A Year in the Death of Jack Richards
| A Year in the Death of Jack Richards | |
|---|---|
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| Directed by | B. P. Paquette |
| Produced by | B. P. Paquette |
| Written by | B. P. Paquette |
| Starring |
Vlasta Vrána Micheline Lanctôt Harry Hill Darryl Hunter |
| Music by | Andrew David |
| Cinematography | Daniel Breton |
| Edited by | Andrew David |
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Production
company |
Ourson Films
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| Distributed by | Ourson Films |
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Release date
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Running time
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85 minutes |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
An English-language feature film shot and set in Montreal, A Year in the Death of Jack Richards is a 2004 psychological drama from Canada featuring Vlasta Vrána as the title character, a professor of theology, who may or may not have made himself the target of a supposed cult, whose members then worship him for a year so that they may kill him as an for their sins. It is the debut feature film from Canadian director B. P. Paquette, and also features in supporting roles Micheline Lanctôt, Harry Hill, and Darryl Hunter.
Presented at numerous film festivals in countries from around the world, and honoured with prizes and accolades, A Year in the Death of Jack Richards absolutely polarized critics when it was released in commercial theatres.
A Year in the Death of Jack Richards is the first panel in Paquette's triptych on the psychology of romantic love, followed by The Woman of Ahhs: A Self-Portrait by Victoria Fleming (2008), and The Anonymous Rudy S. (2016).
Paquette has discussed two avenues that led to the development of his story. The first was that of an old European legend, circa 15th century, of religious sects scooping up individuals to be cared for by the group for a year before being killed. The second is closer to Paquette’s past. “I came to film school, Concordia University’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, to do my Bachelor’s and while I was there I got to know the director of the program. He was this old Polish guy, single, very kind of gruff,” Paquette says. “I loved him to death. He was the smartest film guy I ever had and I didn’t know a lot of people in Montreal so I took to hanging out with him. He wouldn’t really open up to a lot about his past but you’d get little bits of it and you start to piece it together. He’d given up a lot in Poland to come here.”
Blurring the lines between reality and non-reality, A Year in the Death of Jack Richards is an open-ended film that is vague and evasive but completely up for discussion. In interviews, Paquette has stated that it was his intention to make a film that was wide open to a variety of different interpretations. Even Vlasta Vrána, who played Jack Richards, said, “Don’t ask me about the film because I don’t know anything. I know what got me through making it, doing my part. [...] I had the story, I had the idea of what it is, I know what I took as my motivations—I know that the story is much more complex than what I took for myself.”
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