The Press at the 73rd Berlinale | A Canadian Story

(Berlin) Before the iPhone, there was the BlackBerry. The first smart phone, which at the height of its popularity in the early 2000s occupied 45% of the market, had one particularity: it was Canadian.

This is the story of the rise of a small company created by geek in Waterloo, Ontario, Research In Motion (RIM), and its equally brutal fall as Canadian filmmaker and comedian Matt Johnson recounts in BlackBerrypresented Friday in the official competition of the 73^e Berlinale.

This docufiction around the two men, Mike Lazaridis, the computer genius, and Jim Balsillie, the marketing shark, behind the success and the debacle of RIM is a free adaptation of the book of two journalists from the Globe and MailJacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff, Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry.

The film begins with an interview with the great communication theorist, Canadian Marshall McLuhan, who in the 1960s presided over the electronic commerce and telecommuting revolution. And images of Montreal actor William Shatner, aka James T. Kirk in the series star trek, source of inspiration for more than one computer scientist. In short, it’s a film that displays its colors (red and white) from the outset.

“Too often, in English Canada, we are content to make ersatz American films that we try to emulate. It’s pathetic, ”said Matt Johnson at a press conference on Friday, proudly wearing a Toronto Blue Jays t-shirt and a matching blue headband in his hair.

Which is ironic in that gossips might say that BlackBerry is a Social network of the poor. A film that seems to have American ambitions, made with modest Canadian means. Jay Baruchel, who plays Mike Lazaridis, wears a ridiculous wig and it is clear that Glenn Howerton (Jim Balsillie) is not bald in life.

However, this traditional way of filming is not without charm. Whether BlackBerry does not avoid caricature, it does not bore thanks to effective dialogues, unexpected reversals and a rather captivating narrative. “Have you ever heard the expression: perfection is the enemy of good? Balsillie asks Lazaridis. “Bien is the enemy of humanity,” replies Lazaridis, who, according to the film, designed the BlackBerry prototype overnight, using parts from calculators and children’s toys.

To give depth to his characters, Matt Johnson, who co-wrote the film with Matt Miller, met with former RIM employees, including a Quebecer who kept his diary from the time. Matt Johnson was also inspired by it to interpret his character of Doug Fregin, best friend of Mike Lazaridis and one of the founders of Research In Motion. A sympathetic geek cinephile who wore a John McEnroe headband, looked like the main character of the film Napoleon Dynamite and clowned around the office.

Fregin, who fell out with Lazaridis, sold his shares in RIM when his stock market rating was at the peak of its value. He would be, according to Matt Johnson, one of the richest men in the world. In 2007, Steve Jobs announced the arrival of the iPhone, which eventually spelled the death knell for BlackBerry.

Two years later, the Ontario and United States securities commissions levied hefty fines on Mike Lazaridis and especially Jim Balsillie, who quit the company’s presidency after an options backdating case purchase of shares.

Balsillie, who hasn’t seen Matt Johnson’s film, will probably not be thrilled by the portrait he paints of himself. The businessman is portrayed as a shamelessly ambitious ready to do anything, even to break the rules and break his word, to achieve his ends. A hot-tempered alpha male, more interested in buying an NHL team than in the future of RIM, which he nevertheless transformed from a spit-fire landmark of retarded teenagers to a multi-billion dollar company. For a time.

The Quebec exception

Like the Montrealer at heart Jay Baruchel – who has Notre-Dame-de-Grâce and the CH “tattooed on his heart” – Matt Johnson does not intend to go into exile in the United States to pursue his career there, despite the call of the Hollywood sirens. But he doesn’t have his tongue in his pocket when asked to define Canadian cinema.

“We haven’t quite defined what English-Canadian cinema is yet,” says the 37-year-old independent filmmaker, known for his mockumentaries (The Dirties, notably). “I say ‘Canadian-English’. In French Canada, it’s different. Our institutions are not doing enough to support young talent in English Canada. Whereas in Quebec, it seems to be a priority. »

Recalling that “English Canada is constantly fighting against American cultural hegemony”, Jay Baruchel, who made a name for himself at a very young age in Hollywood films such as Almost Famous And Million Dollar Babyadded that Canadian cinema has long reveled in “the cold, dysfunctional sexual misery” inherited from the 1990s films of David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan or Don McKellar.

BlackBerry nothing like a Cronenberg movie. It’s a dramatic comedy that would have the air of norbourg if Maxime Giroux’s film had been shot like the series The Office. In Waterloo, Toronto, London and Hamilton.