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Passchendaele
Paul Gross
Alliance 2006
 Production Information
» Production Company’s Involved » Passchendaele is a 2008 Canadian war film
Rhombus Media from Alliance Films, written, directed by and
Whizbang Films starring Paul Gross. The film, which was shot
in Calgary, Alberta, Fort Macleod, Alberta,
Damberger Film And Cattle Company CFB Suffield, and in Belgium, focuses on the
experiences of Gross's grandfather, Michael
» Distributed by Alliance Films Dunne, a soldier who served in the
10th Battalion, CEF in the First World War at
» Release date(s) October 17, 2008 the Battle of Passchendaele (also known as
» Running time 114 min. the Third Battle of Ypres). The film opened
at the Toronto International Film Festival on
» Country Canada September 4, 2008 and was released in
» Language English Canada on October 17, 2008.
» Budget $20 million
 Historical Context
‘The Third Battle of Ypres’ consisted of a series of
'Bite and Hold' attacks to capture critical terrain
and wear down the German army, lasting until
the Canadian Corps took Passchendaele on 6
November 1917, ending the battle. Although
inflicting irreplaceable casualties on the
Germans, the Allies had captured a mere 5 miles
(8 km) of new territory at a cost of 140,000
combat deaths, a ratio of roughly 2 inches (5 cm) QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
gained per dead soldier. are needed to see this picture.
Passchendaele has become synonymous with the
misery of grinding attrition warfare fought in
thick mud. Most of the battle took place on
reclaimed marshland, swampy even without rain.
 Paul Gross Wants to Make a 20 Million Dollar Film

» "The province's centennial is a time to recognize our past and tell our
stories, including those about Alberta's military heritage. We must
work to keep our veterans' sacrifices in the forefront of our minds.
The story of Passchendaele pays tribute to a key event in our
country's history, and will educate Albertans and all Canadians for
years to come." - Premier Ralph Klein

Funding
» In its opening weekend, Passchendaele grossed $847,522 in 202 screens in
Canada, ranking second at the Canadian box office behind Max Payne.As of
January 22, 2009, the film had grossed $4.45 million, accounting for half of
2008's box office revenue from made-in-Canada Anglophone films.
Let’s Break this
Film down
 The Article: The Concept of National Cinema.
By: Andrew Higson

» Key Questions: » Key Quotation:

» “The range of and relation between discourses about film
What Ought to Represent Canada? circulating within that cultural and social formation,
» What Does represent Canada? and their relative accessibility to different audiences.
Crucial among these discourses is the tension
» What is involved in positing the idea of between, on the one hand, those intellectual
Canadianhood? discourses which insist that a proper national cinema
must be one which aspires to the status of art (and
» Do Canadian films maximize the therefore adheres to the current dominant definitions
industries profits while bolstering of cinema as an art form), discourses which, from a
Canada’s cultural standing all at once? particular class perspective, dismiss Hollywood’s
popular cinema as culturally debilitating and on the
» Do characteristics of Hollywood (war) other hand, those more populist discourses where, in
films feed into our national cinema? effect, the idea of ‘good entertainment’ overrides
questions of ‘art’ or ‘nationality’. This latter
» Is it balanced? (Culturally Motivated discourse suggests that a cinema can only be national,
but Economically Viable) and command a national-popular audience if it is a
mass-production genre cinema, capable of
constructing, reproducing, and re-cycling popular
myths on a broad scale, with an elaborate, well
capitalized and well resourced system of market
exploitation”. (Higson, p. 45).

Found on pages 37, 39, and 41

 Questions Answered!
» What Ought to Represent Canada?
» Mounties, Beavers, Hockey, Drinkers, Snow, Native Americans, Log Cabins, Don Cherry, Alanis Morrisette, The
Littlest Hobo, Rita McNeil, Robert Munsch, Eh?, ‘Deir-By’, and our ‘Little Brother to America’ dilemma.

»
The slightly rustic ‘Heritage Park’ quality to the props and settings that all smell Canadian.

» What Does represent Canada?

» Alberta has a beautiful landscape.
» Like a true Canadian, Paul Gross takes a beat to acknowledge death before his eye, looks left to right, and thinks,
“Screw this, I’m outta here..”
» Local Calgary settings.
 Ever watch films filmed elsewhere and then become curious about what films being filmed in their own city
would look like? Here’s your chance!
» positing the idea of Canadianhood?
» In the end, the messages were rather mixed, the romance settled, Paul didn’t die, love wins, war disappears, for
now.
» Mostly Canadians were hired to make the film happen, which certainly instills Canadianhood.
» If it tries to posit Canadianhood, the over-dramatization of the characters interactions may suggest to international
audiences that we walk around emoting all the time and take long dramatic beats.
 Questions Answered. Part 2
» Does Passchendaele maximize the industries profits while bolstering Canada’s
cultural standing all at once?
» Given that it recouped under 1/20th of it’s production cost during opening weekend while attempting to be a middle-
brow romantic/war drama, the answer is ‘not really’.
» Do characteristics of Hollywood (war) films feed into our national
cinema?
» “Paul Gross’s ambitious Passchendaele doesn’t try to compete (with famous American War movies). Instead, the
writer-producer-director-star chooses to focus on an Ernest Hemingway-style tale of love and war. Unashamedly old-
fashioned and resolutely middle-brow, it unfolds in broad brushstrokes storytelling and heart-on-the-sleeve emotions
before bursting into effective scenes of the mud and mayhem of battle. It has the sentimentality of Spielberg’s Saving
Private Ryan but without the guts.” -Allan Hunter (of Screendaily.com)
 Well put. However, on the back of the DVD case it does state “The opening scene [in this film] rivals the
opening scene in Saving Private Ryan.

» Is it Balanced? (Culturally motivated but Economically viable).

» Passchendaele is culturally motivated when considering the scale of the production that is centered around the life
story of a Canadian war veteran.
» Ironically, its economic UN-viablility (lest we forget the 1/20th recoup) is characteristic of Canadian productions,
which contributes to Passchendaele being Canadian, albeit unknowingly. We call this ‘not being able to break even at
the box office’.
 Who Watched Passchendaele?
» It seemed like the audience they were aiming for was a
widely spread variance of Canadian heritage
enthusiasts, Canadian film buffs, combinations of the
two, and even international audiences by making the
Canadian story applicable to all. The film cinematically
is very safe, (disregarding that it’s about war) but the
story’s pacing, lighting, framing, character
development, and balance of love and war fits very
snuggly into the category of romantic war drama. It’s
not quite an epic, but Paul Gross may call it one.
 Conclusions
» In the end, Paul Gross’s Passchendaele is
well summarized by the image of him on his
knees, bloody, in the mud and rain. This shot
tells of a Canadian who took a knee asking
his government for 20 million dollars in
order to restage his grandfathers wartime
experiences. Paul’s WWI romantic/war
drama (on which he worked so hard) was
QuickTime™ and a truly the one-man-show you see here, as he
decompressor
are needed to see this picture. managed to undertake ,multiple key creative
roles such as producer, director, lead actor,
and editor in the production process. Finally,
the elaborate staging and environments show
the grittiness of war, all around Paul.