After eight films and a limited series, Xavier Dolan says he’s retiring from filmmaking. The news comes from Spanish outlet El País, who interviewed the filmmaker about his new limited series “The Night Logan Woke Up.” Despite premiering the series’ first two episodes at Sundance this past January, an American release for it has yet to be announced. And that’s why Dolan’s retiring; after another HBO series he commited to, he plans to leave behind movies and TV for good.
“I don’t feel like committing two years to a project that barely anyone sees,” Dolan explained to El País. “I put too much passion into it to have these disappointments. It makes me wonder if my filmmaking is bad, and I know it’s not.” Dolan also said “The Night Logan Woke Up” was financially difficult for him. “I have not earned anything with the series, I invested my salary in the production and my father had to lend me money,” he continued. “It is a very thankless process, I am tired and discouraged. The simplest solution is to direct publicity and build me a house in the country”.
Dolan’s comments follow up similar ones he made to Le Journal de Montréal last year about stepping away from filmmaking, claiming exhaustion and frustration with the medium’s current landscape. “I don’t really want to do this job anymore,” he said last year. “I’m tired. We are in 2022, and the world has changed drastically. Me, in that world, I no longer necessarily feel the need to tell stories and to relate to myself. I want to take time to be with my friends and family. I want to shoot commercials and build myself a house in the country one day when I have enough money saved. I don’t say that in a sad way at all. I just want to live something else, other experiences.”
That sense of exhaustion from the interview last year carried over to Dolan’s call with El País. “I don’t understand what is the point of telling stories when everything around us is falling apart,” Dolan said. “Art is useless and dedicating oneself to the cinema, a waste of time…” He followed up those comments by referring to a quote by animator Hayao Miyazaki. “He says that making movies only gives you suffering,” Dolan continued. “I confirm it.” So how does Dolan plan to bow out? “Before the pandemic, I promised to shoot a series for HBO in English, which is still in an embryonic state,” said the filmmaker. “I’m going to keep my word and then I’ll quit.”
After taking world cinema by storm with early career hits like “I Killed My Mother,” “Tom At The Farm,” and “Mommy,” Dolan won the Grand Prix and the Ecumenical Jury Prize at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival for “It’s Only The End Of The World.” But some critics met the Cannes jury’s decision to award Dolan harshly. Dolan’s next film, 2017’s “The Death And Life Of John F. Donovan,” was a critical and commercial disaster, although the director sticks by the movie. “It is a film that I like, although I could not delve as deep as I would have liked, for reasons that it is better that the public does not know”, Dolan told El País about that film, which starred Kit Harington, Natalie Portman, and Susan Sarandon, among others.
After the backlash over “Donovan,” Dolan premiered “Matthias & Maxime” at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. But the film received only muted praise and a severely limited release. Dolan muses that the subject matter of his film is part of the reason for his career’s sudden downsing. “I’m interested in filming men with internal dilemmas, a bit monstrous, with demons they fight, who express themselves with verbal and often physical violence,” he explained. “They hide a deep crack and a great need to be loved. Life has hurt them and they hurt themselves. They don’t love each other, so they don’t know how to love either.”
But now Dolan wants to veer away from that subject matter, and filmmaking entirely. “Men’s violence scares me more and more, because I don’t know how to calm it down,” he continued. “When I see bearded men protesting outside a California school against the teaching of LGBTI+ history, it seems like an image of the end of the world. I am afraid of a civil war provoked by intolerance, by fear of the difference that we represent. They are convinced that we want to subdue them, when we do not have the will to dominate anyone. Our aspiration is to live and let others live”.
It’s hard to hear any filmmaker decry the importance of art and storytelling, especially in a period where the imaginative possibilities of cinema feel so dire and necessary. But perhaps Dolan is just burnt out and needs time to restore himself after a handful of creative failures. Any dedicated artist is familiar with those—best of luck to Mr. Dolan on his remaining projects. Let’s hope he reconsiders his decision to retire so early.
