The decline of the Empire has been vastly overrated. Here we are fighting questionable wars, still picking fights and enjoying every moment. As French-Canadian writer-director Denys Arcand slyly points out in his satirical The Decline of the American Empire, we still live in an age of indulgence and hedonistic pursuits. Sure, we feel like crap because of it but we're loving (or pretending to love) every second of it.

The set up is clever. The guys are at home cooking the meal and the girls are at the gym working out. And what's everyone talking about? Sex, of course. The first hour of the film is devoted entirely to the subject offering frank views and astute observations. It's crude, rude and honest. Sometimes funny, sometimes kinky, frequently filled with sorrow, these are people who think they know themselves when in fact they're clueless to anyone's point of view but their own. Even more striking is that they're all intellectuals conversing together. They come from different aspects of the university's history program either as tenured staff, teaching assistants or secretaries. They're a Jeopardy Tournament of Champions waiting to happen when it comes to trivia and ideas. Just don't challenge their point of view.

Intellectual commentary such as this runs the risk of outdating itself in a hurry. But not so. Like it or not, our attitudes and actions haven't changed all that much in the almost two decades it's been since Decline was first released. On a whole we're still a society looking for pleasure and personal gain. Enron, Oval Office fellatio and other scandals have shown we can at least acknowledge many of our shortcomings yet we continue to pursue that which brings power and prestige over internal happiness. Arcand's message might not be the happy, happy, joy, joy we have come to expect from our movies but he does shed some truth no matter how hard it might be to digest.

Decline is a talkie that at times talks a little too much. Arcand knows that his characters are smart and exploit that for everything they're worth, even if it's at the sacrifice a little bit of entertainment value for us non-intellectual types. Is it because he thinks the lower common denominators don't have a hope or because the intellectuals are the ones that need some humbling? I'm not certain either way. But Arcand is smart and he's a filmmaker intent more on challenging us than entertaining us. That's fine, just as long as he doesn't attempt to adapt all the monotone teachers I had over the years.

©Movie Views; June 5, 2003