Fils in the gap
Set against the backdrop of the Quiet Revolution, Canada’s Oscar nominee reveals a father and his sons trying to bridge the generation chasm
At the heart of the Quebec box- office smash C.R. A.Z. Y., which makes its first foray into English Canada tomorrow after earning close to $6-million in la belle province, is the relationship between Gervais Beaulieu, a traditional father raising five trouble-making boys during the relentless social change of the 1960s and 1970s, and his second-youngest son, Zachary. The close and special bond between the two — played by veteran actor Michel Côté and relative newcomer Marc-André Grondin — is broken by Zach’s discovery of his homosexuality and Gervais’s subsequent denial of it.
While the generation gap between père et fils
takes almost 30 years to bridge completely in the film, the distance between 21-year-old Grondin and 55-year-old Côté is much smaller — both literally and figuratively. Squeezed in next to each other on a cramped hotel-room couch during the Toronto International Film Festival, the two actors joke and jostle like rambunctious brothers, filling in words for each other as they answer questions.
“The gap between my parents and my grandparents is way bigger than the gap between my parents’ generation and mine,” agrees Grondin, a one-time child actor who marks his return to the big screen as a shaggy-haired young adult with C.R. A. Z. Y. “Because they made the big steps, the changes, the revolution.”
“ The Quiet Revolution,” says Côté, a well-known face in Quebec television and movies since the mid- 1970s. “I was there. It was terrible. It was amazing.”
C. R. A. Z. Y., which opens in Toronto this week and across the country over the fall, is set during that tumultuous time in Quebec when churches suddenly emptied and traditional values went out the window. Born in 1950, Côté remembers attending Mass every week with his parents until things began to change when he was 13. “I don’t know where it came from, but one Sunday, with my friends, we just decided not to go,” recalls Côté. “My parents were shocked.”
And that was just the leading edge of the upheaval. The generation gap had grown into a chasm by the time Côté’s younger brothers reached their teens. While Côté still refers to his parents with a respectful, deferential “vous,” his younger siblings began addressing them with the colloquial “tu” in the late ’60s. “ This is the only little thing I kept from before the Quiet Revolution,” says Côté, not to be confused with the scandal-ridden Mulroney-era Cabinet minster of the same name.
In
C. R. A. Z. Y., selected as Canada’s nominee for the foreign-language film Oscar, the distance between Gervais and Zach is shown through the music they listen to: Charles Aznavour versus Pink Floyd, Patsy Cline versus David Bowie. The musical divide isn’t nearly as strong between today’s kids and their parents. Grondin had no trouble connecting with the rock stars that ’60s child Zach worships instead of God in C. R. A. Z. Y., which was sold to almost 40 countries at the Toronto festival. Grondin’s father worked at a radio station and so he grew up listening to classic rock like Led Zeppelin. In fact, it was through C. R. A. Z. Y.’ s extensive soundtrack — an impressive assemblage of hits by the Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Pink Floyd — that Grondin really connected with the movie. Reading the script, he was sold when he got to the point where Zach appears at age 15 for the first time while listening to Shine On You Crazy Diamond.
“ You don’t see this in French Canadian movies at all, ever,” says Grondin, who plays drums in two rock bands in his spare time. “It was more fun than anything to get on a ’ 70s set with beautiful cars and nice clothes and good music.”
While Zachary puts on rainbow makeup in his bedroom and sings along to Space Oddity, his father, Gervais, embarrasses his offspring by singing Aznavour’s Hier encore at every family gathering.
The Times’s fall is our gain as Rakoff is inspired to write a perfectly scathing essay wondering, among other things, “Just how f--- ing good can olive oil get?”
He nails the topic in this one skewering sentence. “Surely when we’ve reached the point where we’re fetishizing sodium chloride and water, and subjecting both to the kind of scrutiny we used to reserve for choosing an oncologist, it’s time to admit that the relentless questing for that next undetectable gradation of perfection has stopped being about the thing itself and crossed over into a realm of narcissism so overwhelming as to make the act of masturbation look selfless.”
There is much to be incredulous about in the 21st century, and one could say Rakoff ’ s latest book of essays, Don’t Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, the Torments of Low Thread Count, the Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and other First World Problems is a record of incredulity.
There is his disbelief at the giddy fans attending a showing of Puppetry of the Penis (“I do find it mystifying. Maybe it’s because I’ve got one at home”), the dawning of Hooters Air (Rakoff flies it to Myrtle Beach), and Paris Hilton, who he theorizes could be a covert agent from some “secret Taliban madrassa on a mission to portray the ultimate capitalist-whore puppet of a doomed society.” That wouldn’t surprise him at all.
Rakoff said the title of his book and the illustration (his own) say a lot about the aim of his writing. “Creature comfort is nice, but ultimately that’s all it is. It’s not a moral value.”
One can imagine how, if left on his own, Rakoff might indulge his self- confessed shut-in tendencies. But what is a little shocking is that he might spend his time doing crafts. The cupboards under his bookshelves are packed with pipe cleaners, plastic fish, horses and clown heads, acrylic paint, rhinestones, pearl buttons and so much more. He also bakes chocolate ginger shortbread cookies (but that’s the only kind) and is desperate to learn how to knit.
Luckily, his writing gets him out of his New York apartment, because Rakoff adores his adopted city. Although born in Toronto, he has lived in Manhattan for nearly 25 years and recently became an American citizen.
He was worried how Canadians might take this move and explains that George W. Bush made him do it. First, he wanted to be able to vote him out of office (it didn’t work) and he was living in fear of being deported. Now, Rakoff considers himself a Canadian with an American passport.
While Rakoff said he bears no capacity for fun, he does feel great joy about his adopted hometown.
“ Three times every day I’m like, I love New York. It could be some human interaction or some vista or some astonishing bit of cosmopolitan privilege I feel is reaped upon me.”
Or maybe it’s the chutzpah of the following interaction from Sept. 12, 2001. The author was delayed while waiting outside the New York Times building for a paper and asked to borrow a woman’s cellphone. She thought about it a minute and said, “Hmm. No. I don’t want to use up my minutes.”
“It was the day after the worst tragedy the city had ever seen and we were all terrified, and I wanted to tell my friends I would be delayed. It’s not like she didn’t want me to use up her battery, it was literally the minutes, and I was offering to pay her a dollar,” Rakoff recalls.
Ultimately, he writes, he found this display of shocking rudeness bracingly restorative.
“We were still intact, after all.” ❚
Don’t Get Too Comfortable
is published by Doubleday ($ 29.95).