A film about "subversion", a wonderful deconstruction

Braxton 2022-10-09 22:09:45

A film about "subversion", a wonderful deconstruction.

A far-left father meets a far-right capitalist son, and at the end of his life, he embarks on a subversive journey to the meaning of life, religion, ideology, and morality. All oppositions and conflicts, all traditions and fixed meanings are dissolved in this subversion, just like the father and son who finally reconciled.

Who is the barbarian? Is it "us", is it "them", or is it the whole of humanity? In the film, the director deconstructs and thinks about the conflicts of all civilizations.

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The Barbarian Invasions quotes

  • Rémy: [in French] Contrary to belief, the 20th century wasn't that bloody. It's agreed that wars caused 100 million deaths. Add 10 million for the Russian gulags. The Chinese camps, we'll never know, but say 20 million. So 130, 145 million dead. Not all that impressive. In the 16th century, the Spanish and Portuguese managed, without gas chambers or bombs, to slaughter 150 million Indians in Latin America. With axes! That's a lot of work, sister. Even if they had church support, it was an achievement. So much so tha the Dutch, English, French, and later Americans followed their lead and butchered another 50 million. 200 million dead in all! The greatest massacre in history took place right here. And not the tiniest holocaust museum. The history of mankind is a history of horrors.

  • Rémy: We've been everything: separatists, supporters of independantists, sovereignists, sovereignity-associanists...

    Pierre: At first, we were existentialists.

    Dominique: We read Sartre and Camus.

    Claude: Then Fanon, we became anti-colonialists.

    Rémy: We read Marcuse and became Marxists.

    Pierre: Marxist-Leninists.

    Alessandro: Trotskyists.

    Diane: Maoists.

    Rémy: After Solzhenitsyn we changed, we became structuralists.

    Pierre: Situationists.

    Dominique: Feminists.

    Claude: Deconstructionists.

    Pierre: Is there an -ism we haven't worshipped?

    Claude: Cretinism.