Rob Munday
Storytelling has traditionally explored existential themes, but when it comes to confronting your own mortality, there’s no more direct approach than dissecting your own body on screen. In Patrick Bouchard’s 10-minute short, The Subject, the director takes a scalpel to a life-size version of his body, extracting various items that symbolise his past until he reaches the heart and the weight he has been carrying with him.
The Subject begins in a workshop. Not the traditional setting for an autopsy, but then this is no ordinary procedure. A fact that is confirmed shortly after the first incision, when a large metal nail bursts from the cut – a pointed reference to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Things get weirder still as the body is scored with thousands of lines, like well-traveled routes on a map, they show the paths taken by this person.
Stranger is still to come, as pipes, cogs, the needles of a record player and other oddities are revealed from within the cadaver, each holding personal significance for Bouchard. The most revealing moment comes when the director reaches into the heart space of his doppelgänger and retrieves one final surprise. The film concludes with Bouchard eye to eye with his corpse – a sobering end for both the filmmaker and the viewer.
When selecting films for Short of the Week, we often seek works notable for their style or storytelling, but a film that excels in both is truly special. Narratively, The Subject is thematically complex, touching on religion, mortality, and more. Visually, the scale and detail in Bouchard’s craft are jaw-dropping. Together, they create a unique and unforgettable viewing experience.
At the centre of that experience is the full-scale model of Bouchard, painstakingly recreated – as the director describes (in an interview with Ben Mitchell for Skwigly) – “almost to a disturbing degree”. So life-like was the recreation, that the director admits to having difficulties when it came to the autopsy process, as he explained to Mitchell:
“At the very moment when I needed to pick up the scalpel and make that first incision… I just couldn’t do it. The body lay there before me and it was me, my own body, totally naked and vulnerable, even under camera. This threw me into a quandary about the entire project, a difficult phase that lasted close to a month. But then one morning, I had the eureka moment: the idea of having a nail emerge from the foot, suggesting a de-crucifixion. A violent gesture that was nonetheless necessary and very liberating. At that point I knew the real adventure had begun. Oddly enough, it only took a few weeks to completely detach from this representation of myself and see it merely as modeled material.”
Touring the festival circuit back in 2018/19, it’s taken a while for The Subject to make its way online, but the short has lost none of its impact during that time. The latest film from Bouchard, in a career that’s spanned over 20-years, if you want to check out more work from the Canadian animator then see the link below.