Cinema Canada (Apr 1976)

“I would like to reach a Canadian audience — that’s my first aim. This film is an emotional history about a fictional moment in our past. A recognizable love story.’”’ Joyce Wieland “T will tell them he was in love with a tree, a rock, and a piece of sky.’’ Eulalie, in The Far Shore photo Larisa Pavlychenko The Far Shore is a feature film by Joyce Wieland. It is about love, nature, art, Canada. It is set in 1919, in Quebec, Toronto, and Northern Ontario. The central character is Eulalie, a wouldbe pianist, who marries Ross, an engineer, and falls in love with Tom, an artist. The plot is melodramatic. The settings are beautiful. The camera. swirls, pans, stops and watches, moves again. The music, superb, is used sparingly. The pace is flowing, precise. It is a simple, straightforward film. It is immensely complex. It is Joyce Wieland’s first commercial feature, a beginning. It is preceded by her considerable output of experimental films and artwork. It is the result of skilled work by many talented people. It has serious flaws. I love it. Quebec: 1919. Sky, with clouds, a tree, a little girl gathering strawberries. Music in a minor key. A man and woman stroll in the peaceful countryside. They discuss the bridge he is planning to build. EKulalie tells Ross her brother is cheating him. “That’s a small price to pay for being welcome in your home,” he says. ‘His home,” she says, and turns away. Eulalie agrees to marry Ross, and titles appear over shots of their wedding journey: The Far Shore, produced by Joyce Wieland and Judy Steed. Barbara Halpern Martineau is a freelance writer and filmmaker who has recently completed a book on women writers and directors, Women Imagine Women. The vision of women, which may lack violence and big guns, could lead us to a new place. It would be nice to go and be allowed to see non-manipulative films in big theatres. Films about being, seeing, smelling, dreaming. I can’t walk into big theatres any more. I’m very careful about what I see, because I don’t like having fantasies imposed or rocks thrown at my head. JW There are three major moves in the film before Eulalie reaches the far shore: the chauffeured drive “home” to Ross’ Toronto mansion is the first. The second is a visit to Ross’ “property” in Northern Ontario; the third is Eulalie’s desertion of Ross, when she swims across a lake to join Tom. This third move is the only one initiated by Eulalie, conceived and executed in violent refusal of the life she is expected photo Larisa Pavlychenko b/s i Eulalie and Tom to lead — as the gracious and obedient wife of a successful businessman. Eulalie has observed the dealings of men, unscrupulous or “honest,” based on notions of property and progress. A lovely woman is property to be won and held, a lovely land is property to be developed, exploited. Ross builds bridges, roads, sewers. As his partner Cluny says, “bridges are our bread and butter.”’ Ross and Cluny also mine the land for silver, regardless of the destruction they cause. Reason Over Passion is a landscape film of Canada, embracing the land in pictures. The Far Shore is the same landscape, only peopled. It’s my evolution to people. JW Underlying the romantic love story, the vision of artists isolated and misunderstood, is the story of the land. Ross abandons his patronage of Tom’s art when a dealer tells him it won’t sell: “I’ve seen twenty-seven of his paintings and there’s not a single cow in any of them.” Ross suggests that Tom, who knows the northern land intimately, guide a team of surveyors. Tom refuses, describing the devastation caused by mines, and this provokes a fight between Tom and Cluny, seconded by Ross, which precipitates the melodrama of the story. The formula is clearcut and complex: violence / materialism / progress / philistinism is opposed to love / art / nature / peace. Ross’ “love” for Eulalie, like his attitude to his work, is shortsighted. When Eulalie suggests that she might become a concert pianist he reacts as to a joke. He is blind to her love April 1976/21