Country:
Canada
Recognizable Faces:
Luc Picard
Isabelle Blais
Pascal Montpetit
Directed by:
Mario Azzopardi
I've been meaning to watch Savage Messiah since it came out in the theaters in 2002. French Canada's most notorious batshit crazy criminal is a tad of a senstive subject so I've been down on luck trying to sit down and watch it for the last seven years. Finally, I came around to watch it this week. Being a crime writer and all, I like to gather as much information as possible about notorious criminals.
Especially when they are out of control...and were imprisonned in my hometown for most of their childhood.
STORYLINE
Names have been changed to protect the identity of the sect member, but Savage Messiah is the true story of cult leader Roch "Moses" Theriault. I nickname him "Moses", because that's who he said he was to his followers.
Theriault has a long and impressive rap sheet of atrocities, but the movie concentrates around the life of his Ontarian village and his downfall. Paula Jackson, a social worker, specialized with kids starts an investigation about Theriault's group after a series of incident brough some of his wives to her office, seeking help for their children.
Paula Jackson will dig up atrocities after atrocities, discovering a sect based around its leader's sexual dominance over his herd and his gradual descent into madness. Group sex, humiliation, submission, torture, necrophilia, the total package. Savage Messiah portrays a little bit of the horrors committed in Theriault's village, but still manages to be disturbing. I don't want to be a party poop and spoil the ending, but today, Roch Theriault is still in jail so you can imagine how it ends.
DIRECTION
There are many questionable artistic decisions to Savage Messiah. I'm not sure Paula Jackson is even a real character in the story, but the way the character is portrayed doesn't make you love her. She's a cold, frustrated, self-righteous woman with a dark past. Kind of like a female hard-boiled character, which doesn't quite fit the mood of the story. Making her a bit warmer would've helped to make me believe she wanted to help more than to crush Theriault herself in order to make peace with her past.
The "visions"/"flashbacks" that Paula has don't work well. She's "reading" into Theriault's facade and sees under a blue filter, the true sadness within his followers and the darkness through Theriault's heart. I hated it, made me feel like the director wanted bad to convince me that Jackson was a great person more than the actress Polly Walker did.
ACTING
Two of the biggest names in Quebec cinema play in this movie. Luc Picard as Theriault and Isabelle Blais as Lise (which is the character that's based on Gabrielle Lavallee, the survivor who wrote a book). Both are delivering the goods big time. Picard (often compared to Andy Garcia) gives a stunning portrait of darkness. He embodies it, he makes you feel like your look into a bottomless pit when you're staring at "Moses". Just for his performence alone, the movie is worth the rent price.
Blais is also amazing. Everytime she's on screen, she makes me forget that she's an annoying hipster from Montreal's Mile-End district and make me believe in the strenght of her characters. In Savage Messiah, she portrays the subtle awakening of a tortured soul that's blessed with a ray of light for the first time after walking through pitched black darkness.. She's the other main reason why you should watch the movie.
The rest of the acting is a complete train wreck that sounds false scene after scene, but it's all good because the two superstars from "La Belle Province" take the center stage and run the show. You just have to sit throught the other moments and close your eyes.
INTEREST
I cannot name you one reason why you should watch Savage Messiah twice. Luc Picard and Isabelle Blais are delivering very strong performance, but it's all the movie has to offer. It's a prude approach to a subject that ended up lacking punching power. The story is told from a first person point of view, which sounds wrong from the start and doesn't concentrate on the horror when it should've. Savage Messiah was mildly enjoyable (and informative) for 95 minutes, but it lacked focus and power. It's a forgettable movie about a subject that we should all never forget.
NOTE:C+
