Joyce Wieland's masterpiece and most complex nationalist statement, Reason Over Passion is a playful, penetrating cinematic exploration of the landscape and mindscape of Canada. Taking its title from Pierre Elliot Trudeau's assertion, "Reason over passion, that is the theme of all of my writing," the film is an impressionistic train and car trip from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. In the middle of the film, when we come to Ontario, Wieland inserts a French lesson and the nationalist anthem. "With its many eccentricities, it's a glyph of Wieland's artistic personality; a lyric vision tempered by an aggressive and visionary patriotism mixed with ironic self-parody. It is a film to be seen many times."-P. Adams Sitney