It’s been said that art finds its highest form in the Grecian tragedy. After watching The Bacchae, it’s easy to see why. Scapegoat Carnivale’s production of Euripides’ classic benefits from an original translation by director Andreas Apergis and assistant director Joseph Shragge. The resulting textual clarity aided the talented cast in conveying a story convulsing with hubris, violence, and painful horror—a tale that, after nearly 2,500 years, still packs quite a punch.

How is a god born? From another god’s thigh, of course. Dionysus’ mortal mother was killed while he was still a fetus; Zeus’ flesh became the supplemental womb. As if such an experience wasn’t traumatic enough, the entire mortal side of Dionysus’ family rejected him. It’s blasphemy; it’s sacrilege! This is the tale told by the young god at the beginning of the story; teen angst coursing through divine veins is a fearsome sight indeed.

Alex McCooeye’s Dionysus trembles with rage and vengeance that borders on the psychotic. The modern conception of the god of drunken revelry caricatures the original in this regard; McCooeye’s fragile and off-kilter performance reminds us of the frightful wrath of gods.

This wrath is directed towards Thebes, where his mortal family resides. The King, Pentheus, refuses to accept Dionysus’ divine status, even after the women of his city are driven by the god into a frenzied ecstasy. Wolves suckle at their breasts. Milk flows out of the ground when they scratch at it with their fingers. Wild beasts are ripped apart by their bare hands. That Pentheus precipitates his own grizzly doom (though not before a scene of unexpected humour) by wilfully ignoring all this comes at no surprise—this is a Grecian tragedy after all.

Brett Watson’s Pentheus finds a mostly singular note of throttled rage and impotent indignity, though it serves the character well while verbally sparring with the disguised Dionysus. In the latter parts of the play, the now-enraptured noble fully externalizes the fool; Watson fleshes out these dimensions with skill—the subtle sighs and vocal quiverings heighten the comic horror of the moment—but even this results after a transition that is all too brief.

Amongst the supporting cast, Teiresias (Greg Kramer) is a stand-out, dominating his scenes with full-bodied, nuanced enunciation. Equally stunning is the Messenger (Paul Van Dyck). From his lips sprung the most violent and fantastical imagery, more vivid than any graphic representation could ever aspire to achieve. The purity, the monumentality of the terror inspired by Van Dyck’s speech as well as that of the Attendant (Karl Graboshas), are easily the show’s highlights. Agave (France Rolland) is the clearest fusion of oral and physical virtuosity; as the mother of Pentheus, Agave epitomizes anguish in the production, and Rolland fulfils this role with expert precision.

The five-member Greek chorus serves as an amiable interlude to scenes, though ultimately, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Harmonization across the vocalists is incredible, euphoric even, but solo segments have mixed results. Brian Lipson’s score—a concoction that oscillates between unremarkable golden hues and contemplative minor dissonance—seems uninspired. Leslie Baker’s choreography is as simple and unvaried as the chorus members’ facial expressions, and its execution sorely lacks synchronicity.

A separate choir at the back of the theatre contributes to a near-surround sound experience—a fantastic decision that could be utilized even more fully. This creative use of the whole of theatrical space is evidenced by the staging of many characters throughout, and is equally beneficial to the performance. Erwann Bernard’s lighting design generally opts for the unobtrusive, and is not without a few moments of thoughtfulness. Francis Farley’s minimalist-yet-functional set design is similarly spartan, and it appropriately allows for the focus to be on the cast itself.

If the goal of Scapegoat Carnivale is the revivification of ancient masterpieces for a contemporary audience, The Bacchae is undoubtedly a success. Traditionally, the play is an important form of ritual worship of Dionysus; I suspect the god of revelry and ecstasy, looking down from Olympus, would be proud of this production.

The Bacchae  runs through Oct. 20 at the Centaur Theatre (453 Saint-François-Xavier Rd.) Tickets are $18 for students.

Brian Knappenberger, the writer and director of We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists, claims to have compiled a documentary which explores the roots of hacktivism. What Knappenberger has created, in fact, is a fawning, if well-intentioned, tribute to Anonymous—the loose virtual collective which originated on the 4chan message board.

4chan, and its /b/ section (the anything-goes message board) in particular, is one of the internet’s most unique locales. Something akin to cyberpunk writer William Gibson’s Walled City, 4chan is an online community brimming with silliness, biting sarcasm, and posts aiming to shock even the die-hard denizens of the internet. By default, all posts are made under the username ‘Anonymous’, leading to the joke that the board is actually populated by the postings of a single trigger-happy user.

Over time, 4chan users began to band together to take part in practical jokes, or harass other users en-masse. These forays (referred to as raids) gradually developed into a haphazard commitment to vigilante justice, with Anonymous hacking into a notable neo-Nazi’s email and revealing that he was, in fact, an FBI informant. While a certain cadre  of the group objected to this do-gooder stance, such campaigns continued, with the majority of Anonymous fighting against censorship by Scientology and Middle Eastern governments alike.

We Are Legion channels the furious energy that simmers beneath Anonymous’ masks, their rebellious nature, and their acute sense of injustice, but it sorely lacks any second opinions. If the distributed denial-of-service attacks employed by Anonymous in protest of Paypal’s suspension of service to Wikileaks (while still serving organizations such as the KKK) are the modern-day equivalent of civil rights sit-ins, as various hacktivists assert, where are the comments by ACLU members and civil rights scholars? If, as Anonymous claim, they were of some help to dissidents throughout the Arab Spring, where are the men and women who put their lives at risk in Tunisia and Egypt, grateful for the virtual assistance they received while speaking out against oppressive rule? These accounts may very well corroborate Anonymous’ statements—their exclusion, however, leaves the impression that that the viewer didn’t get the whole story.

Neither does the film address in depth the instances of internet activism preceding the rise of Anonymous. Knappenberger presents a slick, streamlined version of hacktivism—in the beginning, groups like L0pht and Cult of the Dead Cow were loosely interested in the idea, and a group named Electronic Disruption Theatre took a stand against Lufthansa’s allowance of planes to deport refugees. Anonymous then came about, and after playing some jokes using avatars in online chat rooms, the group grew in strength. How can Knappenberger retell the history of hacktivism without the slightest mention of 1997’s mass takeover of Indonesian government websites, in protest of its policy on East Timor (one of the first instances of a large-scale act of hacktivism)? What about the virtual sit-ins of U.S. and Mexican government websites, aimed at bringing attention to indigenous rights in Mexico?

These omissions stem from Knappenberger’s somewhat misguided vision for the film. We Are Legion portrays Anonymous as the culmination of internet activism; the volatile democratic apogee of political participation, in line with the internet century’s liberal, populist ethos. Had Knappenberger seen fit to tell the story of hacktivism itself, he would not have portrayed Anonymous as the alpha and omega, but merely an important part of a larger, more complex whole. The sad result, wherein hacktivism is equated with Anonymous, falsely relegates the remainder of the term’s history to Wikipedia stubs.

We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists opens at Cinema du Parc this Friday, Oct. 19

A unique opportunity to see works by Degas, Gauguin, Monet, Pissaro, as well as twenty-one canvases by Renoir, has opened at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA). More than a million people worldwide have already viewed the 75 Impressionist paintings on loan from the Sterling and Francine Clarke Art Institute, but this is the first time the collection has come to Canada.

According to Nathalie Bondil, the director of the MMFA and chief curator of this exhibit, “Impressionism has become the best loved and most popular art movement of all time, and yet it turned the world of Western art upside down, restructuring it [into] what it is today. More than a style of painting, it crystallized the aspirations of an era of profound changes in society.” Once Upon a Time… Impressionism makes it easy to see why.

The show is organized in line with new research in art history. It tells the story of Impressionism while keeping abreast of the historical context, and deals with themes such as ecology and optical science, the momentum of modern life, art as a commodity, artistic subversion as a manifestation of political progress, and Impressionism’s role in women’s liberation. If you’ve ever wondered why a particular movement is important, or why we should care about art, do not miss this exhibit (nor the incredible information and quotes printed on the walls throughout the exhibit).

In particular, make sure to catch a glimpse of Renoir’s “Peonies” (begin close and move back slowly to experience a focal change in the canvas from blur to near-photographic), “Sleeping Girl,” the famous “A Box at the Theatre—At the Concert,” and “Blonde Bather.” Monet’s “Tulip Fields at Sassenheim, near Leiden” is quintessential Impressionism. Pissaro’s “Road: Rain Effect” beautifully conveys a nostalgic rainy day feeling. Degas’ “Dancers in the Classroom” and sculpture “Little Dancer of Fourteen Years” will demand close examination. Gérôme’s “The Snake Charmer” brings to life the stereotypical European view of the ‘exotic’ Middle East in sharp hyper-realism and unparalleled image depth. Stevens’ “A Duchess—The Blue Dress” is visually intriguing due to the velvet of the subject’s dress.

The hype surrounding the exhibit is more than merited. Be prepared to spend a couple of hours walking through the four rooms of the show, completely absorbed by the paintings themselves; approaching them up close (unlike many exhibits of famous works, only a thin sheet of glass separates the canvas from the viewer) to peer at the prominent, often pixel-like, brushstrokes characteristic of Impressionism, and then moving back across the room to observe the optical illusion of each stroke and smear of garish colour blending together into a cohesive whole. The two hours I spent at the exhibit weren’t anywhere near enough; art lovers, plan for a second visit.

Once Upon a Time… Impressionism: Great French Paintings from the Clarke is at the MMFA until January 20th. Tickets are $12 for those under 30; $10 Wednesday evenings from 5 to 9 p.m.

“Montreal has it all.”

This was how I neatly summed up the city, when writing home about my first impressions of my student-exchange destination. And it would seem that the world-renowned Italian photographer Mimmo Jodice agrees, putting Montreal in league with an impressive list of the worlds’ metropolises featured in his photo exhibition Sublime Cities, at the McCord Museum.

I was lucky enough to attend the exhibition’s vernissage, and in my eagerness,  arrived too early. The woman who welcomed me looked slightly stressed as she checked her watch and twisted her bracelet, before deciding to pull back the no-entry rope at the exhibit’s entrance, telling me to take a quick tour of it before everyone else arrived. She then hurried off, leaving me to embark on a solitary tour of the world through Jodice’s lens.

A journey from the history-filled cities of ancient Europe to the (by comparison) modernized capitals of America and Asia, Sublime Cities places Montreal in a unique position at the meeting point of two different worlds: the antique Europe of Naples, Venice, Rome, and Paris, where Jodice’s aesthetic inspiration was born, and the flashy skylines of steel and glass in the skyscraper-dominated urban centres of New York, Tokyo, and Sao Paolo. Montreal, as a city which is still developing and asserting its rich European heritage in a strongly North American-influenced geographic setting, lies at the very heart of this clash of cultures.

The exhibition could have focused on this fairly obvious juxtaposition of the old and the new; however, Mimmo Jodice is not merely documenting the specific features of the different cities he visits, contrasting the antique and the modern. He also seeks something beyond the visual. His dozen black and white photos of Montreal portray some of the city’s most significant landmarks, yet the manner in which they are taken adds new dimensions of mystery to scenes normally taken for granted. Through Mimmo Jodice’s lens, Montreal emerges as an ethereal metropolis, taking on the very definition of sublime.

When I returned to the museum foyer, the floor was packed with what I presumed to be art and photography connoisseurs, all well-dressed and drifting about while elegantly sipping their wine. Three glasses of wine, numerous canapés, and 45 minutes of excellent people-watching later, the few hundred guests were finally allowed to view the exhibition. As people slowly started jostling their way into the exhibition rooms, elbowing each other in order to actually see the photographs, I snuck out and made my way home, feeling strongly inspired to fire off a few more e-mails about my study-abroad experiences, this time concluding them all with the words: “Montreal is sublime.”

Mimmo Jodice—Sublime Cities runs from Oct. 11 2012 to Mar. 3 2013 at the McCord Museum. General admission $14, student admission $8.