Cannes 2011

[Nothing]

"Long and dull." seems to be the common refrain on twitter, re: Once Upon a Time in Anatolia...Chances of it being a serious contender for the palm seems remote.

How long have I been saying this. If they're not persuaded by Tree they sure as hell won't be persuaded by Ceylan, at least not for the Palme. And yet, it does sound like Ceylan's most interesting work to date, in particular for being shot on 35mm rather than HD.

Smithee's predictiions all look pretty solid.

Will jury president Robert De Niro go for something close to his heart or opt for something very, very different from the kind of film he would be in? People tend to assume the latter, and yet two years ago jury chief Isabelle Huppert presided over a jury that gave the prize to her friend and collaborator Michael Haneke. So I don't know.

Seems he's been reading the Criterion forum again! Although I'm no longer sure where this line of reasoning gets us... Which film is most like A Bronx Tale?

[kemalettin]

"Long and dull." seems to be the common refrain on twitter, re: Once Upon a Time in Anatolia...Chances of it being a serious contender for the palm seems remote.

How long have I been saying this. If they're not persuaded by Tree they sure as hell won't be persuaded by Ceylan, at least not for the Palme. And yet, it does sound like Ceylan's most interesting work to date, in particular for being shot on 35mm rather than HD.

it was shot on F35 not 35mm

[Hunter]

So it seems that Kim Ki-Duks Arirang and the Andreas Dresens Halt Auf Freier Strecke shared the top in Certain Regards category.
And special prize of the jury was awarded to Elena.

Edit:
Also Mohammad Rasolouf got the Directors Prize for Be omid e didar.

[Alan Smithee]

HA! Wow. Can't believe Arirang pulled that out.

[Amy Racecar]

The Cannes Ecumenical Jury, which apparently exists, gave their top prize to This Must Be The Place.

FIPRESCI gave awards to Le Havre, The Minister, and Take Shelter.

Edit: In other 'shit I've never heard of' news, the Palme Dog went to Uggy for The Artist, while the Jury Prize went to Laika for Le Havre.

Edit again: Sorry to leave you all gripped in agonizing suspense, but the Queer Palme was awarded to Skoonheid.

[Nothing]

Well... Kusturica may be a Nazi, but he and Bradshaw appear to have done a solid job on the UCR Jury! Something I fear won't be repeated tonight... It would appear that Elena, Arirang and Hors Satan should have been in Competition in place of The Source, Ichimei and Pater.

Nb. I see Variety have edited their review of Anatolia to take out the 35mm reference. Strike that one off my 'to watch' list, then...

[Nothing]

Okay, so I'm going to have to admit, it's become a particularly difficult Competition to call this year. There's been a very strong selection for starters, with half a dozen or more films that might've taken the Palme d'Or had they'd been in Competition last year (the Malick would've been a shoo-in in 2010, and if he now doesn't win I imagine Pohlad and others will be cursing). In addition to this, we have a Jury President who is unlikely to impose his own will and a Jury that is otherwise split between middlebrow auteurs and purveyors of genre. Nick James' encounter with one Jury member (a process of deduction would suggest Linn Ullmann) suggests that Tree of Life may have propelled itself over the heads of most of them and out of contention. One might also say there would be something poetic, and strangely inevitable, about the star of The Mission returning to Cannes 25 years later to preside over a similar awards travesty. Regardless of what happens, Tree is the film people will still be watching 25 years from now, alongside Offret... Anyway:

Palme d'Or: Le Havre
Grand Prix: The Artist
Jury Prize: Polisse + Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
Best Director: Dardennes, Kid with a Bike
Best Actor: Michael Fuith, Michael
Best Actress: Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin
Best Screenplay: Moretti, Habemus Papam + Sorrentino, This Must Be the Place
Special Mention: Tree of Life

Would've liked to find a space for the Almodovar, but there we go.

[knives]

a Jury that is otherwise split between middlebrow auteurs and purveyors of genre.

I wouldn't call Mahamat Saleh HAROUN either middlebrow nor a purveyor of genre (though I don't see why that last quality is a bad thing). I personally trust him and To to do the right thing, maybe Assayas too though he strikes me as being in the same boat as De Niro. That's with me being ignorant to three of the other jurors work (though by your comments I assume Ullmann is a good quality critic).

[Nothing]

Haroun is an entirely unexceptional filmmaker, the token African.

Re: Nick James' source - who else would be stopping outside the Palais to talk to Nick James? De Niro? Jude Law? Uma? To? Some HK actress? I don't think so. Assayas maybe, but if Assayas liked a film he wouldn't be shrugging his shoulders in pre-emptive defeat (imho, if there's anything worse than a jury member with bad taste, it's a jury member with good taste who doesn't fight for their choices). It has to be either Ulmann or Haroun and, of those two, Ulmann seems more likely.

[knives]

I've found the work of his I've seen to be some of the better stuff to come out of Africa. His movies manage to work in their political whatever without being terribly obnoxious and has a well structured look to them that is so rare in this modern era and even more so in a lot of third world cinema. To relegate him as only a token African seems far too dismissive.

[Nothing]

The combination of Daratt and A Screaming Man were enough to plonk him firmly on my ignore list. Sorry, but I'm not going to forgive poorly-structured, preachy narratives, poor acting and sub-par photography just because there's little-to-no decent cinema coming out of the African continent.

The essential problem with most third-world cinema is intensified when it comes to Africa - that the vast majority of citizens in these countries are simply too poor and too uneducated to ever make a film and those who can tend to come from tiny, complacent, ruling elites, knowing full well that as long as they throw in a few liberal-humanist cliches even a mediocre effort will allow them to bask in the glow of international glory, a 'representative' of all those peasants they so happily tread on day in day out. Said filmmaker gets to live the high life whilst critics, programmers and distributors get to assauge their white liberal guilt and bourgeois western audiences can pretend they're interested in the plight of the third world at dinner parties - a mutually beneficial relationship.

[knives]

I don't find that at all in his films and you of all people I find it shocking to here negativity toward third world cinema. I think Africa has actually given some of the better movies of recent year and is probably my favorite place for third world cinema. I disagree on every aspect with you. The preachiness especially I found to be a nice change of pace in that his films while having a political aim aren't the least bit preachy with those politics sneaking right up and surprising me. I have no clue what you mean by sub-par photography either. for his short Expectations alone I find his photography to be excellently performed with gorgeous hues while his features use naturalism better than most. The other two aspects I am so clueless as to what you could be referring to that I can't give a proper response.

[Nothing]

So says the man who just called Mizoguchi a "no talent".

Nb. I think a good start would be to stop talking and thinking about "third world cinema" altogether, with all of the triumph-against-adversity and underdog status that implies. Cinema is a bourgeois artform and the likes of Haroun, Kiarostami, Weerasethakul and Inarittu are no more representatives of the poor than James Cameron or Michael Bay (nb. Haroun has lived in France since 1982!)

[knives]

And I was able to defend myself. Whether you agreed with my points or not you have to give me that much. You on the other hand have made proclamations with no backing by evidence. Tell me how Haroun is preachy compared to say Ghobadi (who I also enjoy a great deal) for example.

[matrixschmatrix]

The combination of Daratt and A Screaming Man were enough to plonk him firmly on my ignore list. Sorry, but I'm not going to forgive poorly-structured, preachy narratives, poor acting and sub-par photography just because there's little-to-no decent cinema coming out of the African continent.

The essential problem with most third-world cinema is intensified when it comes to Africa - that the vast majority of citizens in these countries are simply too poor and too uneducated to ever make a film and those who can tend to come from tiny, complacent, ruling elites, knowing full well that as long as they throw in a few liberal-humanist cliches even a mediocre effort will allow them to bask in the glow of international glory, a 'representative' of all those peasants they so happily tread on day in day out. Said filmmaker gets to live the high life whilst critics, programmers and distributors get to assauge their white liberal guilt and bourgeois western audiences can pretend they're interested in the plight of the third world at dinner parties - a mutually beneficial relationship.

Jesus Christ, do you ever actually watch a movie before you decide what you think about it

[knives]

He hadn't wrote that second paragraph when I posted, but that's disgusting and absurd in it's simplification. Firstly what I get out of film makers like Haroun or Sembene has nothing to do with politics. It's primarily a love of the story and the way the characters are built. Hell in Sembene's case I first became interested in him because I heard that his films were very funny. I couldn't care less about the politics surrounding the films. At closest I have taken a slightly anthropological interest in how these countries have evolved over the years, but the same thing applies even with American cinema.

Secondly to say you need to be educated to make a film is such a stupid concept. Anybody can make a film and with the advent of digital technology that is more true than ever. Clearly the question is if they can make good cinema which most of the time is a no as it is anywhere else, but that has nothing to do with education.

[Nothing]

Perhaps Haroun's motives aren't as cynical as some. He's essentially a French filmmaker making films about Chad - which is fair enough - but I just don't think he's very good at it, and he does clearly trade on his background to get noticed ("Chad's only filmmaker!"). If I haven't gone into detail it's because the films were so unmemorably medicore, and I have no desire to see either again. I do recall Daratt being centred around some clunkily constructed moral dilemma, with a humanist 'lesson' at the end that would look cheesy in an episode of Oprah. Technically, it looked like a student film from the 1980s.

p.s. anybody can wave a camcorder around, but that's really not the same thing as creating a work of film art. By education I simply mean the ability to think critically, to even care about intellectual concepts, rather than, say, thinking about where the next meal is going to come from, and in terms of cinema it means having had the opportunity to at least experience the full possibilities of the medium - difficult in a country where, Haround admits, there is only one cinema, and that one cinema is positioned inside a French enclave, with ticket prices that could feed a family for a month.

[knives]

He is clearly not the only film maker in Chad, just ask Issa Serge Coelo. Also what would make it for a native 'fully' African person to make cinema and it not seem cloying or cynical to you? I mentioned earlier Sembene, who tackled a whole host of issues and fought the French with his cinema (though I find how he integrates the Senegal culture with the modern one better), does he pass by you erratic standards?

[Nothing]

Sembene was a great talent, obviously, and not a member of any elite, a product of exceptional circumstances at the end of WWII. I see no-one to replace him.

[knives]

p.s. anybody can wave a camcorder around, but that's really not the same thing as creating a work of film art. By education I simply mean the ability to think critically, to even care about intellectual concepts, rather than, say, thinking about where the next meal is going to come from, and in terms of cinema it means having had the opportunity to at least experience the full possibilities of the medium - difficult in a country where, Haround admits, there is only one cinema, and that one cinema is positioned inside a French enclave, with ticket prices that could feed a family for a month.

There have been many great film makers that were not educated in film before they entered the field. I believe David Lean was entirely banned from such entertainments until he actually started working in film and of course Agnes Varda famously didn't know much about film before going in and that may have made her all the better. Anybody with the right sense can make a great film. Those that wave around camcorders (admittedly in the majority) are terrible but that doesn't mean everyone is that sort of film maker.

[Nothing]

? Lean was a cinephile in his teens and twenties and then spent 15 years working in the industry before turning his hand to direction. Varda was a professional photographer who studied Art History in Paris.

Honestly, how many feted 'third world' filmmakers can you point to who were born into poverty? Sembene, an emigrate to France, is about as close as it gets, but an illegal illigrant wouldn't be able to advance themselves in that fashion in the modern world.

We're getting way off track here.

[MichaelB]

Yes, I was slightly baffled by the reference to Lean, whose career was entirely typical of a British filmmaker at that time - he got a low-level studio job in 1928 (as a clapper boy, in his case) and worked his way up, becoming arguably the best editor in British cinema in the 1930s before turning director in 1942.

This was such a common way into the industry that it was completely unexceptional (Alfred Hitchcock started out as a title designer and broke into directing via the art department and the odd bit of screenwriting) - and it remained the best way of breaking in decades later: Nicolas Roeg was born the year that Lean got his first industry job, and he's another one who started out as a tea boy and worked his way up (via outstanding cinematographer, in his case).

In any case, the comment that they were "not educated in film before they entered the field" is flat-out bizarre. Regardless of what knowledge they may have picked up beforehand, surely their lengthy industry apprenticeships before they were allowed to direct their first films constituted the kind of hands-on education that's worth any number of film-studies diplomas? And surely this is exactly the kind of film training that's impossible to get in countries that don't have established film industries? (It's precious hard to get in many countries that do, thanks to the fragmentation over the last few decades!)

Anyway, just to get back on topic, here's Jonathan Romney's Cannes overview and individual film round-up - he liked the Sorrentino and the Ceylan more than many.

[Finch]

There are rumours that DeNiro and co were really impressed by Kirsten Dunst. Say what you will about Lars but he does get great performances out of his leading ladies.

[Nothing]

If Melancholia wins anything it'll be Best Actress, Smithee was right about that.

[Finch]

Slant on Day 11 Ceylan etc & predictions