Quote:
"The film takes a statement from then-Prime Minister of Canada Pierre Trudeau ('Reason over passion, that is the theme of all of my writings') as its cohering element, as its caveat about devaluing assumptions and emotions in the search for (supposed) rationality and truth. [...] Trudeau's statement is rendered incoherent, literally, by the seemingly random scrambling of the letters of the alphabet that make up his original utterance and, metaphorically, in what (if anything) this statement says about Canada. In so doing, Wieland makes a powerful statement about what becomes of passion in the face of obsessive ordering and rationality; it loses meaning, it loses sense."
-- James Missen

Source:
Missen, James. "Reason over Passion." In The Cinema of Canada, edited by Jerry White. London: Wallflower, 2006. (p. 64)