Before watching this movie, I had a very tired two weeks, staying up until three o'clock every day for homework, presentations, papers, etc. The geodata analysis of this film is the last thing I do in this busy cycle, which can be traded for 2 or 3 days of free time after the end. I never imagined that the days after going abroad would be like this. Countless homework reports swept in. The boss and the little boss told me more than once that you should go out for a walk. If you don’t go out for a walk, it will be winter. After that, I couldn’t go out in Montreal. I told them that I didn’t have free time, and they looked at me with helplessness and regret every time. And starting next week, winter is really coming, and I haven't even been to the Basilique Notre-Dame de Montreal.
Montreal was once dubbed by Mark Twain as a place where a stone can hit the glass of a church, and all kinds of churches are scattered all over its streets. The first time I heard about this place in Montreal was also from the photos of Notre Dame Cathedral posted by the smashing young masters at that time. The colorful glass dome fascinated my eyes, and I was so fascinated that I actually came here. It is not difficult to understand why this film was born in Montreal, where the religious atmosphere is so strong. Isn't that what faith is meant to be opposed to?
As an atheist with strong roots, I really can't understand the mystery of religion, let alone the intricate relationship between various sects. The first half of this movie is a lot for people like me. It feels like I almost fell asleep several times during the 7 or 8 hours of watching the movie. Here is what we do. We have a list of 50 Quebec films. What we have to do is analyze every geographic scene that has appeared in the film, and in general, complete a film. Data collection took more than 10 hours.
This film was shot in the 80s, so you can see the clothes of the 80s and hear the melody of the 80s, all of which do not exist today, Montreal is a city that is at the forefront of fashion, and the whole city is the same. The cinematic landscape, which is why our project can only be carried out in these North American and European places, the landscape of the filming location has not changed for decades.
Most of the film's location is at Saint Joseph's Oratory, known locally as the Oratory, which is south of Mount Royal and another place that attracts millions of visitors each year. The interior view of the church is the Church of St. Michael and St. Anthony in the north of Mount Royal, another very distinctive Roman Catholic church. The place where the protagonists rehearsed the script was a French university in Montreal, called École Polytechnique de Montréal. It is located on the west side of Mount Royal. There have been many statues of Jesus. According to Wikipedia, it is in a school called Marianopolis College. It's a pity that no one in our project team has been there, so we can't confirm it. The place where the independent theatrical performances appear in the film, we have not found the specific location, the biggest guess is the Botanical Garden (Montreal Botanical Garden) and the Royal Mountain Park (Parc du Mont-Royal). The subway station that appears twice in the film is Place-Saint-Henri, where the protagonist performs his last shocking Jesus performance before his death. Twenty years later, the subway is still blue and white, just as old and crowded.
Returning to the film itself, this is undoubtedly a film worth watching. It is about commercialization and artistic thinking, about the understanding of religious modernization, and about the impact of modern art on tradition. 20 years later, Montreal is still full of art, all kinds of galleries and street performers. It attracts countless artists, but it is still not an artist's paradise. The government is trying to reduce investment in art. The classmates are a group of artists in various fields. Every time they talk about the contradiction between commercialization and art, the artists are still a group of marginalized people. A colleague in the project team is an independent film director and writer. When analyzing this film today, she said that she plans to move to a city 40 minutes drive from Toronto next year, where there are many English schools with modern art schools. This subject, she can teach there, and here in Montreal, she has to be proficient in French, and her French is not good enough to teach, "I'm an artist, but I also have to survive, I'm 45 years old , life is like this, you are powerless."
The last part of the film still gave the viewers a good prospect. Although the "Jesus" in Montreal finally died, he was still alive.
Where is he, he is still here.
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