Polytechnique (2009)
Relive a poignant true event, gripping for drama enthusiasts; sensitive content may unsettle some viewers. Fans of "Spotlight" will appreciate.
Genres: Crime, Drama, Thriller
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Polytechnique(2009)
Overview
This dramatization of a real 1989 shooting at a Montreal engineering school follows students and staff as an ordinary day turns into a terrifying crisis. Told in a stark, restrained style, it focuses on the immediate chaos and the emotional aftermath for those caught in the violence.
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Review Summary
Pros: tense, haunting experience; striking black-and-white look; thought-provoking themes | Cons: minimal character depth; limited insight into attacker; can feel emotionally distant
Will You Like This?
You may like this if you want a stark, realistic drama about a school shooting that’s tense and discussion-provoking; Not for you if you avoid disturbing violence, bleak stories, or prefer clearer explanations like in Elephant.
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Full Cast & CrewFeatured Comments/Tips
It''s crazy to think that something like this could happen. Denis Villeneuve really creates tension and horror throughout the whole shooting. Some great camera work and cool shots. You can see right away the Villeneuve is a talented director.
Watching this in 2025, the age of the incel, the manosphere, when men like this guy have a large following in social media, makes this film extra disturbing.
A very impacting movie based on real events. The image is all in black and white, giving a darker tone to the story, the development is done in different perspectives of the same situation, there are also some interludes focusing on specific stories, which ends up breaking the traumatizing moment of the events a while. The performances are great and manage to give everything a more realistic and sad tone.
A movie that marked me as a teen, they used to show it to the students at my school as awareness. Kinda weird when I think about it now, it's an intense and provocative piece. Just the speach at the beginning explaining why he's doing all this is troubling enough. ***Polytechnique*** is the highest form of horror, a real life horror. It shows everything, the camera never looks away. Beautifully shot. Not sure if the black and white was necessary but it looks good so why not. The flashback (or flashforward?) scenes with Jean-François were completely unnecessary and they kinda ruined the momentum the movie had going. Why even focus on him that much? It does redeem itself in the final few moments though. Quite the haunting experience but it doesn't hold up as well as I thought it would.
Incredibly gripping stuff until it squanders its potential in the back half. There's a flashforward sequence in this portion that I really wanted to be revealed as a flashback instead, thus opening up themes of how two men in the same lonely spot can think differently about the world but no it turned out to be more basic and boring than that, as did the whole end of the script tbh...it also ends on this hollywood-esque female empowerment message that not only reeks of half-baked knowledge but also doesn't fit with the perverse and brutal setup that came before it.
There's no doubt that Villeneuve is a master craftsman and storyteller, and there was never any doubt that Polytechnique was going to be a good film, but more in the film school kind of way rather than what the man is famous for now. What I got, though, was this gut-wrenching and horrible story told in a brutally honest way, and I wasn't prepared for it. I guess Villeneuve was a master from the start, because, although horrible, this is very, very good.
Featured User Reviews
So many years into the great experiment of feminism and equal rights…this film takes a mass shooter event and, instead of making a docudrama, makes an art film. The experience of viewing it was quite strange at first, but grew on me. Importantly, it raised tons of questions about men and women and their roles in society, and the impacts we already see from equal rights. "If I have a boy, I'll teach him to love." Love certainly needs to be taught and demonstrated to all children. Is the absence of mothers from their lives hampering that? The training of men to be passive had an impact in this tragedy, but that seemed to no longer be the case 12 years later in the skies over Pennsylvania; it just proves that each traumatic situation is its own, and prediction of behavior is impossible. "If I have a girl, I'll tell her the world is hers." Does she hope for a daughter, as she believes her son would have no future. Has the tragedy of mental illness and violence caused her to lose her belief that a boy could ever become a good man? Or perhaps this statement indicates that she foresees a day when woman hold most of the jobs, and men must homemake or collect unemployment? These are all questions which make this film an excellent choice for a film club or classroom where discussion could follow.
