Review: Bruce McDonald’s Pontypool

By A.L. Bishop Saturday April 4, 2009

Bruce McDonald, Tony Burgess, I really wish Pontypool changed everything.

They had me at TYPO. Pontypool is a fantastic little movie–low budget, big ideas, great cast, pitch-perfect atmosphere, spectacular script. OK, so maybe all the reviews you’ve read that say things fall apart a bit when the key to what’s happening gets explained, and maybe they have a point. (I’m not going to get any deeper into that, because this would become a spoiler-rama if I did.) But in my book, any film that has enough room for jokes about zombies, French separatists, and elevator music gets a bye on some of the finer points of verisimilitude. In many ways, the film’s flaws are as interesting as its successes.

: Image via Wikipedia

Pontypool is a movie about fear or, more specifically, the terror of becoming what we already are. What if the spread of the English language made people lose their ability to control their own actions, and they were forced to consume mindlessly to satiate this loss of their autonomy? Oh, wait. Uh… The infected residents of the small Ontario town of Pontypool might not be zombies, but they’re definitely cannibals. The film uses cannibalism in the same way as Antonia Bird did in (the severely under-appreciated) Ravenous. As a metaphor, it becomes a spotlight on our reality and, incidentally, a device for humour. The film has much to say about media, communication, and our relationships with one another–particularly our fear of the other, which takes on significant dimensions among the few principle characters. Perhaps most importantly, the film raises the kinds of questions about resistance that keep you turning things over in your mind for days. And that’s no mean feat.

So here’s my question: why were there only 60 odd people in the screening I went to? This is a smart Canadian film, as cheeky as it is spooky, directed by one of our cultural icons. Pontypool teems with audacity in its humour, its characters, and its set-pieces, not to mention the idea at the crux of the film. Shut up or die, indeed. Perhaps it’s that most Canadian cinema is independent cinema, and although indie film has gained a lot of traction in the last fifteen years, the average Jacque Plumber still isn’t in the mood. But that doesn’t seem like a good enough answer, when it comes to a film as intensely interesting as this one. Pontypool didn’t have to take place in a small Ontario town. I suspect that if it had been set in some Utah backwater, it might be the breakaway hit of the year. (Although, in that case, it would have a different title. And the bilingualism jokes would need a new spin.) What is that about, Canada? For real.