Core issues raised as Cannes kicks off its first day
by Eric Kohn
"I don't think we went blind. I think we always were."
--Danny Glover in Blindness
CANNES, France -- Members of the press are divided into color-coded categories ranging from white to yellow badges in a system that's vaguely like class discrimination, but the media keeps on coming; movie stars hog the spotlight, but bump shoulders with obscure art house personalities on the red carpet; the sun beats down hard, but the weather is glorious. The innate paradoxes of the Cannes Film Festival, which began its sixty-first year on Wednesday, come from all directions. Often accused of celebrating materialistic enjoyment under the pretenses of championing film as high art, Cannes features a very particular dissonance of form and content. Sometimes, the chaos is glorious, but other times it's just plain chaotic.
The festival's opening night slot usually falls into the latter category — the last two years featured The Da Vinci Code and My Blueberry Nights, both critical disappointments, albeit for vastly different reasons — and this time proved no exception. Blindness, the adaptation of Portuguese author Jose Saramago's surreal thriller about an inexplicable malady that deprives most of the world's population of its sight, desperately tries to meditate on societal paranoia and humanity's tendency toward self-destruction. Instead, it's a dopey B-movie injected with simplistic melodrama — but maybe that's just a sign of the times. With The Constant Gardener director Fernando Meirelles behind the camera, Blindness relishes in the plot's built-in despair, but the scrappy writing and pervasive grotesqueness prevent it from building any intrigue out of its relentless unhappiness. But, boy, is it unhappy: "It seemed like a millennial summary of the tragedies of the centuries," actor Don McKellar told journalists at a press conference (which I, a meek yellow badge holder, was forced to watch outside on a television screen) after the film's first screening. He was joined by Mereilles and fellow performers Julianne Moore, Danny Glover and Gael Garcia Bernal, all of whom had plenty to add to the story's topicality, but Mereilles was the one who noted there was something off about the gathering: "I don't think this is the best film to open a festival," he said.
Oddly enough, the only other film screened for press on Wednesday was no less dour: Waltz with Bashir, the compellingly animated documentary by Israeli filmmaker Ari Folmer, based on his experiences in the Christian militia during the 1982 massacre of Palestinian refugee camps. Intent on reconstructing the tragic events from which he can't escape culpability, Folmer meets up with a number of former military colleagues throughout the film, animating their recollections in moments of surreal beauty and, frequently, horrific specificity. Turbulent, consistently serious and undoubtedly original in its construction, Bashir has limited commercial appeal — but the cold intelligence serves its narrative.
This being Cannes and all, where a certain animated movie about censorship in Iran succeeded last year, you might call Bashir the Persepolis of modern Israeli cinema, though it's a lot less playful. However, Folmer's work slips when he chooses to transition into live action at the end, reminding us how everything that came before was artifice and giving off the sense that the gimmick eclipses the good intentions.
That's actually a general problem with Cannes: With the fancy outfits, pricey gatherings and pervasive overexposure, the festival suffers from the tendency to make every single movie seem like the biggest deal ever rather than letting quality naturally bubble to the surface. The result is that the whole thing come across like some sort of expensive machination, but it's not quite that. There are a number of independently minded filmmakers visiting this year, from first-timers to short film directors and other unique characters (many of whom you'll read about in this space in the coming days) ready and willing to make the process work for them. Not everybody gets drowned in the bright lights. It helps if you have your own agenda.
That's precisely the situation faced today by the jury for the festival's main competition, when they spoke to reporters (myself among them) about the coming week-and-a-half of viewing awaiting them. The reputable actor/director Sean Penn heads the team this year as president, accompanied by an international grouping of faces so diverse it looks like somebody played "Spin the Globe" to choose them. Each, in their way, is a star for a particular kind of cinema fan. Consider Natalie Portman (American movie star), Children of Men director Alfonso Cuaron (every film geek's preferred aficionado of the long take), Rachid Bouchareb (France's beloved indie sensation since his Days of Glory told the forceful story of North African members of the French army in WWII), Marjane Satrapi (celebrity cartoonist) and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand's much-admired avant-garde visionary) as different playground cliques forced to get along for a couple of days. That's not to say these people don't like each other — but who would have expected them to agree on the finest achievements in modern cinema?
But wait, said Penn, that's not exactly the case. "The ideas here is we're going to see twenty-two movies," he explained when asked to reconcile his current role at Cannes with previous complaints about the contest qualities of events like the Oscars. "In my view, it won't be a competition. It'll be a consensus that allows no film to get hurt, and some to get a leg up."
Speaking of which: Among the competition titles this year is Clint Eastwood's courtroom drama Changeling, starring Angelina Jolie. Although Penn won an Oscar for his role in Eastwood's Mystic River, he insists there's nothing unethicall about judging the new movie at the festival. "While I don't know how to turn on a computer, I understand this question has been coming up on blogs and things like that," Penn said. "While I can tell you that it's an emotional possibility for any of us to give into something as petty as [this], I also want to make it clear that this person will not be biased against. If Clint Eastwood has done a film that deserves an award, we're going to fucking award it."
Cuaron lightened things up. "I'm just looking for the Mexican movie," he said and got a laugh from the room. Then he rebounded with a more honest assertion. "Film is a nation," he continued, "and cinema is a language." Let's just hope nothing gets lost in translation.