{allmovies} Cannes in black and white, and brighter colors, too

 

 

CANNES, France — It was a matter of life and death at the Cannes Film Festival this year.

Several stories marked by shock violence and gruesome murder dominated critics' attention, but a powerful undercurrent to the world's largest movie gathering was not death but birth — in the form of creativity and imagination.

Though "blood on the Riviera" was a popular conversation topic among filmgoers, lighter stories about storytellers also filled the festival's screens, providing lively, heartbreaking and often funny perspectives of artists consumed by their passions.

In this intense convergence of light and dark, the darkness frequently captured the most attention, even as audiences recoiled.

The sexual violence and mutilation in Lars Von Trier's art-house horror film Antichrist set the oppressive tone, followed later in the festival by the twisted punishment of young children who lash back violently in The White Ribbon. Both films took home prizes: White Ribbon, a black-and-white film set in the pre-World War I German countryside, claimed the top Golden Palm award. And Antichrist's Charlotte Gainsbourg won best actress.

Earlier in the week, White Ribbon director Michael Haneke (best known in the USA for his sadistic thriller Funny Games) said his film's study of a brutalized generation that would later grow up to support Hitler was merely a worst-case scenario. He even tried to put a somewhat optimistic spin on it. "Obviously, if children could only react in this way, the world would be a place of still more despair," he said.

Claiming the runner-up honor was another harsh film: A Prophet, from French director Jacques Audiard, about survival inside the walls of a maximum-security prison.

Quentin Tarantino's InglouriousBasterds proved to be one of the rare films that straddled the split personalities of the festival. Amid the story's bloodletting and history-twisting gunplay, it was seen as surprisingly restrained.

Like many other films populating the lighter side this year, Tarantino's movie, opening in the USA Aug. 21, turned out to be perhaps more about creativity than World War II.

The revenge epic set in Nazi-occupied France involves a German starlet, a British film critic-turned-commando, and a femme fatale French theater owner who teams up with Jewish-American soldiers to annihilate top Nazi leaders at the red-carpet premiere of a Third Reich propaganda picture.

Tarantino says he wanted to imagine moviemaking itself pulverizing some of history's most horrific villains. "I set out to write a World War II movie and ended up writing a love letter to cinema," he joked as the festival came to a close.

Among the other movies that gave viewers behind-the-scenes stories of creativity and ingenuity:

•Broken Embraces. Spanish director Pedro Almodovar's bittersweet story of a filmmaker who loses his sight and reflects on the beautiful actress (Penelope Cruz) who cost him both his heart and his vision.

•Bright Star. About the love affair between 19th-century Romantic poet John Keats (Ben Wishaw) and a quirky girl-next-door named Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish) who inspired some of his greatest writings. Written and directed by The Piano's Jane Campion.

•Taking Woodstock. A comedy about the raucous events surrounding the creation of the politically charged 1969 music festival. Directed by Brokeback MountainOscar winner Ang Lee.

•The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.Heath Ledger's last film, a Terry Gilliam fantasy about a traveling stage show where a young con artist gets caught up with a magical storyteller (Christopher Plummer), who competes with the devil to win over spectators with the most tempting story.

Though very different in tone and story, each focuses on an artist trying to make something out of nothing.

Film critic Emanuel Levy says this reflects filmmakers' turning the camera on themselves. "Each of these movies has become self-reflective," he says, noting that Francis Ford Coppola's new drama, Tetro, which played out of competition in the Director's Fortnight category for experimental films, "was about two brothers trying to write a book, and a comment about how things in real life never seem to have the satisfying endings of movies."

In the case of Broken Embraces (due in theaters in November), Cruz says Almodovar's noir-ish drama is a look at how memories and entertainment often intertwine. "A good movie, or a good book, or a good song can mark times in our life, for all of us," she says.

That's especially true when you're the one making it, she points out. She has worked with Almodovar on three other films and says, "For people like Pedro, who care so much about art, when he is making a movie, it becomes the most important thing in his life, which is something he has in common with" the director character in his film.

Cruz also says films set behind the scenes satisfy a natural fascination for people who dream of being on the screen. "Since I was a little girl, I have grown up with movies as a very important part of my life. And if I wasn't an actress, I would still love to see what goes on behind the camera."

A film doesn't have to have literal similarities to strike at a deeper truth.

Gilliam's Imaginarium is about a old, broken-down storyteller who can no longer interest anyone in the fantasies he creates, though a young scam artist (Ledger) thinks he can twist them to his advantage.

The director of 12 Monkeys, Brazil and The Fisher King says Doctor Parnassus is a stand-in for himself, inspired by his recent string of bad luck with movies that either fell apart in production or flopped.

"I was feeling very full of self-pity a couple of years ago. 'Oooh, my films aren't working the way they used to work. No one wants my stories anymore.' So it was: Let's start with self-pity and see if we can make a movie out of it," Gilliam says with a laugh.

Lee, whose Taking Woodstock (opening Aug. 14) focuses on a shy young man (The Daily Show's Demetri Martin) helping to launch the iconic hippie concert despite being repressed himself, says his film is semi-autobiographical as well.

Though Lee was born in Taiwan and was just a child when the real Woodstock happened, he says he feels a connection to Martin's timid concert planner, since he too is an introspective person driven to express himself through sometimes epic-size projects.

"Yeah, I was repressed, trying to find my place and being influenced by big happenings," he says, acknowledging that a soft-spoken nature was ingrained into him. "The root of my culture is somewhere, but I want to go somewhere else. And my heart is already gone."

What motivates an artist's heart was the inspiration for Campion's Bright Star, a romance set in the early 1800s that attempts to unlock Keats' writings through the eyes of the woman who inspired him. Regardless of whether audiences are interested in his poetry, the writer-director hopes they'll connect to the power of the love story.

She says Bright Star is inspired by a very simple idea, one that perhaps lines up with similar messages from the darker films of the festival: You can't go it alone.

"For me, it was interesting to discover this love story of his and realize he was really falling in love at the same time he was having one of his most famous outpourings of poetry. It can just be a very empowering feeling," Campion says, breaking into a smile. "Connecting to someone who ... just thinks you're amazing."

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001U0HBPG/almosthuman

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