Weird Sex and Snowshoes and Other Canadian Film Phenomena

Susan Patrick is a librarian at Ryerson University in Toronto.

Monk, a journalist and movie reviewer with the Vancouver Sun, has
produced a personal, subjective, and quite fascinating study of Canadian
films. It covers their beginnings (Back to God’s Country, 1919—here
the snowshoes), through the development of groundbreaking documentaries
at the National Film Board, to the more quirky, ambiguous, and
individualistic filmmakers of today (here the weird sex).

Margaret Atwood’s classic treatise on Canadian literature, Survival
(which defines the Canadian literary tradition in terms of a variety of
basic victim positions), is used as a jumping-off point for Monk’s
lively discussion of Canadian film. The book is organized into thematic
chapters that include director profiles. Among the recurrent themes are
importance of landscape, missing parent, outsider stance, potent women,
passive men, film-on-film images, identity issues, twin imagery, road to
nowhere, and survivor guilt. An alphabetical list, with brief
discussion, of Monk’s selection of 100 notable Canadian films is also
included.

Monk is an unabashed cultural nationalist, and the stated purpose of
this book is to promote an appreciation of Canadian film. Although it
could form the basis for a university-level Canadian film course, the
book is written in an informal and easily understood style (happily free
of arcane postmodernist jargon). Highly recommended for all Canadian
cultural collections.