It subsequently screened at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival and at the Valladolid International Film Festival, where it won the FIPRESCI Prize. Pierre-Paul rents a storage locker to place the bags and the bulk of the cash, keeping some in his apartment. He dismissed Susskind’s assumption that public policy must be rooted in "the reality-based community." While working on a delivery in Montreal, he witnesses a robbery that ends in a fatal shootout, leaving two gym bags filled with millions of dollars of cash unguarded on the ground. In the summer of 2010, military tensions between the US and China … Sixteen years later, the American wars and war crimes launched by the Bush administration have only spread chaos and violence far and wide, and this historic conjunction of criminality and failure has predictably undermined America’s international power and authority. They all do. The transfers take place as the friends distribute the cash to Taschereau's clients, whose money overseas is in turn transferred to Pierre-Paul. Bigras advises Pierre-Paul not to see Lafontaine anymore, but Pierre-Paul responds he has an "alibi" that Lafontaine is a friend. The gang searches for its money, torturing gang member Jacmel for information. [17], On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 59% based on 37 reviews, with an average rating of 6.71/10. All Citizen Truth original articles are licensed under a Creative Commons license provided you credit Citizen Truth and provide an active backlink. But now U.S. militarism and America’s economic interests have diverged. [24], "Une première bande-annonce pour La chute de l'empire américain de Denys Arcand", "Denys Arcand unveils upcoming new movie Le triomphe de l'argent", "Denys Arcand’s morality tale a gut check for Quebec, and us all", "Denys Arcand changes name of new film that is set to come out June 28", "Jury finds 3 men guilty of 2010 double murder in Old Montreal", "New Denys Arcand film a crime thriller about our obsession with money", "Triomphe de l'argent: réalisé par Denys Arcand et produit par Denise Robert", "Alexandre Landry et Louis Morissette dans le prochain film de Denys Arcand", "Maxim Roy Sera Dans Le Prochain Denys Arcand", "Une bande-annonce pour La chute de l'empire américain, de Denys Arcand, mettant en vedette Maripier Morin", "Denys Arcand Dévoile Une Première Bande-Annonce De La Chute De L'empire Américain", "Denys Arcand renomme son film La chute de l'empire américain", "Kelly: Quebecers have to wait for English version of new Arcand film", "Toronto Film Festival Adds 'Fall of the American Empire' to Canadian Lineup", "The Fall of the American Empire (La chute de l'empire américain)", https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-fall-of-the-american-empire, "La chute de l'empire américain: du Arcand pur jus! [13] He analogized the current situation with the presidency of Donald Trump to the rule of Roman Emperor Caligula, which could be followed by a Nero figure "and three centuries of inexorable decay". An ambitious blend of comedy, thriller, and social commentary, The Fall of the American Empire lightens its heavy message with refreshing intelligence and wit. Even as America leads the world in allowing a pandemic to ravage its people and economy, neither party’s leaders are ready for a more realistic debate over how to redefine and rebuild America as a post-imperial nation in today’s multipolar world. Lafontaine claims the storage space was for her clothing where, in fact, Bigras had moved the money to his own home, to keep it safe. [21] The Huffington Post's Jean-François Vandeuren criticized the film, comparing it unfavourably to Arcand's previous two works Days of Darkness and An Eye for Beauty, in not fully developing its characters and missing opportunities in the story. [18] On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 55% based on reviews from 17 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". The Fall of the American Empire | Official Trailer HD (2019) - YouTube. [10], The filming schedule was set to start on 5 September and was completed on 8 November 2017. Pierre-Paul approaches Bigras as soon as he is released, asking him to serve as a financial analyst. Samuel Culper is a former Intelligence NCO and contractor. (The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of Citizen Truth.). Even in the American empire’s neocolonial phase, the role of the U.S. military and the CIA was to kick open doors through which American businessmen could “follow the flag” to set up shop and develop new markets. So post-World War Two Americans grew up in carefully crafted ignorance of the very fact of American empire, and the myths woven to disguise it provide fertile soil for today’s political divisions and disintegration. [22], The film finished 2018 as the year's third highest grossing Canadian film. The Decline and Fall of the American Empire December 5, 2010 / 10:19 PM / CBS Alfred W. McCoy is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Credit Citizen Truth and provide a backlink when republishing our work. Decades ago Martin Luther King Jr. warned us that “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”. By Tom Engelhardt Published December 6, 2020 10:00AM (UTC) The expansion of America’s territorial sovereignty over Native American lands, the Louisiana Purchase and the annexation of northern Mexico in the Mexican-American War built an empire that far outstripped the one that George Washington built. You can’t sell our articles for a fee but you may place them alongside ads. The expansion of America’s territorial sovereignty over Native American lands, the Louisiana Purchase and the annexation of northern Mexico in the Mexican-American War built an empire that far outstripped the one that George Washington built. What would it mean for him in terms of his place in society? It was left to critics like President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana to seriously examine the imperial control that wealthy countries still exercised over nominally independent post-colonial countries like his. For example, China has built the largest high-speed rail network in the world in just 10 years (2008-2018), and Europe has been building and expanding its high-speed network since the 1990s, but high-speed rail is still only on the drawing board in America. When President Eisenhower warned against the “unwarranted influence” of America’s military-industrial complex, he was predicting precisely this kind of dangerous dichotomy between the real economic and social needs of the American people and a war machine that costs more than the next ten militaries in the world put together but cannot win a war or vanquish a virus, let alone reconquer a lost empire. The film was released in Quebec on 28 June. Paul Ratner The Fall of the American Empire (French: La chute de l'empire américain) is a 2018 Canadian crime thriller[2] film written and directed by Denys Arcand and starring Alexandre Landry, Maxim Roy, Yan England and Rémy Girard. In 2007, his film Days of Darkness was the Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival for Closing Night, a very special evening as it was the 60th birthday of the festival. Nothing extraordinary about that, all empires so far have had life cycles, and the US Empire is no exception. What could he do with that? No country fighting for independence from the U.K. or France was going to welcome imperial invaders from America. Written by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies. The decline and fall of the American empire: Joe Biden's biggest challenge America's global ambition has collapsed in chaos and failure. Ours, he argues, is an empire with an attention deficit disorder, imposing … With the exception of the first Gulf War, fought largely by mechanized units in the open desert that did not – wisely – attempt to occupy Iraq, the United States political and military leadership has stumbled from one military debacle to another. Did you enjoy what you just read? By Medea Benjamin, Nicolas J.S. Lafontaine does not trust Bigras and believes he will take the money; she and Pierre-Paul find the storage locker empty, and La Bauve and McDuff arrive. Political Instability Is Here but the U.S. Is Still a Republic. The Fall Of The American Empire (11) IMDb 6.8 2 h 7 min 2018 R A deliveryman gets caught up in a mob robbery gone wrong and becomes a modern-day Robin Hood. Will our leaders squander America's only hope for a successful transformation from a decadent and declining empire to a dynamic and prosperous post-imperial future? It is about a man (Landry) who, after an armed robbery in Montreal, discovers two bags of money and is unsure what to do with them. The Decline and Fall of the American Empire In 2004, journalist Ron Susskind quoted a Bush White House advisor, reportedly Karl Rove, as boasting, "We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality." A courier delivery man (Alexandre Landry) and Montreal's priciest escort (Maripier Morin) navigate a world of underworld riches in Denys Arcand's "The Fall of the American Empire." Americans were not always so ignorant of the imperial nature of their country’s ambitions. In no way should that be confused with any fall of the USA; just to the contrary, the fall of the US Empire may lead to the blossoming of the US Republic. But that imperial expansion was more controversial than most Americans realize. Meanwhile, Pierre-Paul searches the Internet for an escort and finds Camille Lafontaine, who tempts him by using an alias from Socrates' friend Aspasia. When Lafontaine leaves Pierre-Paul's apartment she runs into police officers Pete La Bauve and Carla McDuff, who are arriving to question Pierre-Paul; the officers recognize her as a high-profile prostitute and question Pierre-Paul about it, noting he could not afford her services. The Fall of the American Empire (French: La chute de l'empire américain) is a 2018 Canadian crime thriller film written and directed by Denys Arcand and starring Alexandre Landry, Maxim Roy, Yan England and Rémy Girard. Yet Americans shy away from the long-term commitments of manpower and money that are indispensable if rogue regimes and failed states really are to be changed for the better. La Bauve and McDuff realize a deal is unfolding but are unable to attend due to a manpower shortage, with most officers attending a student's protest. JS:You’ve written this excellent book that will come out from Haymarket books in September called “In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and the Decline of U.S. The irony of the Bush administration’s imperial pretensions was that America has been an empire from its very founding, and that a White House staffer’s political use of the term “empire” in 2004 was not emblematic of a new and rising empire as he claimed, but of a decadent, declining empire stumbling blindly into an agonizing death spiral. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. [4] The incident took place in a clothing store called Flawnego and was suspected as gang-related; Kyle Gabriel, Terrell Lloyd Smith and Carey Isaac Regis were convicted of murder in 2014. It would not be one in which tiny numbers of the staggeringly wealthy made hundreds of billions more dollars and the country’s military-industrial complex thrived in a pandemic, while so many others went down in disaster. Vladimir staged the robbery of his own bank, believing he deserved a better share from the West End Gang; by mistake Vladimir's bodyguard was present, leading to a shootout. ***1/2", "La chute de l'empire américain: un film jubilatoire", "2018′s top-grossing Canadian films, box office", "Philippe Lesage's 'Genesis' Sweeps Spain's Valladolid Festival", "Gala Québec Cinéma : 1991 de Ricardo Trogi mène la course avec 16 nominations", "Gala Québec Cinéma: 1991 sacré meilleur film de l'année", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Fall_of_the_American_Empire&oldid=1019714917, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 25 April 2021, at 00:29. Instead of opening doors for American big business or supporting America’s diplomatic position in the world, the U.S. war machine has become a bull in the global china shop, wielding purely destructive power to destabilize countries and wreck their economies, closing doors to economic opportunity instead of opening them, diverting resources from real needs at home, and damaging America… Davies. Share. [2], Eddy King took the role of a gang member, because he said the film would not rely on the stereotype of how gangs are depicted. America’s defeat in Afghanistan is one in a string of catastrophic military blunders that herald the death of the American empire. [1][12] In his view, the U.S. had long been suffering and Quebec was affected. The Fall of the American Empire. Pierre-Paul Daoust works as a delivery man to pay his bills despite having a PhD in philosophy, believing himself too intelligent to be successful. By. Ex: (By John Smith, Citizen Truth). Through Lafontaine's connections, Pierre-Paul meets Wilbrod Taschereau, who specializes in tax evasion. The hypothesis is not that the fall and decline of the US Empire implies a fall and decline of the US Republic (continental USA). [20] For Le Journal de Montréal, Isabelle Hontebeyrie assessed the film as jubilant and "pure Arcand", giving it four stars. Cold War on China, Credit the author and Citizen Truth in the byline. Please CLICK HERE and consider a small donation to help us continue to bring the truth. The period we know as the time of the … [8] Alexandre Landry took the lead role of the McGill University philosophy student who discovers the money, saying he found it "interesting to figure out what the relationship with money in society is". Apart from a few military contractors, American businesses have not followed the flag into the ruins of Iraq or America’s other current war-zones in any lasting way. In his book, Neo-Colonialism: the Last Stage of Imperialism, Nkrumah condemned neocolonialism as “the worst form of imperialism.” “For those who practice it,” he wrote, “it means power without responsibility, and for those who suffer from it, it means exploitation without redress.”. Fourteen out of fifty-two U.S. senators voted against the 1848 treaty to annex most of Mexico, without which Americans might still be visiting California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Nevada, Utah and most of Colorado as exotic Mexican travel spots. America's defeat in Afghanistan is one in a string of catastrophic military blunders that herald the death of the American empire. Every successful empire has expanded, ruled and exploited its far-flung territories through a combination of economic and military power. [19], In La Presse, Marc-André Lussier awarded the film three and a half stars, calling it Arcand's best work since The Barbarian Invasions. Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK for Peace, is the author of Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection. Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection, Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq, How ExxonMobil Uses Divide and Rule to Get Its Way in South America, From Concentration Camps to Overflow Facilities: With Biden in Charge, Media Forgets Kids in Cages, Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, Attribution-NonCommercial-No derivatives 3.0, Muna is Palestine, Yakub is Israel: The Untold Story of Sheikh Jarrah, A Pesticide Linked to Brain Damage in Children Could Finally Be Banned, Colombia’s Leaders Want to Stain Their Country with the Blood of the Working Class, Hundreds of Palestinians Protesting Evictions in Jerusalem Injured in ‘State-Sanctioned Campaign of Israeli Violence’, Interview: Hybrid Wars with Vijay Prashad, The U.S. Is Trying to Light the Match of Islamic Extremism in China’s Xinjiang, Biden’s Appeasement of Hawks and Neocons Is Crippling His Diplomacy, Why Xinjiang Is Emerging as the Epicenter of the U.S. Iraq(x1)/Afghanistan(x2). Include an active dofollow hyperlink in your article back to the original Citizen Truth article. Bigras asks Pierre-Paul for papers on his finances, but Pierre-Paul confesses he has only bags of cash. America still has the weakest social safety net of any developed country and no universal healthcare system, and the inequalities of wealth and power caused by extreme neoliberalism have left half of Americans with little or no savings to live on in retirement or to weather any disruption in their lives. Not knowing what to do with this amount of money, he sees on the news biker Sylvain "The Brain" Bigras is being released from prison, during which Bigras was also allowed to pursue a BA in finance. Visit the post for more. He rushes to grab the bags and place them in his delivery truck when the police arrive. They later arrest Taschereau for soliciting a minor. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); All Citizen Truth original articles licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. And in no way should the book be seen as "anti-American"; just to the contrary. [2] Hypothesizing money is contemporary society's only remaining value, he said, "Then I began thinking about what would happen if a guy found himself with two bags full of money. [9] 19-2 star Maxim Roy joined the cast and performed her own stunts. "[6] He also visited cafeterias in the Bordeaux Prison and the Old Brewery Mission homeless centre to research how to depict a scene where food is served. Denys Arcand’s new movie The Fall of the American Empire, is also supposed to be a sequel, but I couldn’t find the link (beyond the title) with the director’s acclaimed 1986 movie The Decline of the American Empire.. Global Power.” But I want to ask you about a much earlier book that you wrote, “The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade.” And that details your investigation — and it really was what introduced you to this world of covert CIA operati… George Washington described New York as “the seat of an empire,” and his military campaign against British forces there as the “pathway to empire.” New Yorkers eagerly embraced their state’s identity as the Empire State, which is still enshrined in the Empire State Building and on New York State license plates. Four years after that, in a pandemicized land, its economy a wreck, its military power deeply frustrated, its people divided, angry, and increasingly well-armed, that sense of failing (already felt so strongly in the American heartland that welcomed The Donald in … So America’s leaders developed a system of neocolonialism through which they exercised overarching imperial sovereignty over much of the world, while scrupulously avoiding terms like “empire” or “imperialism” that would undermine their post-colonial credentials. [16] The Fall of the American Empire was one of 19 Canadian films selected for screening at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival, while Sony Classics purchased the U.S. distribution rights. Bigras deduces the money was stolen from the West End Gang, which was keeping its funds in a store owned by banker Vladimir François. The Decline and Fall of the American Empire The U.S. war machine has become a bull in the global china shop, wielding purely destructive power to destabilize countries and wreck their economies. La Bauve and McDuff follow Pierre-Paul and Lafontaine to The Street, dedicated to serving the homeless in Montreal, but the officers end up volunteering there alongside Pierre-Paul and Lafontaine while Pierre-Paul talks about income inequality and possible revolution. Our leaders’ insistence on siphoning off 66% of U.S. federal discretionary spending to preserve and expand a war machine that has long outlived any useful role in America’s declining economic empire is a debilitating waste of resources that jeopardizes our future. China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty, while America’s poverty rate has barely budged in 50 years and child poverty has increased. Upon hearing of Jacmel's torture and against Bigras' advice, Pierre-Paul orders Jacmel's protection. 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