Séraphin: Heart of Stone (2002)

Too much of everything

One of my all time favorites.

Fresh and Exciting

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

The review on the DVD proclaimed that this film was "Quebec's Titanic". That was about right: a film using sentimentality and a historical setting to distract from a weak plot and wooden characters.The premise of the film is that pre-1960s Quebec was a miserable, oppressive place where the Church and the wealthy controlled the peasants like some sort of Catholic Iran; this allows the wealthy bad guy to brtualize the poor hero and heroine with impunity. No doubt, this had some historical accuracy (certainly in the minds of Quebec film-makers), but it isn't very interesting to watch the main characters flail about helplessly, unable to overcome their lot in life, while some bad guy manipulates them.Compare this film to the much better "Louis Cyr", where a man growing up in the same time period and subject to the same low status overcomes his obstacles and becomes an inspiration for generations.The actors are some of the best that Quebec has, but each main character in Seraphin was so unidimensional that it almost felt like a parody. The rich bad guy is obsessed with money to the point where I confused him with Scrooge McDuck - he literally died with gold coins in his hand. The heroic lumberjack is so heroic that at one point he starts cutting wood in doubletime to pay off the rich bad guy. The damsel in distress is so distressed that I had to ask how a human being can reach adulthood without a backbone -- the one redeeming feature of Titanic was that the heroine took some control over her situation and tried, at the very least, to not die, something that Karine Vanasse's character wasn't up to attempting.If our cable was working, I wouldn't have watched it to the end.

This had the potential to be a gripping and tragic tale but fell flat. Character development is weak, many scenes are pointless. What should have been a sad and tragic tale merely had me shaking my head wondering what the director was thinking. There is no sufficiently convincing case for Donalda to marry Seraphin; What, so her spineless father can keep his general store running? Once married to Seraphin, she for some reason feels compelled to remain true to this deplorable monster. The problem is, there is no convincing case made as to why she feels so bound to him - most of the town is on her side and sees her marriage to him as wrong in the first place. Pierre Lebeau's role as the utterly detestable Seraphin is convincing however, which makes the supporting roles that much more absurd.

Too many people thought this was going to be a splashy production of les Belles Histoires du Pays d'en Haut. Unfortunately that series is long gone and the main actors are no longer with us either. The series was a laundered version of Un Homme et son Peche (sorry no accents on my keyboard) which was a brutal novel about avarice. Avarice is one of the seven deadly sins and Claude-Henri Grignon (the author) wanted to show this in the context of a rural Quebec setting. French-Canada has a mythology and Seraphin Poudrier the mean and cruel became with the help of Radio-Canada Seraphin the miserable and sometimes ok tightwad. Otherwise the series would have become unbearable, I mean, how can you love a man who deforms his wife's dead body to fit in a cheap coffin??? Grignon worked on the series so it was done with his blessing and as a result French-Canada ended up with a sanitized version that became its best-loved series ever. Indeed, to this day, anyone over 40 will fondly remember the adventures of a group of hard working French Canadians in the colonial era during the late 1890's. They were easily identifiable and very human. Naturally those who did not read the novel were shocked at the baseness of the main character Seraphin Poudrier. Jean-Pierre Masson's magistral interpretation of his character in the series was nothing short of absolute perfection. Sadly he became so typecast that he died a drunken miserable person who tried to escape this identity with very few actually realizing that he was indeed a first-class actor.The French-Canadian society in Quebec is very selfish in a loving way and will not let its heroes go. Being so insular, it will raise its favorites to the highest level but at what cost. Anyway, the novel was a classic and must be studied to understand another view of French-Canadian rural mores. Today Quebec has become a dreary socialist third-world type society and frankly I miss the older more pictoresque place. The present day society: anti-religious, vociferously anti-English and very stupid about it, double names, silly socialism etc.. is not to my liking. Oh well...

Well... I just saw this movie an hour ago. Not only it touched me, but it's also a total gem. Karine Vanasse, a young actress of 19 years old is astounting as Donalda. With her GREAT acting(probably the best one ever done in a French-Canadian film or even EVER), she simply brings us to tear. She has the power to take your heart and tear it. I'm a guy, it is a huge accomplishment. hehe When I left the teather, I felt like this story happened in front of my eyes. The wonderful job of the crew team gives us a strong impression of reality, which helps to touch us. On the other hand, they make a great job too with including humor to remind us that were watching a movie. They do that exactly when it is so touching that you have no control on your feelings, so it helps to regain control of yourself. Pierre Lebeau did an amazing job as Séraphin, we hate this man to the point that we want him to die, so Alexis and Donalda can live their beautiful love story. There's no cliché in this movie. Unlike in «Les dangereux», we did not wanted to do exactly like the american movies, we wanted to create a believable 1890 period of time which would represents the French-Canadians.I give 9.5 out of 10 to this movie because a movie can't be 100% perfect! But, it's close to be perfect! Everyone in the world should see this touching love story that goes directly to our heart. I hope that more people on this website will see this movie because it is a French-Canadian classic!