Cannes Film Festival Mini-List Discussion + Suggestions

[colinr0380]

Kafka does have that great score though, which is probably its most enduring legacy!

I agree with the comments on Kafka, though I have a soft spot for these kinds of folly films, and really like the performances throughout. Its kind of the more serious toned, while still absurd, version of Brazil's bureaucratic paranoid vision, but in a world where Terry Gilliam's Brazil and the Orson Welles version of The Trial already existed (and Michael Haneke's version of The Castle was soon to arrive), it did feel rather unnecessary. But at least it let Soderbergh do a film in black & white set in a thoroughly compromised European setting long before The Good German!

Related to our discussion on Emir Kusturica on the previous page, I do find it ironic that he won the Palme D'or for both his film before (When Father Was Away On Business) and after (Underground) his greatest film, 1989's Time of the Gypsies. Though Time of the Gypsies won Kusturica the Best Director award instead, and I'd definitely argue that Sex, Lies & Videotape was the best choice for the Palme, as its a fantastic film and of course significant in kicking off the indie boom and raising the 'coolness' profile of the whole festival, something that Pulp Fiction's win only consolidated.

That, and zedz's list (I'm amused that you changed the 1993 winner just to remove The Piano! And I still don't know how Melancholia didn't win the top prize that year! ), reminds me that even more than the Oscars it seems best to look at a few award categories at Cannes to fully grasp that year's festival, as perhaps the 'best' film might not win the Palme but it will get its due in other categories, especially when there are a number of different top prizes awarded. I'd love to do an 'Uncertain Regard' list (where the edgier, or at least not tried and tested, names live) sometime!

[The Narrator Returns]

I haven't seen Kafka in four years (I've been foolishly waiting on that director's cut to come), but I quite liked it and was able to get on its weird, maybe not totally functional wavelength. Although most of what's stuck with me from it (besides the aforementioned score) is the dueling typewriters gag.

[the preacher]

Thank you Dom. I'm curious to see a defense from the person who voted for Chronicle of the years of Fire given the thrashing we did on it in thread.

That's me, as usual swimming against the tide! Not high-ranked, though, #18. What really hurt me was domino's review of Castellani's Two Cents Worth of Hope, considering how vivid so much of this picture remains, with remarkably natural performances that grow on you as real people do.

[domino harvey]

I think you mean TWOCENTSWORTHOFHOPE (emphasized for maximum shouting)

[knives]

That's Just the volume those by Italy's knee speak.

[zedz]

I'm amused that you changed the 1993 winner just to remove The Piano!

Well, I can think of two better Campion features that were in competition at Cannes, and I didn't pick them either.

I found 1993 a pretty soft year, all told. Lots of second rate work by decent filmmakers (Soderbergh, Wenders, Ferrara, the Tavianis), I'm not much of a fan of Naked or The Piano (two films which at least have survived in the critical consciousness), and I found The Puppetmaster disappointing when I saw it at the time, after A City of Sadness and Dust in the Wind, and haven't had a chance to revisit it and reassess it since. I was tempted to go the wild card route with Libera Me, but that film is now muddled up in my mind with La Rencontre (which I preferred), so no dice.

[domino harvey]

Body Snatchers, Falling Down, and Splitting Heirs were IN Competition?! Dear lord. And Faraway, So Close!, which is godawful, won the Grand Prix?

[knives]

Not to mention the awful Phil Colins starring Frauds. Definitely a very poor line up.

[zedz]

Body Snatchers, Falling Down, and Splitting Heirs were IN Competition?! Dear lord. And Faraway, So Close!, which is godawful, won the Grand Prix?

Going through the last forty years of official selections there were a LOT of baffling choices, especially when you consider some of the films that were sidelined out of the main competition or turned down entirely.

Case in point for 1993: two films that ended up in Un Certain Regard and the Director's Fortnight that are better, in my opinion, than anything in competition that year:
- Sonatine (Kitano) and The Blue Kite (Tian)

[domino harvey]

Interesting that Menace II Society was relegated to the Director's Fortnight, though I guess there's a certain logic to it-- while it's easily the least of the Big Three (w/Do the Right Thing and Boyz N the Hood), that the Hughes brothers were only twenty years old when they directed it is astonishing. Are there many (or any) good films made by a director(s) that young?

[zedz]

Xavier Dolan directed his first feature at 20. So. . . no?

Actually, we're not talking features, but almost all the films for which Sadie Benning was celebrated were made before she turned 20.

[thirtyframesasecond]

Interesting that Menace II Society was relegated to the Director's Fortnight, though I guess there's a certain logic to it-- while it's easily the least of the Big Three (w/Do the Right Thing and Boyz N the Hood), that the Hughes brothers were only twenty years old when they directed it is astonishing. Are there many (or any) good films made by a director(s) that young?

What about the Makhmalbaf sisters? Samira was 18 when The Apple was released. Hana was 14 when her first film was made.

[colinr0380]

There was also Matty Rich, who was 19 when he directed Straight Out Of Brooklyn.

Case in point for 1993: two films that ended up in Un Certain Regard and the Director's Fortnight that are better, in my opinion, than anything in competition that year: Sonatine (Kitano) and The Blue Kite (Tian)

Those are both fantastic. Here's Siskel and Ebert on The Blue Kite, which is the accessible, multi-generational epic of mid-20th century Chinese history that outdoes The Last Emperor for insight, mostly because its from the perspective of the proleteriat (I'd bracket it in with Jung Chang's autobiographical novel Wild Swans). Its one of those films that I'd love to see Criterion rescue from relative obscurity, and it could provide the opportunity for lots of historical context extra features.

(But aside from those two, I'd probably have awarded the Palme D'or to Body Snatchers! Also, did Mikhail Gorbachev win anything at Cannes for his Faraway, So Close cameo scene in which he is shown pensively writing his memoirs?)

[domino harvey]

From what little we see in the trailer, I'm gonna go ahead and assume that any film with performances / line readings like that is prob not a good movie

[mizo]

Are there many (or any) good films made by a director(s) that young?

I don't know how you feel about Garrel, but he made his first film at 16. He was 20 by the time Le revelateur was finished.

[zedz]

Interesting that Menace II Society was relegated to the Director's Fortnight, though I guess there's a certain logic to it-- while it's easily the least of the Big Three (w/Do the Right Thing and Boyz N the Hood), that the Hughes brothers were only twenty years old when they directed it is astonishing. Are there many (or any) good films made by a director(s) that young?

What about the Makhmalbaf sisters? Samira was 18 when The Apple was released. Hana was 14 when her first film was made.

Hana Makhmalbaf's first film was a making-of her sister's third, so I'm going to assume it's not a lost masterpiece, but her first real feature, Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame, is a really good film, and she was 19 when it was released. Though I think Le Revelateur is definitely the winner so far. I knew Garrel was young, but not that young!

[Omensetter]

Thanks, domino. Petulia was my 1968 pick and one of the few Warner DVDs I didn't flip, so I dig the poster. A Report on the Party was my runner-up and is as good a winner as any. While I'm glad the festival did not occur, I cannot help but wonder if Miklós Jancsó---he of two Competition titles---would have a more fashionable (for lack of better word) reputation, at least here in the States.
-----
I'll only do this for winners I'm not fond of, but here are my Alternate Palmes for the 21st century only:
2000: Songs from the Second Floor
2001: Mulholland Drive
2002: The Son
2004: The Holy Girl
2015: Carol

[zedz]

I saw The Square last night, and it would have definitely made my final list. By turns hilarious and disturbing, a really complicated mix of tones, exploring its ideas from all sorts of expected and unexpected angles.