Technology leaves Cannes reeling
Rapid advances as the screens grow smaller are putting the 70-year-old festival on edge
CANNES, FRANCE— In one of those coincidences that seems like wicked mischief by movie gods keen on shaking up the industry, Clint Eastwood was talking about Sunset Boulevard at the Cannes Film Festival this week.
It was during the actor/director’s master class session, when interviewer Kenneth Turan asked him what movies he’s seen lately. Eastwood replied he likes to watch old movies at home, with Sunset
Boulevard being a recent pleasure. That’s the classic 1950 Billy Wilder film noir in which Gloria Swanson plays Norma Desmond, a silent film star sidelined by “the talkies.” She spends her days in her Hollywood mansion obsessively watching her old movies and planning an unlikely comeback. She can’t accept the changes to her beloved industry, which in 1950 included the advent of the disruptive new medium called television.
When someone observes that Desmond “used to be big,” she caustically replies, “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.”
It’s been like that at Cannes this year. The festival has been having its own “Norma Desmond” moment in its uneasy relationship with disruptive digital technology, which is advancing at a dizzying pace. Screens are getting smaller, security concerns are rising and Cannes is feeling anxious.
This is the 70th anniversary of the world’s most celebrated film festival, and Cannes chief Thierry Frémaux wanted to celebrate it, both by saluting the past and embracing the future. People are increasingly watching films, not in conventional movies theatres, but on TV, computers and even smartphone screens, so why not recognize that and let them into the Palme club?
To that end, he and his programmers allowed for the first time into the 19-film Palme d’Or competition two films by online giant Netflix that are destined for wide distribution not on big theatrical screens but on the small ones of TV and digital gizmos: Bong Joon-ho’s sci-fi fantasy Okja, about a young girl who befriends a monstrous pig, starring Tilda Swinton, Jake Gyllenhaal and Paul Dano; and Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz
Stories, a dysfunctional family drama starring Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller.
Frémaux immediately regretted his decision, as France’s powerful theatrical exhibitors’ guild denounced the move as a threat to the sanctity of cinema, but that sanctity faces both a new threat and an old one.
First, streaming services draw ever bigger names and sometimes put them in films that might otherwise have been art-house hits: Cannes’ favourites.
Second, most big commercial movies add little or nothing to the art form’s lustre — this weekend’s big openings are Baywatch and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.
An easy metaphor presented itself at the festival’s start, when actor/ comedian T.J. Miller crashed Cannes rather literally, parasailing into the port to promote The Emoji Movie.
“The world is changing and we do have to change with it,” Nicole Kidman said after Friday’s world premiere of The Beguiled, a Southern Gothic remake by Sofia Coppola that is getting a conventional theatrical rollout next month.
Kidman speaks truth that is difficult for cinema purists to accept — and count me among them — but it is truth nonetheless.
The fact is that Cannes has long been outside of mainstream cinemas trends and it has for the most part celebrated that fact. Most of the films that compete for the Palme are auteur-driven small works that are made for art houses and not multiplexes.
To be sure, Cannes has traditionally also enjoyed inviting a few big Hollywood features to screen out of competition to add additional eye candy on the red carpet of the Palais des Festivals, along with big-budget parties to up the fest’s glamour quotient.
There’s nothing like the cachet of being able to say “I saw it at Cannes,” even if it’s just another instalment of Johnny Depp’s Pirates franchise, one of which premiered here.
But no major Hollywood studio is in the Cannes Official Selection this year, which could be a fluke or could be a sign that Hollywood is losing interest in the festival.
It seems a little strange that a festival that has been talking about the big screen so much these past few days is missing out on both of the largest new big-screen films — even if they are Baywatch and the new Pirates chapter, either or both might have been expected to screen at Cannes in years gone by.
Netflix has further underlined the divide between the mainstream and Cannes by releasing War Machine — a military drama by writer-director David Michôd starring Brad Pitt — that had been touted this year as a likely Palme competitor. Instead it will play in the palm of your hand, or on TV or computer screens. What if a lot more stars and movies decide to go the Netflix route, robbing Cannes of even more glitter?
Netflix could have played the diplomat with Frémaux by promising to release Okja and The Meyerowitz Stories in French cinemas, but it balked at a further condition that it would also have to not stream the two films for 36 months in France.
Chastened Cannes officials have sided with the guild, announcing that, beginning with the 2018 festival, only films destined for bigscreen release would be allowed into the Palme competition.
This circle-the-wagons attitude was also adopted by Palme jury president Pedro Almodovar, who announced opening day that he couldn’t see giving the Palme — to be handed out along with other prizes during closing ceremonies Sunday — to onlineonly films because they lack “the capacity of hypnosis of the large screen for the viewer.”
Thus began a debate that has become a predictable question at every news conference during the festival’s 12-day run, with both directors and actors feeling obliged to comment on how Netflix is transforming the movie industry.
The surprising thing has been how many of them support Netflix. Directors Bong and Baumbach spoke of how much financial support and creative freedom they got from Netflix, while actors Will Smith (who is on the Palme jury with Almodovar), Tilda Swinton, Jake Gyllenhaal and Nicole Kidman argued that the future is here and “Norma Desmond” had better get with the program.
The directors are of the kind courted by Cannes and their films are deemed worthy of the Palme competition. But Netflix and the festival have recently crossed swords over Netflix’s refusal to have a proper theatrical release in France for Okja and The Meyerowitz Stories, as the online entity stubbornly sticks to its business plan of releasing films only on TV and computer screens, with rare exceptions.
France’s theatrical exhibitors guild has objected to Netflix’s elevation to the Palme competition, issuing dire warnings that it represents the death of film if a small-screen operator can skirt the country’s strict release rules designed to protect the big-screen movie experience. (It’s an interesting coincidence, perhaps, that Michel Hazanavicius’ Le Redoutable, a drama about director Jean-Luc Godard and his provocative “la mort du cinéma” proclamations, is among the Palme contenders.)
Cannes has also raised eyebrows by letting TV series in this year, following the lead of festivals elsewhere, the Toronto International Film Festival among them.
Two episodes of David Lynch’s reborn Twin Peaks and six episodes of the second season of Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake were screened here, the latter in one marathon six-hour screening, which means the binge-watching habits of 21st-century consumers have arrived at a festival still struggling to move on from the 20th century. Adding to the “Norma Desmond” feeling here is the siege mentality inside the Palais des Festivals, which by necessity has had to sharply increase security against terror attacks that have become a global scourge, including this week’s horror at a pop concert in Manchester, England.
There are now airport-style checks to enter the Palais, additional road barriers outside to stop potential car bombers and police and military people strolling the waterfront Croisette with automatic machine guns at the ready.
The intrusive security resulted in long lines to get into the building, resulting in delayed screenings and news conferences. On opening weekend, a package left by accident in the Debussy Theatre forced an evacuation of the Palais and a 40-minute delay in the press screening of Redoutable.
All of which conspires to make Cannes seem less like the progressive celebrant it wants to be and more like the fearful dowager that turbulent change threatens to make it. Yet still it carries on, hopeful that its “Norma Desmond” moment will not become a permanent state of affairs. The Cannes Film Festival runs until Sunday. Follow Peter Howell on Twitter and Instagram: @peterhowellfilm