Days of Darkness

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Days of Darkness
Directed by	Denys Arcand
Produced by	Denise Robert Daniel Louis
Written by	Denys Arcand
Starring	Marc Labrèche Diane Kruger Sylvie Léonard Emma de Caunes Didier Lucien
Music by	Philippe Miller
Cinematography	Guy Dufaux
Editing by	Isabelle Dedieux
Release date(s)	December 7, 2007 (wide release)
Running time	104 minutes
Country	Canada
Language	French
Preceded by	The Barbarian Invasions
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

This article is about the film. For the Testament album, see Days of Darkness (album).

Days of Darkness (French: L’Âge des ténèbres, also known as The Age of Ignorance) is a 2007 Quebec comedy/drama film directed by Denys Arcand. It is the third part of Arcand's trilogy which began with The Decline of the American Empire and the Academy Award-winning The Barbarian Invasions.

[edit] Synopsis

Jean-Marc Leblanc (Marc Labreche) is living the ideal North American life. He has a big house, a safe civil service job, a wife who is a go-getter businesswoman, and two kids. But the wife and kids ignore him, and as for the job, it' is a help agency... he meets with people with horrifying (and also very funny, for most of the film is a black comedy) problems and explains why the government can do nothing to help them. Ah, but it's such a sensitive agency! No smoking is allowed within a mile of the government office, the word "black" cannot be applied to people (you must call them "of equatorial origin"), and when a desperate woman arrives seeking help for her sick father, she is told the offices are closed for sensitivity training. You want the people who "help" you to be sensitive, don't you, the guard asks her. It's a lot like the film "Brazil" Punctuating this are delicious fantasy scenes in which gorgeous women swoon at the sight of our hero. But even those fantasy creatures develop minds of their own. Almost by chance, Leblanc meets a woman at a speed-dating event who leads him to a world of medieval pagentry, which Leblanc comes to realize is as phony as the commercial world he detests. The plot doesn't end here. There's struggle, resolution and redemption too.