Le Démantèlement by Sébastien Pilote is an outing reminiscent of the great classics of
American cinema, in which the changing colours of the landscape reflects the characters' emotions and the rhythm is echoed in a breath. Actor Gabriel Arcand's magnificent performance brings to life the organic reality of the film, reminding us of the humanism
of some John Ford figure. Without denying his roots, Sébastien Pilote has chosen a new
landscape in which to set his film.
"My heritage is that of direct cinema; films by Michel Brault, Pierre Perrault. The best fiction is For Those Who Will Follow, which is a documentary. I went with the idea (Truffaut used to say this) that a film with a character on a downward slope could not work or interest people and I wanted to prove the opposite. How can we climb up by going down? This upward climb, dramatic and emotional, built on little nothings, comes from my wish to be generous towards the spectator and my interest in melodramatic cinema. So I went with the characters of Père Goriot and King Lear and brought them to the land of cowboys.
Like my previous film, The Salesman, the film centers on one character. The other challenge
was that I wanted this character to see his world one step at a time, so he doesn't interact with more than one character at a time.
A way to show that he himself is also 'dismantled'... Gabriel Arcand has a solid reputation
as a follower of Dostoïevski's acting method and of Grotowski, who refuses television, a very rigorous actor. I knew him from films by Gilles Carle and those of his brother Denys Arcand,but that's it. I found him very photogenic, in an American sort of way. I thought to myself... that's because of his eyes... If I can make him smile, it's in the bag".
