For some directors the Palm d’Or revolves in tight little circles inside their heads, like bodily vital functions and sex. For some it’s about as important as a plausible plotline and the respect of critics.
I’m not sure what camp Michael Moore falls into but he won it anyway with a film lacking US distribution and a plausible plotline.
If we were to turn the current international events into a screenplay, people would laugh it off as a film that couldn’t even sell seats in cinemas, let alone popcorn.
A leader of the “free world” that uses the English language like dough in the making of a pizza, planes crashing into skyscrapers, the US invading two countries in as many years and political intrigue that is subtle and hard to untangle from media infringements upon both truth and poetic license.
It is an interesting day for the Cannes Film Festival. The Palm d’Or has previously been awarded to Pulp Fiction, The Pianist, Dancer in the Dark, Barton Fink, Taxi Driver, La Dolce Vita, Apocalypse Now and Blow Up. All have been films that have been considered art, have been considered cinematic triumphs in the exploration of human nature or explorations into the human need to tell stories that are universal and boundless.
Almost all the previous winners have been examples of dramatic contortions of the imagination (we wish the that the Pianist was of the same mould). Some might have had as their inspiration the foibles and contrivances of reality, but few have had this reality at their centre. All have attempted to make beautiful our terrible and comic existence. All have diluted reality through this attempt - the dictates of the tale exceeding the content.
Fahrenheit 9/11 does not have this as its motivating force. It is admittedly political in intent and execution. Moore himself has said that he hopes the film helps in driving President Bush out of office. Many in the media have claimed that the Cannes jury, in awarding Moore the festivals most prestigious prize, is possessed with the same political motivation.
I am conflicted.
I am torn.
I don’t know what to think.
I have always respected the judgement shown by Cannes jurists and I have always had at least an inkling of what films would take the award at the end of all the debauchery and money lubricated chit-chat. This year they have taken me by surprise. A documentary by a dubious film maker and political commentator; A film about a situation that is still in effect and that cannot, by its very nature, make use of narrative or cinematic detachment to make it less polemical… less damaging.
Now I don't know what Cannes is all about. What I have always known is that, predominantly, it has been about the money and the deals; about ego and status, about the proof of genius; about France as a powerhouse of culture – but at the end it is always about the films that win. At the end it always comes back to that wonderful and idiosyncratic art we call cinema.
This time we might not find the same end. We might not find cinema, or art, or hope, or genius or the simple pleasures of an elegantly told story.
We might find bickering and a nation divided. A world trying to decide the veracity of a story that seems as plausible to one half as it is farcical to the other. We might see the triumph of political over the art that attempts to make the political clear and lucid.
The Cannes film festival has always been a gaudy affair. Until now the films it has awarded have not been.
Cannes has finally joined us here in the real world.
Cinema gets left behind to suffer.