[The Walrus will be reviewing films at this week's Hot Docs festival in Toronto. More reviews to follow.]
In 1919, in Paris, the leaders of hundreds of nations and disparate groups convened in Paris to map out the political geography of the postwar world. New alliances and lines would be drawn, and the Treaty of Versailles would be broached, edited, and signed. This was important stuff, I thought. I wanted to know more. So I went to see Paul Cowan’s Paris 1919, based on the book of the same name by Margaret Macmillan. I had been taken in by a festival write-up promising a portrayal of that “significant event [that] has never lost its geopolitical influence.” Apparently, its failure continues to haunt us. This sounded important. Naturally, I wanted in. Unfortunately, Cowan’s film did not deliver.
The theatre was packed. People had waited for rush tickets in an ever-thickening drizzle, separated from their friends to claim the lone seats available in the theatre’s upper reaches, and listened to a fifteen minute pre-screening presentation by the filmmakers on making the film. That was dedication—this was going to be good.
I settled in.
Ninety minutes later all I felt was annoyed. I had sat there for ninety minutes, and had I learned anything? Where was my promised education? It certainly felt like an educational film—nothing screams grade 10 history class like dramatic re-enactments courtesy of the NFB—but all I had gleaned from Cowan’s exposé was that politics is a dirty game, politicians largely useless, and tops hats should come back into style. Well, I knew all that already.
Paris 1919 succeeds as an examination of political ego. It contains some striking archival footage of post-war France, and makes interesting use of photographic stills. But as an illumination of the Treaty, its composition, its purpose, and its repercussions, it does nothing to educate its all-too-eager audience.
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