He was sitting in the chair and he saw it clearly. He wanted to bring that story to the screen but also telling the past of the characters. And to go from the hour and a half that the play lasted to the five hours of The Night Logan Woke Up, the first series created, directed and starring Xavier Dolan. The new work of the Quebecois director (Mommy) is a dramatic thriller about family relationships that Filmin has just added to his catalogue.
The work that Dolan was watching was La nuit où Laurier Gaudreault s’est réveillé by Michel Marc Bouchard, author of Tom at the Farm, which Dolan -one of the prodigy children of contemporary auteur cinema and protected at the Cannes Film Festival where he premiered with success most of his films – he also adapted to the big screen.
The Night Logan Woke Up, set in the early nineties, tells the story of Mimi (Julie LeBreton) and her brother Julien (Patrick Hivone), who form an inseparable trio with their friend Logan (Pier-Gabriel Lajoie). Their relationship breaks off abruptly when a terrible incident occurs one fateful night forcing them to go their separate ways. Thirty years later, Mimi, now a renowned thanatopracticer, returns to her homeland to take care of her mother’s corpse. Grudges and old wounds come alive to reveal what really happened that night.
Dolan remembers how, sitting in the theater seat, “I saw the possibility of telling a family story in which the death of the mother, in this case, instead of separating the family members, what it does is provoke that they meet again and that they have that closeness that a family gives you and that had been broken ”.
“Each character had their own story and I wanted to tell the circumstances of each one of them,” he explains to La Vanguardia. That’s why he had no problem opting for the series format instead of a film. “The structure of the work was perfect; every three or four scenes I saw exactly where an episode could end because it left you on the brink of the precipice”, he points out.
“The revelation at the end of the story would have lost a lot of power if I had told it in an hour and 40 minutes compared to the possibility of doing it in all the richness that five hours give you, and that leads to a greater final impact.” Asked if he considers the idea that serial fiction is of a lower category than great movies to be outdated, he replies: “I think that this is already somewhat outdated and, honestly, it also seems pretentious to me.”
Family relationships always lead one way or another to analyze the essence of the human being, Dolan thinks. “Being part of a family, the enormous responsibility that parents have, that you like the family that has touched you… All of this prepares us for life and to build the individual that each one of us is going to become. One can look at oneself in the family to see part of the person that one is reflected, ”she points out.
Another side theme of the series is that unresolved conflicts from the past always come back. “In Quebec there is a saying that goes ‘When you spit up, it will always fall on you’, says the filmmaker. “Indeed, lies and not facing the issues of the past cause them to always come back, to reach you in the present and can even destroy you.”
For Dolan, one of the latent messages in the series is that “you always have to tell the truth” and that “it is extremely important to learn and know how to forgive.” Although it can be uncomfortable and even a little violent at times, “you have to tell the truth and what you think about people, especially those we love and love deeply,” he continues. “You also have to be willing to listen to that truth about yourself and what another person makes you face.”
