Just Say - "Can"

The 2015 Cannes (say 'can') Film Festival (the tops in film fests) is over - and, as is always the case, there was controversy, arguing, and disappointment.

It seems to me that Cannes has become political vs. artistic. The Festival has morphed into a nature preserve, a sanctuary for endangered foreign and documentary films, rallying against the un-natural, polluting, and destructive ways of Hollywood.

The grand prize winner of this year's Palme d'Or was 'Dheepan'. A French made film, 'Dheepan', the work of Jacques Audiard, is about a Tamil Tiger, who escapes Sri Lanka with a bogus family (a woman and child he doesn't know) and goes to France where he gets caught-up in a drug turf-war.  A great film? A good film?  I hope to view it at an arthouse. I'll let you know what I think.

'Dheepan' would never have won an Oscar - but then again Cannes is not an awards show but a festival - a coming together of cinema makers to show their wares and craft-skills.  Cannes, in my opinion has gone to the dark-side.  It's less about the art of film-making and more about the message. Political messages and viewpoints are smeared all over the Festival - from the monotonous, blustering of the global warming threat to the Tamal Tigers (a defunct pro-self governing military organization which formed in Sri Lanka in1976 and was destroyed by the Sri Lankan military in 2009).

Cannes is still the preeminent annual affair for all the biggies in the global movie industry to be seen and heard.  Like most industries, the movie business in now global.  This globalization can be witnessed by the number of films screened at Cannes which were in English (the world's un-official universal language).  Of the 20 films in competition for top honors, only three were made by English speaking film-makers, yet 12 were in English.  So, even foreign films are being made and distributed in English.

I post about Cannes because it's all about excess. In dress, in food, in private jets and yachts, in the way the glitterati pontificate to the 'common and misinformed man', and in the way our hum-drum lives are, some how, made better by the existence of Cannes and its Festival.

Just saying,
Jim