The Barbarian Invasions: everything goes by

The Barbarian Invasions is a 2003 movie that deals in its dialogues with the question of the interpenetration of divergent worlds, failure of ideologies, and the fall of empires and points of view. It is no coincidence that it occurs shortly after the Twin Towers tragedy in the United States.

Rémy (Rémy Girard) is a college professor who has a terminal illness and is on the verge of death in a chaotic Canadian hospital assisted only by his ex-wife Louise (Dorothée Berryman). Pressured by the precarious conditions of the public hospital and the severity of Rémy's illness, Louise calls their son Sébastien (Stéphane Rousseau), a dominant trader in a London financial conglomerate. They do not get along. The son does not forgive his father, who left his family for a bohemian life. The father does not support his son's lifestyle, opposite to his beliefs.

However, it is the son's money that will give Rémy some dignity in her last moments. Sébastien bribes hospital staff and union members to have his father set up on an unoccupied floor, hires a few students to visit him, contacts some of his best friends, and employs a morphine addict to share the drug's effects with his father.

Rémy does not accept the idea that soon he will no longer be in the world, but in one of his “trips” provided by Nathalie (Marie-Josée Croze), she makes him understand that his attachment is not to the present but his past.

Realizing his father's affection for his old lakeside home, Sébastien organizes a gathering of all around his father to talk, drink and eat. Conversations, it turns out, are the film's strong point and revolve around the deconstruction of youth illusions, outdated ideologies, and ridiculous loves.

Everything goes by, and indeed the desire to live forever or die a good death are no more than delusions on this nostalgic night. Everyone lived, perhaps not as long as Rémy, illusory lives and passions. For him, death comes the way he finally wished.

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