CANNES OPENING
Fest copes with changing times
The Cannes Film Festival is turning 70, an odd milestone for an event that began 78 years ago this autumn. But the opening night of the very first edition, Sept. 1, 1939, turned out to be the same day Nazi tanks rolled into Poland, and so the world’s most famous festival was scuttled until the world’s most famous war could be concluded. Subtract a couple of more years cancelled for budgetary reasons, and this marks the platinum jubilee.
Cannes this year is weathering changes the likes of which its founders could scarcely have imagined. Video streaming service Netflix has caused the most noise, with two films in competition for the Palme d’Or that aren’t really films at all.
French cinema owners delivered a “Zut!” chorus when they learned that The Mereyowitz Stories, written and directed by Noah Baumbach and starring Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman, won’t appear on big screens outside the festival. Neither will Bong Joon Ho’s Okja, with Tilda Swinton, Paul Dano and An Seo-Hyun.
But French laws prohibit any theatrical release from streaming for a full three years, a delay Netflix wasn’t prepared to wait out. And so we face the possibility of a Palme d’Or winner that never makes it to cinemas — much as the latest Sundance domestic Jury prize went to Netflix’s I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore.
Netflix isn’t the only ripple in the waters of this seaside festival town. Last year, audiences at Cannes tittered at the sight of the unfamiliar Amazon Studios logo before competition films Paterson and The Neon Demon. This year, Amazon presents Todd Haynes’ Wonderstruck and Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here in competition. Unlike the Netflix offerings, both are primed to hit cinemas this year.
Festivals are continuing to grapple with the resurgence of long-form television — although given the streaming options, even “television” is starting to feel like a dated term. The Toronto festival has had a program for the past two years called Primetime, with episodes of Black Mirror, Nirvanna the Band the Show, Transparent and others.
This year, Cannes presents two episodes of the second season of Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake, a mystery drama set in Australia; and two of David Lynch’s new Twin Peaks, albeit several days after they will première in North America.
The inclusion is billed as part of the festival’s 70th-anniversary bill of fare — other items include concerts on the beach, a 25th-anniversary screening of Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, and short films directed by Cannes darlings Robin Wright and Kristen Stewart. But the anniversary label means the fest isn’t committed to continuing the experiment.
Another odd, semi-filmic inclusion this year is virtual reality, with the festival presenting a six-and-ahalf-minute VR installation from Alejandro G. Iñárritu, director of The Revenant and Birdman. It’s called Carne y Arena, which translates as meat and sand, although its official English title is Virtually Present, Physically Invisible. It allows viewers to experience the journey of a refugee. In the words of the director, “in the immigrants’ feet, under their skin, and into their hearts.”
Critics wishing to experience Carne y Arena have to sign up for a time-slot and then present themselves at the VR “welcome desk” next to the Palais de Festival. From there, says the invite, “an Official Festival car will drive you to the installation location, and will drive you back.” Budget 90 minutes, it advises, and “Please be on time, the driver will not be able to wait.”
It almost makes one nostalgic for the days when, as long as there was peace in the world, you just sat in the cinema and waited for the lights to go down.
The 70th Cannes Film Festival runs from May 17 to May 28.