Streaming on SBS On Demand (with lots of advertisements) - Rod Bishop finds enthralling viewing in THE NIGHT LOGAN WOKE UP (Xavier Dolan, Canada, 2022)

Xavier Dolan as Elliot, The Night Logan Woke Up

Last month, there were reports from Europe suggesting Xavier Dolan was retiring as a filmmaker. 

Dolan, the wunderkind of Cannes at 19 years of age and a multihyphenate auteur with eight feature films and one television miniseries all completed by his 34^th birthday, first signaled his retirement in the Journal de Montreal on 20 November 2022: “I don’t really want to do this job anymore. I’m tired”. He talked of building a house in the country, spending time with friends and making commercials.

Early in June this year Dolan told Le Pais in Spain:

“I don’t feel like committing two years to a project that barely anyone sees. I put too much passion into it to have these disappointments. It makes me wonder if my filmmaking is bad and I know it’s not”.

In July, he bickered with Spain’s El Mundo and their interview with him titled “Art is useless and dedicating oneself to cinema is a waste of time”. Dolan apparently claimed he was misrepresented. The website World of Reel reported this disagreement between Dolan and El Mundo and it triggered a backlash from their readers:

“Stop giving this nobody crybaby a platform.”

“Xavier Dolan thinks anyone gives a shit he’s retiring, who does he think he is?”

“He is a clown.”

“God, he’s insufferable both with his films, and his whole demeanor outside of them…”

“…a classic narcissist…”

“…full of himself…”

“…precious little bitch…”

“Is there a more stereotypical insufferable queer in existence than him?”

All reminiscent of the vitriol from some in the Cannes Press Room in 2016 when Dolan’s It’s Only The End of the World won the Grand Prix.

For their part, on 8 July, El Mundo then released audio of 4 minutes of their reporter’s interview with Dolan. He talks eloquently about climate change; widespread political and social intolerance; and meaningless filmmaking. An excerpt:

“What am I exactly? Am I an employee? A servant? Am I someone who dances in front of the King? To distract them from what’s happening outside their window?”

The full text of the 4 minutes is available if you click here and is transcribed below. 

Some believe Dolan will not retire and call his current mood “just part of the show”. They think this depressed Millennial auteur will get over the poor reception of his last two films and he will soon be in pre-production once again. 

An adaptation of a play, the premise of his 2016 drama It’s Only The End of the World, is a 34-year-old gay playwright who returns home to his family after an absence of 12 years to tell them he is dying, presumably of AIDS. But the emotional dysfunctionality of the family members, their neuroses and their angry shouting is so consuming and insistent, the playwright eventually leaves not having found the right moment to tell them of his prognosis.

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Chantal (Magalie Lépine Blondeau), Denis (Éric Bruneau),
Maddy (Anne Dorval) and Elliot (Xavier Dolan). 

This five-part television series, The Night Logan Woke Up - also from a play - has many similarities to his Grand Prix winner at Cannes. Set in 1991 and 2019, Elliot (Xavier Dolan) is let out of rehab to join his siblings Denis (Éric Bruneau) and Julian (Patrick Hivon) and Julian’s wife Chantal (Magalie Lépine-Blondeau). They are in vigil at the bedside of their dying mother Madeleine (Anne Dorval). 

When her body is transferred to a mortuary, a sister Mireille (Julie LeBreton) re-appears after an absence of 25 years, intent on embalming their mother. The series then explores the traumatic past and present of the children, their chronic dysfunctionality, their shouting exchanges and the mysterious role of childhood friend Logan Goodyear in their frequently explosive family squabbles.

Mireille (Julie Le Breton)

There’s one riotous family dinner. Although shorter than the one in the second series of The Bear, it does share the same sensibilities. People locked together around a table (unable to escape because this is “Family” and family is to be valued above all else), but in the end resorting to insults, ridicule, sarcasm, contempt and derision.

Dolan’s direction is as tight and occasionally flamboyant as ever, but here, across nearly five hours he can almost leisurely unpeel even more layers to his characters than available in the feature film format.

If you’re not an admirer of his work, The Night Logan Woke Up is most unlikely to change your opinion. But for those transfixed by this director’s grip and his penetrating insights into all the damage inflicted by families, and in particular by parents who fix their children at a certain age and treat them that way no matter who they have grown up to be, then this is enthralling viewing.

If nothing else you can look at the wallpaper. Québécois must have the world’s worst taste in wallpaper. 

 

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Transcript of four minutes of Dolan’s interview with El Mundo on 3 July 2023. He spoke in English.

“When I look at the world, suddenly making films is unimportant. It’s very, very small. I guess a little bit meaningless. Like I told you before, it’s making me feel like it’s irrelevant. It is a very privileged thing to be working right now in this industry and not realise that the world is burning while we’re still making stories about the world burning. But not really doing anything about it.

I think our problem is inaction. We’re an individualistic society and we just really don’t care. In a world that’s supposed to have literacy and education, but people are mis-educated and misinformed and you have all these anti-vaccines, anti-immigration, anti-LGBTQ+, people who inflate their intolerance in the same bigger, more vast, larger intolerance of anything different. And so, it’s funny to see all these people converge towards the same mass of anti-everything. 

So, it’s just us against them and I find that to be worrying because what that means to me is insurrection and civil wars…that’s why amazing films seem so disconnected. 

What am I exactly? Am I an employee? A servant? Am I someone who dances in front of the King? To distract them from what’s happening outside their window. I’m sure people need stories more than ever to find [inaudible] from reality. But making stories costs money. It takes time. And I don’t have that money and that time anymore. You know I’m re-injecting my [salaries?] in these films forever. 

And some people keep telling me: ‘You need to make something small. Something that doesn’t cost anything, so that people will understand you’re still able to make something for nothing.’ Why would I make something for nothing? Why wouldn’t we make something with great sets where people are actually paid to do their work. Why wouldn’t I write a story with wind and rain and snow so that it’s visually attractive? Why wouldn’t I dress people with textured costumes and looks? Why wouldn’t I write something with detail and detail means money and needs time and research? Why would I write something for nothing to prove what? That I can still make something for nothing? That I’m cheap labour? 

I don’t think we have time. If you think we have time, you are misreading the situation we are in right now in the world. You think we’re in a good place right now? You think we have time? I don’t think we have time…I wish I had time. I feel very young, but I don’t think I have time.”