Kafka que de 1a crise d'octobre 1970.10 But these criticisms remain at the level of the surface structure of the film. They review the events and characters shown to us and regret that other events and characters were not shown instead. I would argue that a study of the rhetorical and structural aspects of the work reveals a sense of the unsaid that can be linked to the tradition of film-making developed in the National Film Board of Canada. The dramatic action of the fibn is essentially composed of the intersecting stories of five central characters caught up in the events following the declaration of the War Measures Act in October 1970. Claudette Dussault (CD) is a social worker; Richard Lavoie (Rt) is unemployed; Beauchemin (DrB) is a community doctor. Two of the five are a married couple (Clermont and Marie Boudreau - CB and MB). Otherwise, none of· the characters knew any of the others before these events. As spectators of the film, we are made aware by shot 14 of how the film-maker has brought together the testimony of some fifty victims of the round-up.l1 The fact that they did not know each other is, then, justified empirically. However, it does pose an interesting problem of exposition. How can these different stories be brought together coherently and rapidly? The formal solution adopted by Brault has specific rhetorical properties that may be derived from a brief analysis of the opening 159 shots. 616 DAVID CLANDFIELD Level of narration Shots Shot content (a) Political events 1 TEXT - Trudeau in 1958 (b) Characters MB/CB ~12 Boudreau home, morning (c) Actors/Narrators 6-7 Jean Lapointe (CB) (b) Characters MB/CB 8-9 Boudreau home, morning (c) Actors/Narrators 10-12 Helene Loiselle (MS) (a) Political events 14 TEXT - FLQ kidnappings film project explained (b) Characters CB 15-16 Clermont at factory (b) Characters co 17 Claudette in street (c) Actors/Narrators 17-18 Louise Forestier (CD) (b) Characters CD 19-28 Claudette with bailiffs (b) Characters CB 29-39 Clennont suspended for union activities (a) Political events 39 Headline...