Is the cinema screen the mirror of the soul of the filmmakers, or of the spectators? No doubt a bit of both, and that’s why the films reveal as much about the values, torments and passions of artisans as about those of the society from which they emerge. As part of the summer series In Therapy: Quebec Cinema, The duty gives the opportunity to eight psychologists to lend themselves to the game of the therapeutic session, with a local film of their choice for the patient. This week, the only documentary of the selection, the moving The children of Refus global (1998), by Manon Barbeau.
In 1998, celebrations around the 50th anniversary of the famous manifesto Global denial, published in 1948 and signed by the great figures of the Automatiste movement, including Paul-Émile Borduas who was its standard-bearer, did not take place without controversy. After all, the signatories, including Jean Paul Riopelle, Françoise Sullivan, Marcelle Ferron, Maurice Perron and Marcel Barbeau, wanted to shake off the apathy and conformism of the Quebec of their time. By pleading for “an end to the massive assassination of the present and the future with a redoubled blow of the past”, their approach to rupture and protest could not be without consequences for their career, their life as a couple and their family.
Daughter of Marcel Barbeau and Suzanne Meloche — she refused to sign the manifesto — Manon Barbeau decides, 50 years later, to come back to the consequences of this manifesto, including the separation of her parents, and what happened the other sons and daughters of these creators. In The children of Refus global, not only does she engage in a personal quest, reconnecting with her brother, François, suffering from schizophrenia, as well as with her father, but she also finds other signatories, and their offspring, to shed light on the aspects most painful of their choices. And their repercussions on the next generation.
How far does the freedom of the artist go? At what price does it exert itself on others, and particularly on the family clan? These questions did not please everyone when this documentary was released, but they have remained relevant two decades later. To try to answer it, make way for Nicolas Lévesque, psychologist, psychoanalyst and author of several essays, including ptoma. A shrink in freefall (Varia, 2021) and I know too well not to exist (Varia, 2016).
How did you feel when you first saw the film?
I must have been 24-25, and I saw him the same week as You shouted: LET ME GO (1996), by Anne Claire Poirier. At that time, I was beginning my practice as a clinical psychologist, my work as an essayist, while undertaking a doctorate on bereavement, not to mention my intention to start a family. These two documentaries were fundamental for me, because they allowed me to understand the psychologist, the writer and the father that I wanted to become. Without counting that the two scenario writers affirm with courage that it is very beautiful, the speeches and the great ideals, but it is also necessary to go towards reality, and towards people. I also had a very personal interest in seeing The children of Refus global : my mother lost hers when she was three years old, I saw her undertake a quest similar to that of Manon Barbeau, while my father [Claude Lévesque (1927-2012), philosophe et professeur à l’Université de Montréal] spawned with the automatists.
The film caused a stir when it was released, because it moved many spectators, but some saw it as a questioning of the manifesto, or even as a biased point of view, centered on the suffering of the filmmaker.
It seems to me like a subversive work, even today, because Manon Barbeau desacralizes the figure of the great artist by defending a feminist position: should we stick to the idea of the narcissistic man achieving great success and becoming the father other children who are in fact his pupils? She also dares to ask herself if we can accept everything, tolerate everything, in the name of art. As far as I’m concerned, the answer is no! Look at religion, and see all the terrible things that have been done in its name.
Basically, you approach it as a… manifesto?
I received it that way, intended for my generation. Global denial said: “Make way for magic, make way for love”, while Manon Barbeau says rather: “Make way for nature, make way for children” – it is no coincidence that the film is dedicated to her daughter, Anaïs , and his son, Manuel. It’s even quite rebellious, because she affirms loud and clear that she doesn’t see things their way; it is not just a charge, but a proposal. The signatories affirmed that it was necessary to get out of the “fear of all the forms likely to trigger a transforming love”. Why not then the love of a child that transforms life? Signatories thought it was impossible, but in 2022 we are able to believe it.
In the same way that the signatories said they were suffocating in Quebec society in the 1940s, isn’t his film also a way of expressing his own suffocation in the face of his past?
When Manon Barbeau touches her mother’s name on one of her paintings and she breaks down in tears, it’s a scene that condenses a powerful emotion, a great moment in Quebec cinema. Another highlight of the film is when she finds herself in the studio of her father, Marcel Barbeau: he is unable to speak to her without painting… When she talks about her abandonment and her brother’s schizophrenia, he never does not want to engage in any introspection, explain what he may have experienced in his own childhood, etc. The Automatists were very close to psychoanalysis, but in a more theoretical way. The filmmaker arrives at her father’s house saying: who is going to treat my brother? Who will heal my childhood wounds? Basically, it’s a film that demonstrates the importance of psychology.
What place do you give in the cinema in your practice, and could this film be useful?
I am the student of my patients. They are the ones who suggest books or films to me. When I have the chance to read or see them — many are suggested to me! —, it can become an object to work on, because all these works talk about them, with other words and other images. It’s the same thing for the dreams of my patients, films in which they invent, and find, extremely eloquent images.
Have you accompanied people who might look like those we see in Manon Barbeau’s film?
Some schizophrenic patients comparable to his brother François and others similar to his father. Often they lived in extreme solitude, sometimes being the only person they talked to, much like Paul Borduas [fils de Paul-Émile Borduas], went abroad alone on a boat. I also accompany patients who have experienced major ruptures, such as that caused by Suzanne Meloche: the legacy is very heavy to bear. Because it must be understood that no human value, taken in isolation and pushed to the limit, is a good thing. Freedom only makes sense if it is echoed with responsibility. This is why certain movements demanding freedom represent above all the void of our time: freedom at any cost is neoliberalism, and where does the free market lead? To destruction.