Today as in yesterday is tomorrow as in today: struggle between modernity and tradition in Pour la Suite du Monte Pour la Suite du Monte is a Canadian documentary film directed by Pierre Perrault and Michel Brault in 1963. The film follows the residence in the Saint Lawrence River in Quebec about the traditional Beluga whale-hunting event as they agreed to reenact it for the one last time. One of the most outstanding themes from this film is the inheritance and innovation of the tradition and the modernity. In order to reflect such struggles, the film takes the benefits from its selected topic in which the event itself is an act of honoring the past, and it reveals the issue by showing the personal conflicts between the attitudes and viewpoints
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Many scenes in the film reflect the daily discussion and communication around the residence of the island. They often take close distance to observe the clothes, gestures, and facial expression from different generations. In each scene of the discussion, there is always the appearance of the young teenager and children. Specifically in the scene where the elders and the middle-aged men are debating about whether or not the Indians invented the strategy of trapping whale, the shot of a little girl sitting on an old man’s lap and looking around stands out. This shot delivers a clear message that when the older generations talk; the Youngers are constantly listening and learning with the civilizing influence. The audiences can easily cause pathos to the scene and recall their own memories as a child where they were surrounding by relatives and hearing their father, uncles, and grandfather talk. The stakes which are sunk into the old poles revive their traditional mission of capturing the whales. The film patiently and honestly records the process of the middle-aged generation work together to plant the stakes into the shore as their ancestors once did. After the stakes been gradually planted into the low tide, the camera panning through the shore: the new cut stakes stand vertically in the same old sea; each parallel to the others like the guardian of the home island. One can easily imagine, when the event ends, when the time passes, and wind blows, those fresh and straight stakes would also be bent and destroyed with only a mark deepen in the
Many scenes in the film reflect the daily discussion and communication around the residence of the island. They often take close distance to observe the clothes, gestures, and facial expression from different generations. In each scene of the discussion, there is always the appearance of the young teenager and children. Specifically in the scene where the elders and the middle-aged men are debating about whether or not the Indians invented the strategy of trapping whale, the shot of a little girl sitting on an old man’s lap and looking around stands out. This shot delivers a clear message that when the older generations talk; the Youngers are constantly listening and learning with the civilizing influence. The audiences can easily cause pathos to the scene and recall their own memories as a child where they were surrounding by relatives and hearing their father, uncles, and grandfather talk. The stakes which are sunk into the old poles revive their traditional mission of capturing the whales. The film patiently and honestly records the process of the middle-aged generation work together to plant the stakes into the shore as their ancestors once did. After the stakes been gradually planted into the low tide, the camera panning through the shore: the new cut stakes stand vertically in the same old sea; each parallel to the others like the guardian of the home island. One can easily imagine, when the event ends, when the time passes, and wind blows, those fresh and straight stakes would also be bent and destroyed with only a mark deepen in the