Anker at Cannes

Malick Comes Home

2011-05-30T06:34:00.000-07:00

Malick's Tree of Life has come to the US but only to two cities thus far, LA and NYC. When it will arrive for the rest of us is anybody's guess, though it will supposedly open in Chicago this coming weekend.

And the critics have spoken, by and large very, very favorably, if not quite as ecstatically as they might. Some have reservations about the effectiveness of this or that in the film, for it is very much an experimental film, and some even get snide about what they see as pretentiousness, Malick asking all those big metaphysical mystery questions. Some are clearly bothered by the film's straight-on earnestness--call it sincerity, if you wish--and that sort of bugs them, for plain-spoken psycho-intellectual honesty is surely not post-modern hip. There is also, somewhat related to the hipness question, incomprehension of the sorts of questions Malick asks and the modes of perception he evokes in the film, specifically Tree's conspicuous religious content. Yeah, it's spiritual alright, but what exactly is this nebulous ether of "spirit" pervading the thing from start to finish? The notion itself is alien, and from whence Malick draws his "spiritual" fire, so to speak, goes entirely unrecognized. Otherwise very smart, astute, and lively critics, such as Andrew O'Hehir in Salon, get no further than detecting an "indecipherable spiritual allegory," and another finds all of it sort of "goofy." Actually, for those with a modicum of cultural literacy, and surely for any with a half-substantial church background, it's all pretty darn obvious, and a few critics of lesser note recognize that (see Nick Pinkerton in The Village Voice: "its characters address the gauche subject of the eternal, naturally, through the Judeo-Christian lingua franca instead of via a vague, enervated 'spirituality,'" and in this, "it is quite direct and accessible").

The most significant, and instructive, dispute over the film comes in the disagreement between two of the country's best critics, Kenneth Turan of The Los Angeles Times and A. O. Scott of The New York Times, both insightful, learned, and very articulate (Turan was one of the champions of late Polish filmmaker Krysztof Kieslowski). Turan suggests that The Tree of Life will prod audiences to ask what they want out of cinema: " serious philosophizing, fluid filmmaking and stunning images? Or...satisfying drama and deep emotional connection"? In short, Turan thinks that Malick's big questions fast go abstract and dominate at the expense of human interest. He thinks some of it is obscure, such as the long cosmic history section, and, on top of that, he doesn't think much of the audience's capacity to grasp or appreciate that sort of thing: "It is, unfortunately, characteristic of this meditative and elliptical film that it is simply not possible for rank-and-file viewers to know as much about it as Malick does." That misses the point on the sort of "knowledge" Malick is after. Oddly, for Turan is usually more perceptive, the long "family section" seems terribly bland, a rather uncommon view (for this, see Roger Ebert's hymn to that very section). Scott, on the other hand, seemingly anticipating Turan's objection, leaps to Malick's defense, deeming the film cause for "a full measure of my astonishment and admiration." More than that, opting for family drama to the exclusion of metaphysical ponderings would be akin to Melville leaving out the whale in Moby Dick to settle for "a lively tale of a whaling voyage." Scott's best comment, one that pretty well summarizes what Malick is after in The Tree of Life, gets to the soul of the film: "The sheer beauty of this film is almost overwhelming, but as with other works of religiously minded art, its aesthetic glories are tethered to a humble and exalted purpose, which is to shine the light of the sacred on secular reality." Amen.

So SEE IT. DO, TWICE. And bring friends, neighbors, relatives, and pets. In Imax if possible, or at least on a big screen, and sit to the front in the middle. After all, first and last, Malick wishes to envelop viewers with a world unlike any they've ever seen (or dreamed), for in the film's central image, one repeated multiple times and in which Malick clearly exults, light shines in the darkness.

A Day at Cannes

2011-05-18T12:52:00.000-07:00

Cannes sounds pretty exotic, and it is an awfully nice place, for sure, situated on a lovely bay with hills and then mountains beyond those. At this time of year, it is lovely with temperatures in the low 70s and a gentle breeze. Cannes begins the Cote d'Azur, a fabled shoreline that ends, at least in popular lore, with Monaco, the small kingdom of Grace Kelly. It is no wonder, then, that when the notion of the Cannes Film Festival comes up, most folks conjure an image of attendees lolling about in penthouse garden soirees with movie stars or leisurely strolling the Croisette among the beautiful people with an appropriately exotic alcoholic beverage in hand. Truth is that this sort of thing usually happens just in the movies, though in actuality it may work for a very few of the megarich and famous. For the overwhelming hordes here, however, such dreamscapes are just that, dreams, and big ones at that. Not even movie stars can get away with it, for they are, poor souls, celebrities, and they really don't belong to themselves. They can try strolling, but chances are they would fast experience an agonizing demise by a stampede of crazed humans called fans.

At the Film Festival, most people at Cannes are plain-old working stiffs. If you're in the industry, it is trying to hustle product because Cannes is preeminently a marketplace for great numbers of foreign and domestic films seeking a distributor so whoever paid for production can get their money back and maybe even profit. Straight to video is not usually deemed success.

And for the journalists, of which there are many from all around the world, it tends to be work. Me, I typically catch a 7:10 AM train each morning for the short ride to Cannes. Three blocks walk from the station, and I'm in line by 7:40 for the first press showing of the day, which begins at 8:30. And after that, back in line for a late morning viewing. These are films in the main competition, films such as Malick's The Tree of Life and von Trier's Melancholia. In the afternoon, usually without lunch other than an energy bar, it's off to one or two afternoon or early evening showings the Un Certain Regard series of somewhat to very unconventional films. Happily, that is where some of the best film comes round. Still, in betweeen are many waits, chutes, and gates that might well lead to a theater, provided, that is, that you got there early enough. And often, there are three good places to be at once, and to be sure, it is humanly impossible to take in all of the best. Besides catching up on some reading, I've spent considerable time trying to discover the system with which the Cannes folks schedule films. Predictability is not their forte.

Arrival back in Juan les Pins and my Best Western is anywhere from 6:30 to 8, followed by a bit of work and dinner somewhere. A couple of times a day I stop in the Press Room (actually several rooms attached). These include a small lounge, workstations, computers, and lots of receptacles for plug-ins devices. That is a lovely spot in the rear of the Palais that looks to the east upon the Croisette and to the west the bay, and the large sliding windows let in ample breeze. That is the spot where I am happily writing this, sipping the limitless supply of potent French coffee the Festival provides for the decidedly unglamorous working folk. They number many, and they really do slave away. Bon soir.

The Coming of Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life

2011-05-16T12:09:00.000-07:00

The big moment at Cannes has come and gone, the showing of Terrence Malick's long-awaited, the Tree of Life, starring Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, and Sean Penn. The film was due out a year ago, and the talk then was that it would premiere at Cannes, which the attending producers admitted was their goal as well. For a brief survey of Malick's career and thought, see my overview piece (http://www.booksandculture.com/articles/2010/sepoct/mysteriousnature.html).

Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life is certainly the most unusual film you are ever going to see or, perhaps, for that matter, that has ever been made. It reaches to do things that no other film as ever tried, save perhaps for someone like Andrei Tarkovsky. And it is also a profound venture of religious/theological vision, with emphasis on the rudiments of vision, meaning very specifically the seeing part, for that is what happens in this film. Malick strives to convey what it is like as experience to see a world that is infused with light everywhere as a staggering kind of beauty--from the start of creation itself to the very present now. And the hearing part, as with the Word, is there as well with a resplendent score largely consisting of rapturous liturgical music of various kinds, though the music also swings to plumb the agony of loss.

Its epigraph is from Job, asking where any one was when the morning stars sang for joy, and that is exactly what much of the film tries to capture, including fifteen gorgeous minutes of cosmic history. And there are, especially in the opening section, a trainload of voiceover biblical reference, though I doubt if the Cannes audience, a pretty thoroughly secular assembly, noted them as such. And again it is, frankly, stunning--all of it--even when it turns dark in exploring what Malick calls "nature," where it explores the religious and psychological legacy of cruelty and asks hard, Job-like questions. Foremost, though, is the delineation of what Malick labels "grace," an exultant take on Pauline contemplations on the Love that cast the world into being and "shines" still in all that is, radiant and enrapturing.

Needless to say, this sort of thing took the Cannes bunch by surprise. At the press conference with cast (Pitt and Chastain) and crew (Malick was typically absent, his last interview in print in the 1970s), one questioner asked, barely concealing her incredulity, if Malick actually believed in God. Pitt fielded the question, rather bravely, suggesting that Malick was certainly "spiritual" and "universal." True enough, though it is akin to adequately defining a lizard by saying it is a reptile. Pitt admitted as well that he had had many theological discussions with Malick, though was not apparently convinced by Malick's religious views (he did not elaborate). In any case, what we end up with a film that is not only one of a kind but one that moves and dazzles in every frame for its full two hours and fifteen minutes.

A weekend of viewing

2011-05-15T13:02:00.000-07:00

Sunday, May 15, Day Five

Lots of films the last couple of days. I'll mention but a few of the three I see each day.

Two good ones yesterday, The Footnote (in competition) from Israeli writer-director Joseph Cedar, a tragicomedy, or maybe comic tragedy, about two Talmud scholars, father and son, both amply competitive, caught within the academic politics of Israeli Talmud scholarship. And appropriately, The Footnote comes in Hebrew. It is told in high spirits, initially at least (think Marx Brothers), and really slick camera work and editing, and it slowly gathers weight as the full brunt of those politics, and father and son contention, gather steam. Along the way come much suspicion and self-appraisal, both scholarly and familial. And the ending is, well, as unusual as any, Cedar perhaps having written himself into a box, and a wrenching one it is. More from me would spoil that close, which does not so much resolve the puzzle as pose a new one--or several. It is a honest, memorable story that casts a hard light on academic politics, which are pretty much the same everywhere, namely often sordid admixtures of ego, power, hard labor, and idealism.

One film suggests Americans have not reckoned with the rolling terror of the Mexican drug wars. Miss Bala by Gerardo Naranjo might just help in making that a sobering reality. And it is not only the violence, but it is corruption induced by vast sums of money. A relative innocent enters the Miss Baja beauty contest, only to be engulfed, quite by accident in Baja's intense violence, all of which is captured with terrifying authenticity (Die Hard or Fast and Furious XXVII it is not). Watch and weep, for much of this is fueled by loosely-controlled American weapons and ammunition.

And today Sunday came one of the major treats of the Festival, the showing of A Kid With A Bike, a new film by two Belgium brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, twice winners of the big prize at Cannes. The new entry puts them in good stead for a three-peat, to grab some sports terminology. Their plots are remarkable and their style consistent throughout, leaning heavily on the stylistic habits of one of France's great filmmakers, Robert Bresson (Diary of a Country Priest, The Pickpocket, to mention but two) and perfecting him. And like Bresson, a conservative Roman Catholic, they carry some theological freight. All of their stories deal with Belgium's outcasts, as does this one which tells of a ten-year old boy abandoned by his father (there is no mother in sight). The child, understandably, is full of rage, at first not believing his father would do such a thing (and even sell his son's bike), and the boy rides and fights for the bike every chance he gets, on the hunt to get somewhere and find something, anything. Only the intervention of a local hairdresser (well-know French actress Cecile de France) offers the kid any hope. If one thinks, this promises to be a tear-jerker, put away the tissues. The brothers Dardenne are after far bigger game than a bit of gush and roses, and a gorgeous thing it is.

Tomorrow comes the new film by American writer-director Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life, starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn. It is, as one New York reviewer has put it, the "feverishly anticipated" event of the Festival. Check the trailer on the net, in itself a thing of beauty. And that title, most of you know where that comes from. As the trailer itself puts it, the film sketches the perennial conflict between "nature and grace" (see Malick's The Thin Red Line). More to come on that one.

Nonetheless, A Happy Note

2011-05-13T10:08:00.000-07:00

Friday, May 13, Day Three/ Afternoon

Again two films this morning, and one this late afternoon, though more on those later. Instead, a moment on the new film, Restless, by celebrated American Director Gus Van Zant (Good Will Hunting, Milk) on a screenplay by young Jason Lew, a film school friend of one of the producers. It stars the eminently successful Mia Wasikowska (Jane Eyre) as a teen-aged cancer patient who's about to die. She pals up with a troubled young man, Enoch (Henry Hopper, son of the late Dennis), who hangs out at funerals and whose only friend is a ghost, a Japanese kamikaze pilot name Yoshi (Ryo Kase). Obviously, this is not realism, to say the least, and that has really bothered early reviewers, especially hard-bitten lovers of despair. Nor are these young friends particularly believable, proving all too witty, hip, and occasionally gooey. In other words, the tale clearly displays amplified lives and thus moves toward fable.

And this would be a bad jaunt if not for the infectiousness of the characters, all wonderful creations and finely acted. And all focuses on a jaunty thematic, the pleasure, even thrill of simply being alive, something the film contends is a pretty good gig even when death speeds and parents die in accidents. The young patient (Wasikowsk) relishes being alive, especially the marvel of birds and their endless adaptiveness. A big fan of Darwin, she skips the nastiness of "nature red in tooth and claw" for its endless inventiveness and elegance as function and stunning beauty. That sort of plain giddiness about the splendors of simple being, like breathing and seeing, well, perhaps that is passe.

Still, writer Lew doesn't quite know what to do with that and with death other than to quip that we're just a blip in random time, whether long or short. And he seems not to wonder about his elation or from whence it comes. Well, all that is, I guess, just a peculiar twitch in time. even though, as he contends, the birds sing every morning in exultant response to the recognition that they are still alive. Still, great credit is due Lew and Van Zant for picturing, albeit with some gush, one sizeable metaphysical clue to what humankind is for, both before and after Darwin.

2011-05-13T10:06:00.000-07:00

Thursday, May 12, 2011/Day Two/Afternoon

Two films today so far, one more this evening, and then a short train ride to lodgings in the lovely, and blessedly quiet, seaside Ville of Juan les Pins. Thus far last evening's forecast of grimness has proven rather too true. Australian Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty is clumsy, cloyingly enigmatic, and simply bad. Why this film made it into the big arena at Cannes, so to speak, escapes me, though some point to the influence of Jane Campion, another Aussie who loves psycho-sexual undergrowth. A comely but poor college girl slides into an exotic kind of highly lucrative prostitution, and it is downhill from there. The problem is not with the premise or nudity or eroticism (of which there is not really any), all of which can benefit stories (for grown-ups), but in characterization, bad script, portentous cutting, and farcical contrivance all in behalf of who knows what psychological profundity. How a film about al of this could prove so very boring, even painful, well, that is a wonder. Aronofsky's Black Swan, another fairy-tale contrivance, was also a bad film, but it at least was mostly lovely to hear and look at, despite its churning stew of Freudian twaddle.

A much better, though equally uncheery film, is British writer-director Lynn Ramsay's We Have to Talk About Kevin, a tale of dysfunction that makes Rosemary's Baby feel like warm family melodrama. Young married Eva (Tilda Swinton in a great performance) gives up her career to mother, about which she feels ambivalence, to say the least. Sure enough, her own little Cain loathes mom from conception onward and is determined to make her suffer (potty training is a real hoot). Two things save the film: a puzzling but enticing scramble of the narrative and, in addition, a multitude of arresting visual strategies, though these sometimes come with the subtlety of sledgehammer. Nor does the heavy-duty symbolism help insofar as it disperses more red than a blood bank.

From the first frames we know little Kevin is up to no-good, and the only question that sustains the film is what horror he'll finally do to spite mommy. The finale provides a surprise that wishes to pivot the story (and maybe Kevin), but given what we've seen, it's hard to swallow, especially after all that red stuff.

At last, a post, no thanks to Blogspot

2011-05-13T09:46:00.000-07:00

HUMBLE APOLOGIES ALL, FOR THE BLOG SITE HAS DISAPPEARED FOR TWO DAYS. AT LAST, THOUGH, WE CATCH UP...

May 11, 2011/Day One

The sun is bright (very), the breeze stiff on the palms and monster yucca, and everything is just plain crowded. And lots of press conferences: the jury, Woody Allen, and others. Unfortunately, the reason most folks come here starts slowly--the films themselves

The grand opening of the 64th Cannes, replete with red carpet hoopla and gawkers aplenty, happens this evening with Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, though the film is not in the competition (his last Cannes film was Vicky, Christina, Barcelona, 2008), And it is a good film start with, for it is a very good comedy on romance, at once very funny and biting, but also, in a new chord in Allen, both fresh and gentle, less satirical and almost tender. Think of Midnight in Paris as a kind of dessert, amply sweet but light and resonant to the end.

Successful young Hollywood screenwriter Gil Bender (Owen Wilson) is off to Paris with his bride-to-be (Rachel McAdams) to try "real" writing, meaning a novel. Eva would rather be back home, larking in the garden of Malibu, but Gil adores Paris, both its look and lore. The friction worsens when her parents show up, a grating pair of come-lately rich whose sole index of "culture" is cost. Another visitor is worse still--a know-it-all academic boor whose greatest accomplishment is his omnivorous ego. Poor Gil, uncertain and fumbling, is up against.

His rescue proves whimsical and wonderfully beguiling. The past comes to him, or he to it, and he soon chums with Scott and Zelda and Ernie, himself grandly boorish in his constant blather on the glories of macho. Paris' expatriate 20s blooms (and parties) again, and Allen has great fun casting and scripting the whole gang, everyone from Dali to Picasso and Gertrude Stein.
In the end, happily, the magic of Paris still does its sweet thing, and Midnight casts its own hopeful spell for the goodness of the ordinary, even though that might have to be a Parisian ordinary. For grim and grumpy old Woody, that's a good and happy feat--and a summer movie worth going to.

It is good, too, that Cannes saw fit to open with a comedy, for usually what follows tends toward grimness, namely uncomfortably dire portraits of the human condition, something that has never made cheery fare. With any luck, or whatever, a few of the movies to follow will break that mold, and giving who's bringing films to Cannes, there's great reason to think that will indeed be the case.

The Coming of Cannes 2011

2011-05-10T10:01:00.000-07:00

May 10, 2011

Ah, this week, beginning Wednesday, it happens again, the film festival that fetches the world's attention. And well it should, for many good reasons. First, it is a genuinely global event, screening the best from the whole round world, from Kazakhstan to South Korea, Denmark to Brazil. Second, the Cannes Festival does a lot of pre-judging, selecting only those that seem significant cinematically (content and style, as the Fest puts it), whether they be from old hands, like Woody Allen or Clint Eastwood, or first-time directors.

Another virtue is that Cannes offers the very rare opportunity to view in a very short time in one small place some of the best of that global plenty. That is especially fortunate for someone from America, whose film market is terribly constricted to a fast-deteriorating Hollywood product. Many wonderful films from around the world arrive in the States only very belatedly and then only on video. For example, two delightful, moving films from 2008, O. Horten (Denmark) and Tulpan (Kazakhstan), finally came to the US on video in 2010. Or last year's much-praised Of Gods and Men, a tale of martyred French monks in Algeria, has only recently had very narrow theatrical release in the United States in only a few major cities and will not, for the rest of us, appear on video until July.

And then there are the theaters themselves, all within a stone's throw of one another and all featuring the very best playback, both visual and auditory, on wonderfully large formats.

Nor is the Festival only for the film snoot. While a few selections push the experimental, or the shocking, and some are, to be sure, just plain tedious, almost all try to make very human stories compelling. And really, over the last several millenia, not much has changed in the human condition. People still puzzle over the strangeness of being alive--its sorrows and its splendors, its thirsts and terrors--and movies, like art in general, can powerfully show all of that in remarkable fullness. At its best, storytelling, fiction though it usually is, comprises the truest stuff we have in describing just what exactly we are, saints and sinners all. At it best, all this art stuff educates the soul both to relish and cherish and protect--to see and love it all, indeed, as does God's own self.

And, oh, did I mention location? Just incidentally, of course, is the fact that Cannes happens to perch smack-on the Mediterranean in Provence on the fabled Cote d'Azur-- clear blue water, clear blue skies, and sun, sun, and more sun. And the Palais du Cinema, the Festival complex itself, sits on the shore amid lovely sand beaches (though most are private). Other film festivals happen in Berlin in, like, February and in the mountains in Utah in January.

So when it comes to Cannes, this 64th iteration, feasting is not too strong a word. The next entry will recount some of the buzz on what are likely to be the great delights of Cannes 2011.

Day 8: Three thumbs down

2008-05-23T01:04:00.000-07:00

Well, some days are like that. And more their annoyances prove more than enough, happily, to make one glad for the wonderfulness of "normal" days when things go just fine.

First, there's the matter of the trains. To save some dough on this trip, as are apparently a number of others, I'm staying in the nearby city of Nice, which is about fifteen miles from Cannes, and between the two runs the very marvelous French train system: on time, comfortable, and quiet (mostly). Except when the trainmen decide to strike, pretty much unannounced. With no train headed to Cannes to late afternoon, I headed off to the bus station, a good long stroll through central Nice, which was very nice, and I duly caught the bus, again comfortable and smooth, but with many of the trains still, the roads were jammed, as also the bus, and what was supposed to be an hour ride turned into two plus.

This part of the French coastline is densely populated in the few miles between the sea and the hedging mountains, apartment buildings upon apartment buildings engulfing the occasional single-family dwelling. Though many have wonderful views of the sea with but a highway and train tracks between them and the shore, empty it is not. Through every little town that bus dutifully plied its way, and it was interesting, at least for awhile. Eventually at Cannes we did arrive, giving just enough time to view the first film on the list for the day.

And this was the second downward thumb, this one actually having to do with movies. In many ways, La Mujer Sin Cabeza (The Headless Woman) is an artfully done film, and therein lies the problem: a little too artfully. Sometimes good ideas in story-telling go too far. The striking Argentine director Lucrecia Martel (The Holy Girl) tells the tale of prosperous middle-aged woman dentist who in a distracted moment while driving in the countryside runs into and over something, a big something. A glimpse in the sideview mirror shows a dog lying roadside, though whatever it was she struck caused a bigger result than even a good-sized canine. Dazed and confused, she later tries to figure out exactly what did happen, something that does become sort of clear, seemingly, by the finish of the film. In trying to both display and delve into the dentist's mental state, the film casts aside most shreds of narrative momentum or clarity. Scenes follow disjointedly, and the camera is constantly too close, excluding viewers from the very world and people the central character accesses (and we are never quite sure who certain characters really are--friends. lovers, children, grandchildren, servants, spouses?). The hope is that by the close the randomness of the film will gel and clarify, but instead the film just seems to end as assorted family "take care of" any incriminating evidence that might implicate the protagonist. That not just a dog died in that mishap of inattention does become apparent. And so we live our lives apparently, concealing in silent conspiracy inconvenient realities, or that seems to be the point. Maybe, probably. Interesting, yes, for this filmmaker knows well how to move a camera and withhold information, but also annoying for having been too stingy and self-conscious and coy.

Thumb three was lethal, and for the first time in decades I walked out of a film (a somewhat common practice at Cannes; if something's bad, there's always another maybe better one showing somewhere). In his second feature, Ocean Flame, Hong Kong writer-director Fendou Lui lays out the story of a petty criminal (he runs a call-girl blackmail scheme) who systematically demolishes his new girl friend, an attractive and very decent person, full of modesty and restraint. The primary means for this is psycho-sexual violence by himself and others to whom he gives sanction. Perhaps that sort of thing does happen, and perhaps it might provide a topic for exploration in film, but this is not the creature. The problem is that the predominant point of view belongs to the thug, who's given rather too much machismo cool, inviting rather too much viewer sympathy (all the other thugs in the film are blatantly repulsive personally and physically, making him look pretty good in contrast). So when he starts pushing the boundaries, one is first alarmed and then, as he goes further still, repulsed, even as our "hero" rather enjoys his stratagems (he reasons all this humiliation and suffering will toughen her up). The film does have some virtues, particularly its lovely camera work (some of this violence takes place in picturesque locales). Still, its inner dynamic and the pleasure it gives differ little from an ordinary slasher flick, and it never looks very closely at its characters. If it had, especially beyond the cardboard construction of the female victim, more would have exited. The blurb says there's redemption for him in the end (after I left)--after he kills the girl, her lovely face above a blood-filled bathtub, as the ads show. No thanks, though I could use some redemption myself for watching the schlock as long as I did.

Still, Cannes was beautiful, the sun shining all day long, and today it shines again, the trains run, and I get to see other movies. Amen.

Day 7: on parents and children

2008-05-21T05:51:00.000-07:00

The really big surprise here is a theme of sorts that has thus far emerged, at least in the fourteen films I've seen. Moreover, I would guess that no one else would ever have guessed that this would appear so prominently. This is, for sure, NOT a family values Festival, but the central focus of many films has been family, and very specifically the mother and child bond. And this is pretty international, and certainly not solely an "American thing."

The family tangle is front and center is The Three Monkeys, a Turkish film that explores the travail of a family paying the price of a boss' error, and they are already trying to recover from having lost a son. They ward off disaster and actually hang together, though tenuously. Walter Salles, the director of the gorgeous Central Station (1998), also about family, returns to the gritty urban terrain of San Paulo to treat the desperation of a hard-pressed single mother trying to raise four sons, different fathers all, and pregnant with still another child. This is sociology to some extent, and given that this film features a tenacious but not especially likeable mother, it is also without sentiment, save perhaps for the haunting and very strange ending, a reprise in a way of the sort of thing he did at the end of Central Station. Again, against all odds, that human bond in kinship, biological and relational, holds fast, though it is beset by titanic economic and cultural forces. (There's also a not very good film from the Phillipines depicting one day in the life of an extended family that runs a porn theater.)

The mother and child bond is there also in the French film Versailles, directed by Pierre Schoeller. A homeless mother, wary of the social system that might take her child, ends up in the countryside, abandoning her four year old son with another social exile who lives in the woods among others of his sort. When she has at last procured a job, and social rehab as well, she returns to the woods to retrieve him only to find that the caretaker and boy have moved on to wherever. The yearning of all for some deep, unfracturable bond roars through the film, in spite of some implausibility in its premise. Something of the same scenario shapes the new film by the wonderful Dardenne brothers (La Promesse, The Son, and L'enfant, winner of the big prize here in 2005). In The Silence of Lorna a young Albanian woman, working for a small freelance immigration mob, risks her pivotal status in their schemes in order to help another, an extreme and dangerous error in the eyes of her cohorts. When she finds out she's pregnant and, yes, refuses to abort, things go from dire to survival. The same happens in the Argentine film, Leonera (Lion's Den), in which a young woman ends up in prison already pregnant and living there with other women who have their families with them. In all these film stories, that family bond is made palpable, pressing, and, really, in the final analysis, inviolate, no matter what trouble it causes. Love in general is pain, and trial, and, strangely, very much worth it--and all the more so between mother and child.

No film emphases that more than the new Clint Eastwood release, presently titled L'Echange (the exchange), though what its eventual English title will be is still not resolved. It is quite a remarkable film, very much of the masterly efficient and hyper-moral filmmaking the aging director Eastwood has undertaken for what is now decades. In fact, it is fair to say that the central thematic in most all of Eastwood's late films, one after another, focuses on parents and children and guilt. In this one, a single mother (Angelina Jolie, who really can act) in 1928 LA comes home from work to find her ten year old son missing. And there the nightmare merely begins, for she has to deal with an unfathomably corrupt and callous police department. In her fight for help she is aided by a wonderfully Presbyterian minister (John Malkovich) who rails on the radio against police intimidation and corruption. And all of this then gets tangled up in the police discovery, very reluctantly, of a nearby serial killer of children. If this sounds a bit preposterous, out-of-bounds melodrama, well, not so, for all of this is, apparently, pretty much true; parts of the film aeven coming directly, said Eastwood in his press conference here, from court testimony (google Wineville Chicken Murders).

Eastwood is very much an old-time storyteller, eschewing fancy camera and editing, though the photography and palette are very fine, and all works here very well, the story-telling hardly ever missing a beat. This confident graceful storytelling, even into the music, which Eastwood wrote himself and probably played (he is a longtime jazz pianist and has lately taken up composing for his films). The film, whatever its name, offers up a relentless portrait of police chicanery, all true, and most of all, in the story of Christine Collins (Jolie), the horror of losing those creatures that become our lives.

What all these films are up to, and what they collectively might signal about this particular cultural moment in the West, is plainly anyone's guess, but it is one worth appreciating and pondering. Maybe, in the age of Brittany, we're bothering to sober up.

A day in Cannes

2008-05-20T09:54:00.000-07:00

Cannes is, really, in just about every way, quite the place, from Festival to landscape to, well, opulence. Over the top is not all bad, especially in the first two. The Palais de Festival, the main venue for film viewing, is, mildly put, spectacular, containing numerous state of the art theaters, from small to enormous; the equipment and design are just wonderful. And behind the Palais is another enormous theater, perhaps a thousand seats, located in a tent on a roof. And still more small theaters occupy the Festival grounds. Altogether the Festival has some forty venues from those many on the Festival grounds to city theaters and hotel conference rooms.

None of this is accessible without "accreditation," and badges and briefcases are checked and rechecked. How careful the Festival is with security shows up once and awhile in sightings of big dogs of the pit bull variety, all thus far nicely muzzled. Perhaps the biggest security risk are the masses of manic photo-journalists whose monster lenses could double as a guillotine, and they wield them with abandon in cut throat competition for "the shot." Alas, the celebs show up regularly, especially if one wishes to dart around; I've seen Angelina Jolie thrice, all pretty much by accident (really). The Press Room, where I work when not in movies, is a lovely spot (see two photos above looking toward each side of the bay) equipped with wifi and endless free espresso.

Of course, there's Cannes the place, a lovely Mediterranean bay surrounded by mountains, as gorgeous a sea shore as I've seen, though Big Sur and parts of northern lower Michigan compete. The sun helps, which has made rare appearance so far, though on the Sabbath it held forth, shining mightily all day long, and I worshipped abundantly in deepest celebration on an early long walk along the shoreline avenue, the famous palm-lined Le Croisette.

With the Croisette we come to the opulence part, and that is indeed over the top, chic hotel upon chic hotel upon elegant apartment building and occasional swank restaurant where breakfast can be had for a mere 80 Euros (about $120). It is all sparkly and more than a little enticing, and it goes on and on and on. For ordinary folk, there are lovely parks, occasional beaches (most all are private), endless walkway, probably all the way to Nice, and of course, the sea and the sun. A few blocks in from the shore one can find a modest meal, though not cheap, given the dollar these days.

I'm here on a Press accreditation, thanks to Books and Culture magazine, and especially its editor, John Wilson, who had the idea for the venture back last Fall. That pass gets me into most venues, save those designated for the really big folks, both in the industry and media, like the gala "red carpet" processions that show up on television. Those events, filmdom's holy sacrament, need a special invite and, yes, black tie. B&C put up some of the money for this, as did the Calvin Alumni Association and the C alvin Center for Christian Scholarship: thank you, thank you.

As for the movies, I see about two or three a day, depending on schedule; they come along day by day for only a limited number of showings. Most flicks so far have proved wonderful, the feast of the Fest, for sure, though some few perplex in how they got here and what they're after. The work part comes in writing here and there about these films.

Next time: back to the movies.

Day 3 at Cannes

2008-05-19T10:35:00.000-07:00

The strongest impression at the halfway point in Cannes is the extraordinary filmmaking talent from all over the place, especially, so far, from south of the United States.

For example number one, Mexican director Fernando Mierelles does Blindness, and he pulls it off--rather to well, in fact, for this is a agonizingly dystopic story of the world gone blind, literally so, person by person, one by one. A mysterious malady afflicts everyone sooner or later, or so it would seem. Strangely, this blindness is not darkness but white light, a milky white, the experience and look of which Mierelles conjures up with stunning visual force. And, in some irony, the part that goes darker is the human self, for the world turns darkly barbaric: everything stops, wrecks, and just falls apart, including the fabric of the sure thing we call civilization. When the least disruption to normaly typically brings us all to mild panic, think about this one.

The first fraying occurs when the first victims are made exiles, as in Lost, sort of, only without vision and not on a lush island, but in abandoned prisons and hospitals and left to fend for themselves, no one wishing to near for risk of infection. A health gestapo rounds up the stricken and throws away the key, giving them barely enough to eat and letting them run themselves in a horrific game of existential Blind Man's Bluff (women and children too, actually).

Things do not go well inside and out. And that Mierelles displays with uncomfortable honesty and immediacy, for violent predatory anarchy ensues--everywhere (this version of the film is supposedly a tamed down one; given that, I think I might pass on a Director's Cut on DVD). And while graphic and haunting, Mierelles does not pander the sensational or lurid, for what happens we know darn well is all too possible, and it is neither diverting nor exciting in this very real horror flick.

Through all of this does come hope, in spite of it all, or because of it all. How deep or trustworthy that is, well, each viewer will have to assess deep in their soul's own reckoning. In this regard, the film resembles a number of other offerings that end with inconclusiveness, leaving questions that puzzle and gnaw, as maybe good art should.

More later on those, and on Cannes the event.

Day One

2008-05-15T01:35:00.000-07:00

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Cannes, France

It seems a bit strange to go to sunniest France, 300 plus days a year, to do little more day after day than sit in the dark.

Of course, things are neither quite so bright (mostly rain forecast) nor so dark, given what happens inside the dark. What happens in the dark in the seaside town of Cannes is the Cannes Film Festival--the 61st, in fact--the most celebrated and glitzed of all international film fests. Four thousand journalists invade, and I'm imitating one. And there are many more folks here, the industry hordes, supposedly around ten thousand, who do the hyping, dealing, and partying. Journalists watch. At least the ordinary ones do. There are a select few--the likes of Turan, Ebert, Scott, Denby--whose comments can make or break a film, and they, of course, get to hobnob and party with the glitter.

Sometimes lost in the tinsel of the twelve days of hype and red-carpet star parade is the product, the movies themselves, assembled from around the world, usually the best work of the best directors, submitted early, and selected by an official jury (Sean Penn is this year's chair) to compete for the grand prize Palme d'Or. About twenty-five films are in the running, and quite a list it is, a banner year indeed, although that always depends on one's taste in movies.

There's much to like, at least in prospect. The honor of opening the Festival went to Fernando Meirelles' Blindness, an apocalyptic tale of a world gone blind, literally so. Meirelles is stunning with nightmare, first in City of God (2002) and then in the film version of John LeCarre's The Constant Gardener (2005). The new film ends, so says the blurb, with some sort of redemption.

And there are many more promising offerings, films by Win Wenders, Walter Salles, Atom Egoyan, Woody Allen, and the Dardenne brothers. Steven Soderberg comes with two films on Che Guevara, posing the big riddle of why exactly. Clint Eastwood has a new film as well, Changeling, and Steven Spielberg has brought his new Indiana Jones installment.

As the saying goes, we shall see.