What Happens When Your Heroes Fall?

It’s 2015. Fourteen-year-old me, based on a Tumblr community recommendation, signs into Kanopy and watches J’ai tué ma Mère. At this point, I’m interested in filmmaking, but in a vague, non-concrete way that manifests in following burgeoning directors on YouTube and getting too up-in-arms about the poor (in my opinion) color grading of Marvel movies. It’s me joining my high school’s Media Arts Program, and making a slightly blind decision to watch the first of indie-darling French Canadian director Xavier Dolan’s films — the first being (for both him and me), J’ai tué ma Mère. Eight years later, it doesn’t feel overdramatic to say that the course of my life changed after seeing this film. 

J’ai tué ma Mère (translating to ‘I Killed My Mother’) follows teenager Hubert and his tumultuous relationship with his mother, interspersed with moments of reflection and growth about Hubert’s sexuality, education, and more. Dolan wrote the semi-autobiographical film when he was sixteen, directed it when he was nineteen, and received an eight-minute standing ovation for it when it screened at Cannes. At fourteen I didn’t necessarily aspire to create something at this level within the next five years, but it did give me a standard for what I enjoy in film, and it did expose me to filmmaking that went outside traditional conventions. Dolan’s first film led me to the rest of his; I’ve endlessly recommended them, repeatedly named him and his work when asked for favorites in film classes, and written an essay about his collaboration with his Director of Photography André Turpin for a cinematography class I took in my junior year of college. My field of vision in independent cinema has expanded since 2015, but I will always cite Xavier Dolan as my favorite director, and as one of my earliest influences. His work showed me what one could achieve through filmmaking; he made me want to make art that impacted others in the same way that his work had first impacted me. 

So you can only imagine the genuine devastation I felt when in July, the director announced he was quitting filmmaking. Dolan’s films have always been cult hits but as the landscape of the film industry has changed in the past few years, fewer people have been able to watch his work. In the interview where he broke the news, Dolan cited feelings of hopelessness about the purpose of art, saying that the world is falling apart and art is useless in the face of this. And even moving past my own philosophical disagreement with this statement, it’s heartbreaking to see a filmmaker whose art has so clearly impacted people, say that it doesn’t make a difference. It’s no secret that it’s harder than ever to make a film. People aren’t going to theaters, studios are making filmmaking nearly impossible to make a living off of, and the large films being made often feel soulless and unmistakably revenue-driven. Given the generally hopeless landscape of it all, it makes sense that truly independent filmmakers like Dolan are choosing to step back, despite him being a Cannes favorite for years (with films like Mommy receiving a rare mid-film applause) and despite him forming meaningful and genuine working relationships with filmmakers and actors alike (Anne Dorval, Jessica Chastain, and the aforementioned Turpin to name a few). How did we get here, to a stage of this industry that is so inhospitable to artists that we have one of the beacons of a generation of filmmakers saying he has no desire to make any more films, simply because of the world he’s faced with after he’s done making them? 

After the first interview broke, Dolan went on to clarify his words. He said he’s “at peace with [his] decision,” that he “want[s] to be free” of the confines of other people’s opinions, of the tedious and capitalistic aspects of filmmaking, of press tours and distribution. He says, more precisely, and with a sentiment I do agree with: 

Storytelling deserves the best of us and everyone who commits to it. Every detail should be perfect. Every line, reiterated, rewritten, or scrapped. (…) Every actor is a creator, every costume and lense are a choice, every window dressing is a conversation. (…) And I won’t have it any other way. 

Dolan says he doesn’t regret his times on set. He says he and his producer renounced their salaries, that they worked with actors willing to be paid less for the sake of the craft, that he, for the past fifteen years, has felt love and fulfillment on his productions. And I believe him. I also believe him when he says that he was misquoted saying art is meaningless and a waste of time, but rather, it now has lost its meaning to him. To be clear, I don’t blame Dolan, not in the slightest. I take Dolan’s post to mean that it isn’t the art itself that’s changed, it’s the world. Audiences are different. Distribution and rights are different. The process itself is different. For many of us, art is still a solace, and a remedy to the world’s troubles. To our own troubles, too.

And if now, directing films isn’t that for Dolan anymore, none of us can blame him for wanting to stop. But even despite my understanding of his decision, it doesn’t make its announcement any less shocking. The best of reasoning (and this is the best of reasoning) can’t make the pill that the filmmaker who made you want to make films suddenly quit a month after you graduated from film school, any easier to swallow. 

If we want to evolve, learn, and be enriched by the people around us, we need to support unique and unapologetic filmmakers like Dolan, not make their lives so miserable that quitting the artform they’ve practiced half their lives becomes the only viable path to inner peace. It was a sad day for film and a sad day for me, but all there is to do is go back to that old faithful camping slogan: leave it better than you found it. Work to make this industry better, so we don’t lose more voices like Dolan’s. Make some good art. I dunno - just, be a kind person. We need to now, more than ever.