Film review: Harmonium Symphonique–Histoires sans paroles blends the orchestral and surreal into sheer uplift
White rabbits and Magritte clouds, as Visions Ouest presents film of Orchestre symphonique de Montréal’s epic and affecting multimedia performance
Harmonium Symphonique—Histoires sans paroles.
Visions Ouest screens Harmonium Symphonique–Histoires sans paroles on November 1 at 7 pm, at Alliance Française (6161 Cambie Street)
A MAN IN A FEDORA and beige suit reads his newspaper, sitting on a park bench that floats a couple storeys above a live orchestra and choir. Behind him, onscreen, is a grassy park with highrises in the background. Animated curlicues of wind blow around him, shaking his paper.
It’s just one of the surreal images in Harmonium Symphonique—the film of a monumental live multimedia performance by Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, making its West Coast premiere this weekend at Alliance Française. The full-scale concert ode to the music of legendary 1970s Quebec prog-rock band Harmonium is illustrated with a mix of animated projections and live actors. The effect falls somewhere indescribable, between classical-music concert and cinematic experience, with a touch of theatre and Cirque du Soleil-esque magic thrown in.
Under the animated conducting of Dina Gilbert—who’s so contagiously enthusiastic she can’t help but belt out the “lalalas” along with the Laval Youth Choir on hand—it’s an epic treat for both ears and eyes. The production was conceived by classical-music maverick Nicolas Lemieux, the president of GSI Musique who, in 2023, made a splash with Riopelle Symphonique—the multimedia tribute to Quebec visual-art master Jean Paul Riopelle that impressed fans here with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra last April. The music for that occasion, and for Harmonium Symphonique, came care of Serge Fiori—a Quebec icon and Harmonium member who makes a moving appearance at the encore here.
It doesn’t matter if you know Harmonium’s hits, as most Quebecers do. Reimagined in full orchestral arrangements, the music is rousing and multicoloured, the arrangements ranging from harp swells to light-as-laughter flutes to rousing horns. But it’s the acoustic guitar that drives the action, making a cool companion to the strings and brass. The music could pass for a richly hued film score, with all the changing moods that entails. At two hours, and often harnessing the full power of the symphony and choir, the concert itself is a feat.
Now add the mix of artfully animated narrative projections and a few live actors. Through the images, we zoom, drone-like, over a stylized city of highrises to the park, where the man in the fedora meets a boy who climbs down from the sky on a ladder. Later, the man descends that ladder underground, past rabbit burrows, miners with shovels, industrial pipes, rocks, and crystals, to a magical world of overgrown mushrooms. Above ground, the surreal dream has shades of René Magritte paintings, with projections of puffy clouds and a sequence of floating arches and stairways. A quintet of performers in vaguely eerie white rabbit heads watch over the action, like a leporid chorus hallucinated by Lewis Carroll by way of David Lynch’s Inland Empire.
There’s much more, as the uptight man learns to connect with the boy and the world around him, the orchestra forever shifting the moods to match the morphing colour palette and seasons onscreen.
The camera moves fluidly from musician closeups to actor closeups to stunning wide shots of the whole tableau. It’s an experience fully worth catching in this rare chance to see it on the big screen with surround sound.
The moving finale, with a teary-eyed Fiori leading the entire soldout house in a rendition of the beloved Harmonium hit “Un musicien parmi tant d'autres” ensures there won't be a dry eye in the house—even for English-speaking Vancouverites who have never heard of the Quebec band. 
Harmonium Symphonique—Histoires sans paroles.
Related Articles
