Regard this, a new still from the next installment of “Cat Head Theatre.” It has been some time since the first one, but this next production is all the better for coming so late.

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This is the Cannes 2007 Diary, Day 9. It is also the last day of the Cannes diary, although it makes slight reference to the 10th day at the very end.

Vendredi 25 Mai 07

It’s a long wait under the warming sun of the Cannes Cinephile line, and I have a moment to reflect and write. I am by now so insulated from humanity that this sort of navel-gazing rambling is second nature to me. This is a dark proposition for you, as you may have to sludge through some of my epiphanies on the way to better material. Let’s hope I can at least present the self-absorption with a modicum of entertainment value.

The Competition Originale films I missed yesterday were “Persepolis,” an animated film about a young girl’s life in oppressive Ayatollah-era Iran (which has since had its U.S. run in 2008), and some more local dull product, man with a past, etc. Both were in French, both were at La Licorne. Though they were CO films, they looked dull, and I decided to skip them. Maybe I needed 24 hours to gear myself up for watching several movies entirely in French, because that’s certainly what lay in store for me.

Digression on the nature of success and how it has ignored me completely
I noticed, to my humbling horror, that one of my old pals from USC has got a film here in competition. This director has an interesting history with me. When he was in school he was obviously a rich kid from Jersey (or some such place) who had a possible family tie to the industry. But unlike some others, he was really passionate about movies, and seemed to study them pretty closely. I didn’t care much for his tastes, which ran to the same muddled sentimentality that marks many USC filmmakers (John Singleton’s “Boyz in the Hood” comes to mind). But usually the “connected” kids were the least interested in movies - they didn’t really have to prove anything because their uncles or fathers would buy them a career anyway.

In school this particular director grew the obligatory Coppola/Spielberg/Lucas beard (although he styled himself a Scorcese, also bearded at that time) and went around telling anyone who would listen that he was going to be the big success story from our group. I always found it slightly amusing, because he was younger than I and an undergraduate. That kind of cockiness either annoys me beyond my tolerance or gives me some amusement, and in his case I chose the latter, most likely because he did actually like films, and knew something about them.

He had, however, a most sickening coterie of toadies who would literally follow him around. I guess they wanted to ride his generous coat-tails as he ascended the ladder of success. I wonder if any of them did. This seemed infinitely sad to me; some of my peers were already giving up on their own hopes and dreams to follow someone else’s – before they had even started, and before they had given themselves the chance to fail at their own hands.

As a young person you should have SOME bravado, SOME sense you are taking the world by storm – we count on the young generation to have that fire in the belly. This guy certainly had it, but his followers, poor saps, saw themselves as subservient and defeated at such an early stage – more attracted to the star director and his promise of fame than to any chance of their own in the world. And, quixotically, this star-director-in-the-making had NO outward signs of success. His work was average, neither bad enough to attract attention nor startling nor innovative. To be completely frank, he was just another Spielberg wanna-be - the usual for students in those days.

Once again, I say this without rancor - this was a very common thing in our school, and, after all, to be a good pupil one must study and imitate the masters. I am certainly not attempting to indict his current career by claiming he was nothing special at school. Lots of people are nothing special at school nor at any other time, and there is certainly no shame in that.

Anyway, I used to needle this director all the time. I was never impressed by him, and I used to tease him about what I saw as empty bravado - big claims with nothing behind them.

This is his third feature that I am aware of. They have all been dismal B.O. flops, and for that I think he should be proud, to be honest. The second of his films didn’t even open, that I know of. It’s been rough for him, I imagine. His films always have big stars (courtesy the family connection, I imagine). But he’s still a punk undergrad to me who (as in his SC days) confuses his own feelings about his work with feelings his work should generate.

One of the things we used to argue about incessantly was “Apocalypse Now.” This guy worshipped the film, and he was sure that it was Coppola’s dedication, his belief in himself, and his drive that made the film a masterpiece. When discussing the picture with him (a film I think is a beautiful, but troubled and unstructured mess) he could not conceive that the director might have been culpable in Martin Sheen’s heart attack during the shoot, or that he treated his crew with disrespect and even reckless abandon dragging them out in the jungle without much of a plan. To him the heart attack and even the potential loss of an actor would be justified for the greatness of the art. It was the romantic notion of the director as wild man - someone who somehow achieves brilliance through an unexplained alchemy emanating from the personality and aura of the filmmaker.

Of course this is crap. I’ll bet dollars to donuts it was Walter Murch’s hard and methodical work that made that mess of footage into anything.

Understandably, I vowed I would certainly never work with this guy if my comfort – or my life – meant so little. I also vowed that I would never treat people that way. Great art can also come WITHOUT sacrifice. Why not concentrate on the art first, then sacrifice only if necessary? Why did one have to suffer? Or cause others to suffer? My Buddha nature seemed a more worthy goal than the vale of fire; than endurance as a measure of sincerity.

And now, in Cannes, seeing that his feature is here, I wonder how he’s doing, and if he’s treating people the way he said he would, or the way I would. Or something in between.

I will readily admit, it gives me a twinge of the old “well, what the hell have I done with MY life,” feeling… When the balance sheet is tallied, he has made three features and I have made none. And since my ambition is somehow still alive, I consider this strongly. After all, a filmmaker makes films – end of story.

That there are circumstances – his possible family connections, my lack of resources – doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. And that is a sobering thought, certainly. But this is the extent of my envy. If, for, example, it was I who had made any of his films, I would probably jump in front of a speeding train. I don’t want his career, his sensibilities, his interests, nor do I want to attend Cannes as he is. I’d rather sit in the Cinephile line, as I am now, the bottom of the barrel, with my own sensibilities intact. I may be envious that he has a film here and a career far better than my own, but I do not want what he has.

We all have to find our way to what we want. These things are nice ideas (money, influence, ability to do creative work of your own choice), but they need to come on one’s own terms or not at all. The “not at all” part is one that I’ve got worked out fairly clearly, though, and that’s just my problem.

So there are opportunities for this kind of reflection at most stages of this Cannes experience. I declare that I will only return to this shore in future triumph.

Time Wasting
The Cinephile line is now open and I can see what my choices are today, and they are not too appealing. I can see “Rio Bravo” and watch Malcolm McDowell talk about Lindsay Anderson. This would be interesting in a vague way (I like both star and director) but not at the expense of the CO films I should be seeing, and which are playing later today at regular Cinephle screenings.

Now I wait at the Gray for as long as I can. That was my last Cinephile line, and my last offering of tickets to bland events. A huge pile of reading material awaits me in the Gray lobby, and it is not yet 10PM. My first proper screening is at 2PM. It’s time to say goodbye to the Croisette. All my films are at La Licorne, a short bus ride away from the Palais. Goodbye, proper screening venues! Goodbye, all sense of attending the festival as a proper participant! I join the Cinephile Unwashed at the Unicorn Theatre for a grand slam of CO films before I blow this burg.

To kill time I visit the 12th century castle that sits in the middle of Cannes. Yes, that was a surprise, wasn’t it? I’m in Europe, and they have such things as 12th century castles. You see it from every bus ride, and it’s actually quite easy to access. No one is going there (or to the 17th century church there) because they are so distracted by the films, the glitz, and that “Burn” truck. But there it is, a worn battlement and a rambling tower, adjacent to a much younger (but still ancient by American standards) church.

La Tour itself seems to be closed for some event when I visit. It has been converted to an art museum, but one that is not particularly devoted to the tower, the 12th century, or anything particularly. They seem to be showing some local paintings this month. L’Eglise de Notre-dame d’Esperance (The Church of Our Lady of Hope) is open, though, and I investigate.

It has a typical 19th century feel – very dark with damaged oil paintings from the teens of last century, creepy saints with their eyes lifted heavenward and their mouths agape, and dusty religious artiifacts. I am reminded of the similarity between the English word “agape” and the concept of “AGAPE,” the Greek word for brotherly love used so often in translations of the Gospels. Obviously inspired by the rococo, the sculptor who has crafted the icon of St. Nicolas, patron Saint of Cannes, depicts him as if he were in the throes of orgasm. There has always been something eerily sexual about Catholic iconography from previous centuries, and it is never more clear than in these old churches. Vatican II seems to have purged much of it from the American churches, bringing us the hippie guitar masses of my childhood and ridding us of the turgid, exploding saints. More’s the pity.

There is now, as there always has been for me, no feeling of presence or comfort in a church – only echoes. That and the electric feeling of ghosts – it’s clearest in the handiwork of the people who built these walls and laid this tile. There is a wobbly, imprecise, handmade feeling to this massive building – the arches and columns are not perfect, untouched by machines or manufacturing – the whole enterprise has a slightly uneven feeling. It seems much more impressive this way – you can tell it must have taken lifetimes to complete.

This is a great place to be after all the hectic action and irritating waiting associated with the festival. Allowing myself a few minutes to get lost in my own weird historical reveries at this place has done me a world of good, and I feel recharged enough to get on with things.

I descend the hill to the Hotel de Ville and on to La Licorne. Maybe it’s the Stockholm Syndrome, or something quite like it, but I’m already feeling a bit sad at having to leave. There’s a lot I didn’t do while I was here. No parties, no yachts, no real premiere action – some of that might have been fun. I was so into the movies - and the movies only - that I didn’t do much of anything else.

I have another acquaintance who attends Cannes every year, and I seem to have avoided him this trip, not that I was trying. I fully expected to see him on the street corner somewhere, but our paths never crossed. This fellow attends Cannes every year (though he has nothing in competition) in order to sneak into parties and broadcast the entire debacle through his weblog and podcast. His website always features slightly desperate starlet types with their arms around him, smiling into the camera as he lifts a martini glass to the lens. It’s really no wonder we did not run into each other, when you think about it.

I hop the bus, hoping that Cannes-la Bocca will offer better food. I walk past another shwarma place, and, hopes high, I duck in. I am not disappointed. The woman who runs the place (who wears the hijab, I might add) gives me a huge helping and even adds a cube of very sweet dessert. I am in love. This is the first decent meal I have had in over a week.

I sit in the park, next to a creepy smoking guy having his 11AM beer. It’s the only park bench in the shade, and I wish he would leave. I don’t want to smell his godawful shitty cigarette, but the alternative is the hot, punishing Cannes sun. I decide the guy’s cig is not that terrible right now, so I tuck into the shwarma. I almost weep, it’s so good.

A passing guy orders his dog up on the picturesque water fountain in the center of the park and it becomes a dog-bath. Moments later the beer-loser next to me gets up suddenly and walks away, muttering a possibly sarcastic “bonne journee” as he does. I think I invaded his space and made it harder for him to be a deadbeat.

The nearby Hotel Ibis offers me little comfort and not much A/C. Their lobby is a tiny corner compared to the luxurious hotels at the Croisette. I feel restless, having almost two hours before the film. I consider bumming around the basement of La Licorne, where the toilettes are (it’s actually kind of a big lounge space) but when I see people queuing up for the film, I get right into line, where I belong.

I’m down to about 10 Euros. That should be enough for the day the way I’ve been spending, but it doesn’t give me fabulous options. I’ll be eating crackers for dinner, if I even have any dinner, and I’m expecting to walk to the hotel as the buses will have stopped. This is as fitting and end to the fest as any.

Digression on the Nature of Narrative
The natural human tendency to look at one another and attempt to understand the other’s emotional state is part of how humans communicate. It seems as though this empathic response is a key component of why movies work. Film theorists, if they want to be respected, need to study anthropology and evolutionary biology if they are ever going to understand how the spectator responds as he or she does.

Humans are incredibly social creatures. Our emotions seem to have arisen out of the development of our social order and the strategy of cooperative effort for survival. Just as language has developed in order to make cooperation more sophisticated, humans can also read each others’ responses and emotions in order to make this process easier. Thus, in order to get along with our group, we have to be able to let our own desires be known (or not known, in some cases). This is just as important as pursuing – or sublimating – our desires. What we cannot get on our own someone else may provide. It seems as though a certain measure of generosity and kindness is also built into the human system.

Cinema tricks out these natural processes. We are shown pictures of people who do not exist and thus we empathize with them. This is a kind of contract with the storyteller. Pay attention, says the talesman (as a friend calls him or her), and there will be a reward. Often in narrative this reward is catharsis, and sometimes it is wisdom. Either way we get to vicariously experience the emotions of the characters, and the key to this is empathizing with them.

Or perhaps more correctly, we cause ourselves to feel something of what the characters feel in order that we might empathize more clearly with them. It’s our mechanism - the part that an audience brings to the story. The part the storyteller assumes will be provided.

By following the exploits of a protagonist you can experience some of the same emotions as the characters. This explains a good deal of our pull for the underdog or our attraction to romantic movies. A romance has one main objective: to remind you of the feelings you have had of being in love. This is why pre-adolescent boys hate them so much – they have not yet felt romantic love for the opposite sex, so they can’t get too caught up in them – they have no experience with which to relate to the romantic movie, and they are uninterested in feeling those things. Adults may, however, be inspired to fall in love with a character or an actor/actress. This is quite common as people confuse the feelings they have been reminded of (and asked to empathize with) and their own feelings at the time when they watch the film.

The hero story allows us to root for and feel the victory of the winner. The mystery allows us the chance to feel intelligent when we guess the motives and the identity of the killer. And the horror film allows us the thrill and adrenaline of danger without being in any peril ourselves. It’s one part of our brain (possibly the cortex) tricking another part of our brain (some more reactive part that recoils in horror at the sight of blood, perhaps) into reacting and then enjoying the resulting emotions that this trick creates. Perhaps what we are doing is feeling a bond, even though it is artificial.

Kind of a great set-up, in a way, and lots of fun. We deliberately allow ourselves to be emotionally triggered (“suspension of disbelief”) and we use that occasion as a sort of social reinforcer besides. We all get together and cry, or laugh, or whatever. Because even if we saw it all on HBO ourselves in the privacy of our rooms, we will still talk about it when we are together – “did you see that show last night?”

So let us forget all that nonsense about Jacques Lacan and his mirror stage, all that neo-Freudian bullshit and those complicated phenomenological approaches. It does our discipline no good to behave like that, and adhering to those old, defrocked figures of fun give a bad impression to legitimate disciplines.

This new theory of mine, although a little crackpotty around the edges, is at least in line with research in human behavior.

So, given that cinema can make use of narrative, and that cinematic narrative has many consistent factors (sights, sounds, mis-en-scene, editing, etc. – the formal qualities of film) and is inherently time-based (also a formal quality, but worth separating for its impact), the question could be this – does cinema serve as a function of narrative or is cinema larger than narrative? Is the taxonomy like so: Narrative is the superset of forms that includes cinema? Or is it that Cinema is a superset of forms that may include narrative?

For now I believe the cinematic experience is a kind of narrative – and that narrative is best understood as a neurological function. At its essence, narrative is simply a series of cause-and-effect relationships chaining to some sort of master conclusion. It is the same neurological process that allows us to use tools (hit animal with rock, then you can eat animal), and the same neurological process that eventually leads to social order (I hit him, then he hits me, then we all hit, so best not to hit him).

The Classical Dramatic Narrative is a complex device, but it should not be confused with this fairly primitive narrative I am attempting to describe. Because film is inherently time-based, (as opposed to photography or painting, which have no specified time frames for viewing), it is inherently narrative, which is to say that one thing will follow another in a series until the presentation is finished. Even if there is no logical connection between images or sounds, our brains will interpret that first one thing happens and then another.

One may ask, at this point, “well, what wouldn’t fit that description. Lots of things have causes and effects.” This makes it even clearer that narrative is a neurological process – one that we apply to just about everything. Cinema has not yet had its John Cage, but if it ever does, that artist will point out that literally any shot you join to another shot (no matter how diverse) can constitute a series of events – a narrative. Eisenstein probably wrote as much, but I cannot find the citation.

The narrative impulse is in the human brain, and has to do with how we arrange, qualify, pattern-match and conclude events around us as much as it does how they are arranged and what then even are. Consider “3-card Nancy.”

This is a parlor game invented by Scott McCloud, the well-known cartoonist and author, whose books “Understanding Comics (1993)”, “Reinventing Comics (2000)” and “Making Comics (2006)” have been instrumental in developing scholarship amongst those who study comic strips and books.

McCloud suggests that you find an old “Nancy” paperback; the well-known American comic strip by Ernie Bushmiller that still runs in some papers today. Old ones work best. You carefully copy or cut out the panels of various strips in the book and adhere them to cards, which you shuffle. Players draw five cards from the deck and take turns placing the cards down to make some kind of little narrative out of them – There are “rules” of a sort – you try to get rid of all five cards and the players can reject a card that another player tries to put down if they decide it doesn’t really work. But the funny thing is that just about any panels from “Nancy” will eventually make SOME kind of story.

In theory, a robot could write all our story outlines (I’ve been working on this project for some time, but haven’t had the attention span for the coding). It takes a human being to turn them into narratives. Hence, even the most “experimental” of films has, for any given performance (and even if the equipment that exhibits it malfunctions) a beginning, a middle, and an end – simply because we remember that it started, continued, and ended. It is, simply by its time-based nature, a narrative as far as our brains are concerned.

Classical Dramatic Narrative Structure (CDNS), descending from Classical Narrative structures as established by the Greeks, is an efficient, well-developed, highly stylized model for certain kinds of narrative entertainment. The apotheosis of this form is described in the dramatic theories of William Archer and Brander Matthews, codified in the late 19th and early 20th century.

The decay of CDNS is facilitated by the modern screenwriting manual.

But this CDNS is only one of countless strategies for the cinema. To revise the taxonomy, CDNS is a subset of narrative, but one that can be partially contained within Cinema – CDNS does not belong completely to the Cinema nor does Cinema require the CDNS.

If cinema really is a kind of narrative, then what each storyteller brings us - his or her storytelling style - is most important. A chef, for example, uses his art to create tastes that delight us – even though the palette may include some flavors (bitter ones, for example) not valued outside of the chef’s creations. Few would munch on handfuls of capers, and yet many would eat a dish that had them in it. We trust the chef to prepare a meal that works overall. The musician is trusted to create sounds that stir the sentiment, and part of doing that involves controlling the tensions that certain chords and combinations of sounds create. Likewise, the filmmaker creates sympathetic emotional states for the audience – you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll kiss ten bucks goodbye.

Does this mean the filmmaker is responsible for the emotional states he or she arouses? I would argue yes and no. If Spielberg wishes to yank your pity chain (as he often does), then Spielberg is responsible for providing you with the sad/pity context. You can’t blame him when you feel sad, but he has certainly manipulated conditions to provide for your sadness. It is his aim to create pity and sentimentality. He has suggested quite heavily to you that you should feel sad in sympathy with the events and characters he shows you – in Spielberg’s case this may feel like coercion, but it requires that you surrender to it before it has any power – like hypnotism.

By the way, do not think this attempt at levity reduces the man’s powers by any stretch. Though I do not have much liking for practically anything he has made outside of “Jaws,” it really does not enter into the argument. Spielberg really is that damn good. He can direct circles around most of his peers. Even the dreadful fourth “Indiana Jones” movie shows that he knows his way around the language of Cinema, even when he has nothing to do with it. That film’s problems are not in camera placement, editing, or film style.

At no time are your actions as a result of your emotional state anyone’s responsibility except your own, and certainly not the filmmaker’s. If you kill people because you felt violent after seeing “A Clockwork Orange,” we cannot blame Stanley Kubrick. Yet we could approach Steven Spielberg on the street and say “Gee, Steve, old boy, Amistad made me bawl like a little girl.” To which Spielberg may either chuckle and congratulate himself on his cleverness and his control of the medium or he can be sorry you feel this way. In any event, he knows what he is going for, and he knows what he is doing. It should not come as too much of a surprise to him.

OK, maybe it’s not so possible to actually see Spielberg anywhere. People this famous probably do not even go outside their mansions – I sure as hell wouldn’t.

Thus, when I denounce the idiot Quentin Tarantino, it is because he, also, knows what he is going for, and he knows what feelings he is trying to incur in his audience. These feelings, I will argue, are those of a bully looking to exploit the weakness in someone else. To brutalize, to humiliate, and ultimately to dehumanize another person – these are the “pleasures” and goals of a QT film, and the emotional material to which most people respond. Remember what is so “cool” about “Death Proof,” as that dumb girl said: First he is the predator, and then… he becomes the prey.

I will argue, moreover, that this relationship to an audience is what defines his style, and those of his imitators.

This POV-oriented theory is vastly superior (I aver most humbly) to the current popular mode of psychoanalytic film theory because it also removes pesky notions of plot and dovetails with the somewhat tarnished but still valuable auteur theory. Though cinema is a collaborative process, ultimately what we as an audience respond to is the way in which a story is told. The story itself – the list of narrative items that follow in sequence (and usually the province of the writer, besides the dialogue) is most prized in Hollywood, yet we should challenge that notion.

Give a computer-generated list of narrrative events and items to a good director (Haneke, Lynch, Godard) and a bad director (QT, Kevin Smith, that guy who made “Oldboy”) and see what results. Computers operate on a principle they call “GIGO;” Garbage In, Garbage Out. But human artists can turn that second G into Gold, baby, not Garbage.

I apologize, that was right out completely. Start again.

Synopses of films, used so often to sell them before they are made, are therefore completely inadequate to informing you of what a film will actually be like. And the screenwriting gurus and teachers are ultimately wrong about what makes a film work – as the last 20 years or so of exceedingly lame Hollywoood MBA properties show conclusively. Story is NOT King. STYLE (the method of presentation) is. Taxonomically, STORY fits UNDER Style. It is an element (like the CDNS) of what cinema is composed of.

Narrative contains
Cinema which can encompass
Story which can be of the type we call
CDNS

And most definitely NOT

CDNS is the perfection of
Story which is required for
Cinema

This being the big lie screenwriting manuals tell their acolytes. Most story models have it all wrong. Why? It’s obvious – they do not leave room for either “Eraserhead” or “Koyannisqatsi.” They diminish the poetic value of cinema that does not need to describe PLOT but only serves to create (through sights and sounds) feeling. Where is the cinema of Apitchatpong Weerasethakul if we must rely only on story and plot? There is plot in “Tropical Malady,” but I think you’d be hard pressed to say that story is king there.

Even so, this kind of cinema can still be thought of as narrative. There is a sequence – even Stan Brakhage films have sequence, and we will read that sequence because human brains are driven to read sequences, and because we perceive the forward motion of time.

Perhaps it is due to my interest in directing films, but I think the success or failure of a film seems most predicated on how much or how many of the director’s plans came to fruition. If Sirk wants us to cry and we laugh, he has failed. Even if the world goes to see the film and it does great box office, Sirk has failed.

Now, it may be necessary to invoke the specter of Umberto Eco and his famous “reader is the writer of the text” issue. A cornerstone of modern semiotic film theory, Eco had the very valuable notion that despite what an author intends to make, the reader of the text (the person who views a film, reads a book, or hears music) will create his or her own sense about that text.

I can never know what Bela Tarr’s true intentions are when he made “The Man from London” (and as you’ll soon read, I’ll wish I did). He may have wanted to create total sleep with his film. Maybe he had crushing insomnia, and this was a creative solution to the problem. All I know is the film I see in the darkened theatre, and all I can have is my own personal reaction to it.

Eco’s idea is, of course, more along the philosophical/phenomenological lines. He is attempting to create a state of criticism where there can be no right or wrong way to discuss any art. All interpretations are equally valid at some point. The only thing that separates them is if they are INTERESTING or not. Eco’s point is a good one, but it needs to be be rethunk at some point. It sounds good, but in practice the intentional fallacy is not nearly as dangerous as he would have us think.

Because it is more likely that we CAN grasp – with a fair amount of certainty – what filmmakers are trying to do. They’re never really THAT far off the mark. When they ARE (Ed Wood, for example) it is famously hilarious. Suggesting that we cannot know something of what a filmmaker intends is willfully naïve. Of course we can – the filmmaker is usually trying his or her hardest to communicate something to the audience – why make a film if it is otherwise? Yes, we can appreciate Wood’s “Plan 9″ as a masterpiece of unintentional kitsch, but this affirms even more that we somehow understand what he was going for.

To say, as many reviewers have, that QT somehow knew his dialogue in “Death Proof” was insanely dull, but that he included it because he knew it would piss off critics (a very popular assumption right now!) is to suggest the artist can mastermind schemes of such dizzying complexity and highly questionable power. He knew they’d hate it, so he left it in – but then they loved it anyway! No filmmaker has this kind of control over an audience and their reactions to the work.

Similarly, when some aspect of a film seems to be universally regarded as bad there are two distinct possibilities: #1. The artist has taken a creative gamble that failed and #2. The artist was just ineffective and did something lousy while thinking it was great.

Not to keep bringing in Kubrick, but it does recall the excellent short film Kubrick’s daughter Vivian made of the making of “The Shining.” The best scene shows Kubrick angry at Shelley Duvall for missing her cue. An angry Kubrick is kind of interesting, as he neither rants nor raves, he simply says what is on his mind in a more or less stern and irritated tone.

He scolds Ms. Duvall and then advises the director “don’t sympathize with Shelley.” In an interview later on, Duvall tells Vivian that she thinks Kubrick has masterminded that interchange so that Shelley would have the necessary emotional state she needed to do the scene. He has pretended that she goofed up to put her on edge and get a real performance out of her.

What garbage! SK is clearly holding on for dear life, trying everything he can to get the picture done. To think that he had the time, the energy, or the ability to know the actress so thoroughly and to predict minor fluctuations of the future so accurately that he could have manipulated that kind of effect – well, the mind reels.

Thus, when the critics (Hollywood Reporter apologist et. al) backpedal and claim that QT knows his plot is terrible but that this is the “grindhouse” style or that he knows his chatty women are dull, but that he is playing with his critics… these are the hallmarks of the starry-eyed fanboy, too wrapped in idol worship to admit their GOD has pulled a real boner this time.

And considering how little of “Death Proof” actually resembles a grindhouse movie, including the look of the film, the expenditure, the stars, and – most importantly – the run time – this is even more incredible.

When the film works, we must blame the director. When the film does not, we also blame the director. The exception is under the American system, in which a team of know-nothing MBAs, focus groups, and studio heads butcher the director’s work routinely. Which is not to say that the work was fine before this assault, just that after anything passes these committees there’s a wonder the material even resembles a film.

Yes, there are directors whose work completely confounds. It is terribly difficult to assess just how much Paul Verhoeven is kidding with his films. “Robocop” is clearly a satire. “Showgirls” is clearly laughable, but it’s very uncertain whether the director is in on the joke. And “Starship Troopers” is most confusing – is Verhoeven’s future, populated by blank Aryan pretty boys and girls, casually joining the genocide – is this a satire? A grim prediction? Entertainment gone wrong? It’s just hard to tell. Any shot of Denise Richards piloting a spaceship with that hypnotic slack-jawed expression on her face immediately cries out that this is a comedy, yet so little else in the film shouts out so succinctly.

And there are the critics and audiences who have proclaimed such badfilms as “Rocky Horror” and “Faster Pussycat…” secret masterpieces of unintentional camp. That despite being directed in a way that we understand is serious, these films are, in fact, very funny. The inappropriateness of the director’s efforts – and his misplaced vision – is what makes a good badfilm work.

All of which goes a long way toward saying a few fairly simple things:

1. The director can be assumed to know what he or she is doing.
2. This means the film will work more or less the way the director intends.
3. We say “more or less.” On the less side this is due to either incompetence or the director’s idiosyncracies which are too far-out for most people to identify with (foot fetishes, etc.)
4. On the more side this is due to either ability (talent, style, confidence, experience, etc.) or incompetence somehow working accidentally.

This last bit is not sustainable for a director’s career. They simply can’t have happy accidental screw-ups for every single film. But it does account for films in which one or two things work anyway, or in which the contribution of technicians (actors, etc.) is particularly good apart from the rest of the film.

Occam’s Razor explains the rest.

Therefore, is it fair to analyze QT’s foot fetish? Sure, to some extent. If he continues to film scenes in which feet play such an important role, then this is only due to his personal interest in this kind of material. It is not inconceivable yet highly unlikely that a director would pick someone’s else’s fancy completely randomly and then film a scene that caters to those interests purely out of curiosity as to what would happen.

Why he has such an interest is, perhaps, impossible to know. Even if we were to interview him, he might lie. Perhaps only he and his therapist know. He may lie to her, too. But we can simply count the foot shots in a QT film, or we can consider the circumstances in which feet are featured prominently. This all establishes his interest. Does he do this deliberately to confound his critics?

I don’t actually know that QT’s therapist is a woman. I don’t even know if he has a therapist. But it is amusing to think that a guy who comes off as such a misogynist would go immediately to some kind of mother-figure with his problems.

Anyway, it’s just not likely that anyone could mastermind a reaction from critics like that. There is simply too much to lose. Making a film that works is hard enough without attempting special tricky techniques that could jeopardize the income the film could generate. And making your film deliberately bad for any reason is the province of camp, something “Death Proof” could have used a whole lot more of if it was campy on purpose.

Well, now that was certainly rambly. I’ve gone from one topic to the next with such a tumble of words, I’m not even sure what I started with. But this is what happens when there are so many hours to sit and write, waiting for my last three films.

THE MAN FROM LONDON – Dir. Bela Tarr

The best way to describe this film is as follows: soporific, beautiful, slow. Actually, to say “slow” may be unfair to the concept of slow. This film is glacial.

The second best way to describe this film is in the following table:

Reel #	Number of Shots	Running Total
1	3	3
2	3	6
3	5	11
4	2	13
5	2	15
6	3	18
7	3	21
8	4	25
9	3	28

Keeping in mind that a reel of 35mm film is about 25 minutes.

This film is so meditative that half the audience walked out and half of those remaining were snoring. I had to resort to quietly munching biscuits (eating is frowned upon in French theatres, apparently) in order to keep my eyes from fluttering. There are two pieces of music in the film and both of them are used constantly. There is one five-minute sequence that is repeated with only slight variation. This is tough viewing.

Living in this lonely watchtower is preferable to watching this film.

The entire story can be summed up in a paragraph: A man works in a watchtower by a quay and a railroad. He sees a murder, and a bag lost in the water. “The Man from London,” who says he is a detective, but who is clearly shadier than that, comes to investigate/solve the disappearance and some lost money.

In the midst of this, the watchtower guard argues with his family. In the synopsis offered by the festival we are told there will be meditations on “the ontological question of the meaning and worth of existence.” If so, then Tarr’s actor was conveying it with the one eyebrow that was lit during some of the scenes, and I missed it.

I have never seen any of Mr. Tarr’s films before this, so I do not know how this one holds up. I’m not sure I could watch another one like this. I believe his producers are going about it the wrong way, however. If they package “The Man from London” right it could have a long shelf life as a proven substitute for barbiturates.

A quick step for an apple and a cola and I’m back in line again, this time for Sokurov’s “Alexandra.”

You can imagine, if you like, that my little notebook has been scribbled on in golden-lit cafés as cigarette smoke curls in the neon lights of the exciting Riviera. It was in fact, hastily scrawled on buses and while sitting, hunched-over and cross-legged on the sidewalks outside various movie theatres, waiting for the next séance, queuing for the films I did not get to see.

There’s a guy in front of me – a notorious line-cutter and typical Cinephile type. Never misses an opportunity to butt someone in line. Makes a slow crawl during the two to two-and-a-half hour wait to get at least three or four people ahead, inch by inch. Well, I sat back a bit in this line to avoid having to sit on some obvious bird shit on the sidewalk, and this guy whips in with his portable camp stool, landing right in the middle of the sidewalk (which sidewalk pedestrians still have the right of way on over line-sitters).

Of course I immediately move, somehow finding the only geometrically viable spot that places me right in between the bird shit and some other hideous stains. A woman watched me navigate it, and gave me a thumbs up when I figured it out. Or maybe she’s making fun because I’ve just done something highly unhygienic.

A passing baby stroller has just butted the butter out of the way. Naturally he offered obsequious apologies. He’s doing Sudoku, by the way – most everyone in line does. I’m the only lunatic scribbling furiously into a little notebook, and between this and sketching, I inadvertently get people’s attention sometimes. I’m not very happy about it.

I feel like I might be getting sick.

Later, I find I am right back in the exact same seat I inhabited for the last film, and ready to endure more VOSTF (Version Originale Sous-Titres Francais - original language with French subtitles). I have only a few biscuits left, and there are two movies left, back to back, and both requiring the utmost of my sad French reading comprehension. The butt-inski has planted himself on the aisle - for easy exiting, I imagine. What a joke – I’m sure the line won’t be that bad.

This is the last night of the screenings at La Licorne, and they have a program planned all night long, with a 2AM and a 4AM screening later. I’ve seen the 2 and 4 screenings already, so I’m definitely not going to stay for those.

Here are some more people from the line:

ALEXANDRA – Dir. Alexander Sokhurov

A war film with no war in it. A strange relationship between soldier/son and grandmother, all shot in desaturated sepia tones. All yellow-brown and dusty green-grey. Apparently recently, apparently the Chechen conflict.

Grumpy Grandma Goes to War.

Sokhurov’s films always seem to have peculiar family relationships in them. Here the grandmother (the titular Alexandra) travels what seems like weeks in military transports so that she can spend a few days sleeping in a tent next to her grandson. There’s nothing sexual about it, and yet it’s hard not to watch them as if they were some kind of lovers. They have long talks, in which they honestly and openly convey their feelings and seem to understand deep notions of how the other person thinks and feels. Neither is insulted, even by the most startling accusations. These are peculiar, intense, and wholly fantastic family relationships. One imagines that if Sokhurov’s own family relationships are like this, that he and his kin are some kind of evolved beings from space.

Alternately, while grandson is off presumably killing some Chechens, Alexandra goes to visit some of them in the market place. Old folks have lots in common (aches and pains, vegetables, black market cigarettes) and Alexandra, hard and severe as she seems, is actually quite caring, quite maternal. Even when she is among the boys in her grandson’s unit you can see them warming up to her, leaning on her like a mother, asking to spend time talking with her or helping her out.

As emotional portraits go, this is subtle stuff. Those late-night conversations seem to have it all out on the table, yet Sokhurov balances those scenes (which sound like conversations he is having with himself) with very subtle ones in which Alexandra interacts with those around her, the incongruity of an old woman amongst the fighting men leading to some striking images and some slight, indefinable emotions.

Then it’s back to the line again for a very short time:

And back into the theatre. Same row, maybe a seat or two over. What a charade. Last film I endured LA TETE LA PLUS GROSSE DU MONDE in front of me, making sous-titre acquisition a bit tough. I spent the whole two hours with my neck craned trying to see around this person’s truly gigantic cranium. I’m hoping Mr. Lee’s film is of a less complex nature.

SECRET SUNSHINE – Dir. Lee Chang-Dong – Best Actress Award, Do-Yeon Jeon

This is the story of a woman who moves to Miryang, a town where her dead husband was born, a little nothing of a place with the overly mysterious name that means “Secret Sunshine.” The town is ultimately not so friendly - her son is kidnapped and killed, her attempts to make friends backfire, and she is isolated, unloved. She turns to religion, but this fails her as well.

Mr. Kim to the rescue.

The film is shot well, but not as stylized or interestingly as Lee’s “Oasis (2002);” it seems to fit somewhere in between that film and his “Peppermint Candy (2000).” Soft, white diffused light streams in from windows, and even interior locations seem bright at night. It’s not the blues and greens of the European style, but more of the white and silhouette style of Korean and Japanese films.

Mr. Lee, however, has kind of missed it here, whatever he was going for. There is a hilarious satire of goofy Christians that is worth watching, but it may be a bit subtle. This film almost gets going about 5 times, but somehow runs out of gas. Do-Yoen Jeons’s portrayal of a woman grieving is quite affecting and her turn to faith and subsequent fall from grace is well observed and remarkable indeed. Her desperate attempts to connect or to feel something – anything – (ice, cut wrists, sex with anyone) are especially well observed and performed.

But the whole film just kind of stops in the backyard without any fitting ending. No satisfaction. Keep in mind that even a limp film from Lee beats practically anything else in the Korean market, so it may still be worth seeing. Certainly over that dismal “Oldboy.”

And that is it. My week is over. No more La Licorne and no more Cannes. It is now early on

Samedi 26 Mai 07

I walk the several kilometers back to the hotel, but the rest is a blur. Somehow I’m packed and ready to go the next day.

Next thing I realize, I’m at the bus stop, waiting for Hae-Jin and Bob to get back from finishing up their business at the Palais. We’re off to Nice, the airport, and then London. I’ve had a pretty good run of it here, I’d say.

End of the Cannes 2007 Diary. Thank you for enduring it.

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The 2008 Cannes Film Festival is now over, but we’re still posting the 2007 Diary. This is Day 8 of the 2007 Festival

Jeudi 24 Mai 07

Up early in the morning, back in the Cannes Cinephile line. By now I’m well versed with which Coke machines will give me my elixir for only 3 Euros (at the time of this writing still a Cannes BARGAIN at US$4.50!) and I am even now nursing my first of one million I will consume throughout the day instead of eating food. I have followed this largely unhealthy diet for a couple days now, and not because I’m unwilling to spend any money. It’s because I’m unwilling to spend so much money for such terrible food. My dinky motel offers me a few packages of biscuits each day, ostensibly to be eaten in the morning with the ubiquitous teabags sitting next to the dangerous water-heating device (it looks like a bare electrical wire you plug in and stick into the cup). I nibble these biscuits in tiny bites throughout the morning when I feel like I’m going to fall asleep. The coordinated strategy is to consume caffeine and these biscuits in order to fool my body into thinking it’s getting something other than the 50 millionth ham and cheese baguette sandwich.

The tattooed lass in line behind behind me is, indeed, fetching, but she is also wall-eyed. Though 90% of the fetching lasses here seem ocularly without peer, I do notice a high incidence of wall-eyes. There must be some kind of genetic cultural trait, like Swedes having blonde hair, or that Roman or Jewish nose.

All her tattoos are going to look ridiculous in a few years, though. All those roses and curlicules are going to be high hilarity in the nursing home. I’ll be laughing my ass off from my hospital bed to see her in the company of some old wrinkled-up guy with “Metallica” sagging off his droopy man-boobs. This woman is going to have a sliding girdle of scrunched up briars and ribbons that even she can’t read.

After about an hour they post the free tickets and they are all duds. More Ken Burns. Apparently his new “Jazz” series is playing, and I could have seen them all at Cannes! Never mind that they will be broadcast on PBS. Never mind that this time next year I can check them all out of the public library if I would like. Bah, Ken Burns! What good are these free tickets?

All the Cannes Classics (yawn) are also available to me. I can see the old Turkish film “YOL” at the 803rd screening since the festival started. They sure are playing that one until it falls off the sprockets. All week long I’ve been fumbling with a heap of schedules, juggling times and venues in my head until I’m completely dizzy. This late in the festival I’m a master of the dozen or so square blocks of this town, and my new plans coalesce in a matter of milliseconds. I decide to crash Harmony Korine’s “Mr. Lonely” at a market screening, as soon as I retrieve my hideously expensive laundry and purchase a new notebook.

A quick dash back to the cleaners (and the hotel, to change) sets me up for a new non-stinky wardrobe for the day. I only paid half a year’s salary for those shirts, but they sure are nice - much nicer than if I laundered them in the sink like my socks and underwear. Long ago I purchased a bus pass for the duration of my stay, so these frequent back-and-forth trips are not costing me extra money - just extra time. But since the Korine screening is in a few hours and in one of the outlying theatres (sadly, the hideous “Star!”) I know I’ll be fine. In no time at all I’m back at the Hotel de Ville, Cannes.

Monoprix provides me with a new notebook, as I’ve filled the other one completely. Strangely, I find no evidence that a tuxedo can be had here – are they all out? Or were the nice girls at L’Espace Cinephile pulling my leg? If you’ll recall, the staff at L’E.C. informed me that I would need evening wear for the premieres at the Palais, and that I could get a tuxedo at Monoprix, which is like the “Target” of France. I figured they would have them somewhere, but that they would be all polyester, or - worse yet - made of tissue paper or the like. Though I was resolved that I would not need one by now, I still searched for them with no results.

From there, I went to cool my heels at the Hotel Gray d’Albion – it seems very easy to hang out there. As I was trying to get in the front entrance I somehow managed to stumble into a Korean star’s video. They were taping his exit from the hotel and his limo ride down to the Croisette. A live feed that was going to the jumbotron screens outside the Lumiere Theatre. The confused white guy tripping over everyone, ignoring the star, and going the opposite direction from everyone else? That would be me.

This Korean star is apparently one of the actors in “Secret Sunshine,” which I have yet, at this point, to see. Not much more than five minutes after I make a shambles of the entourage, I’m in the lobby, watching the live footage from that same camera broadcast to the hotel lobby. Part of being an imposter, as I most assuredly am, is that you end up in the wrong place at the wrong time quite frequently. I seem to have additional talents in this area.

I wait in the Gray lobby a while, but the temptation to fall asleep on the decidedly uncomfortable lobby furniture is too great. I feel self-conscious killing time like this, and I’m uncomfortable hunched over scribbling in my notebook. I have walked so much this trip that I have literally worn through the inserts of my shoes. They had a kind of gel pad under the heel, and these have burst now, covering my heels in sticky goo. I try to stuff them with paper towels from the Hotel Grey bathroom, but they are still uncomfortable. My feet are covered with blisters. I must have walked untold kilometers just waiting until I can stand in line for films I don’t get to see.

By the way, in case I have not mentioned it yet, France is definitely the dogshit capital of the world. Paris is the ultimate grand palace of dogshit, but all of France apparently does its best to uphold the dogshit tradition. The French do love their dogs. Canines are allowed everywhere, although patrons are asked to muzzle the big ones on the bus. Lots of people own dogs, especially the toy/lapdog variety. And these millions of dogs must relieve themselves somewhere. Hence the streets are littered with stinky piles that really make things pleasant in the hot summer sun. This is a country that is otherwise so civilized we Americans look like grunting chimpanzees in comparison, so why this lack of restraint when it comes to the dogshit? Do the dogs really appreciate it at all? Are they thinking “Oh, sweet heavenly God, I am so happy I can just drop a load anywhere. If I lived in America someone would be cleaning up after me, and that just will not do - as it were.”

There are frequent signs here asking people to clean up after the dogs and there are even special blue trashcans just for dogshit. “Je ramasse!” suggests a popular sign. Innocuous in French, it means “I collect!” a proud statement that you clean up doggy’s do. But it makes me laugh, because the icon of the little man standing behind the dog with this legend is too funny if you’re possessed of both a filthy mind and a lack of sleep. “Je” is the personal pronoun, and I keep reading it as “I Ram Ass!”

The Gray has better air conditioning than the Noga Hilton, But I duck in the latter for a while anyway. I’m self-conscious about loafing in lobbies for too long, so I make it a point to wait a bit and go before anyone notices. Something tells me that after an hour or two they might get suspicious, and I have to wait longer than an hour, so how to work this out? There is literally nothing else to do in Cannes. I have read all my own books and those of my traveling companions. I have drawn in my sketchbook. I am writing these obsessive notebooks.

I’ve never sat in the lobby of the Noga, though, so I enjoy it for what it is worth. I’ve seen plenty of screenings at this hotel - it’s the venue for the Quinzaine. I notice a sign announcing today’s offerings. The French call a screening a “séance,” and I like that notion. Not only for the Baudrillard connotations (”Cinema resurrects ghosts,” our dear friend once wrote) but for the idea that some occult magic is summoned. Call me a romantic, but I love movies.

This notion, in which I indulge freely in my own delirious and fanatic adoration of the cinema, is quickly dispelled when I pick up a flyer for perhaps the worst film ever made. It is an animated film by some Italian company, called, simply, “Noah’s Ark.”

Holy Fucking Christ.

It seems this film is all about the kooky animals and their little drama aboard the titular craft. It seems to have a ripoff of Disney’s “The Lion King” as a subplot. Considering that “Lion King” is, itself, a ripoff of a Japanese cartoon (Simba the White Lion), this pushes us back into Baudrillard territory again - a copy of a copy of a copy. In any event, I take the flyer home, as there is an animation producer friend of mine who simply must be tortured by this drek.

Wait… is that a penis on her chest?

I hit the streets again, feet impossibly sore, but so bored I can’t sit any longer. Cannes would be a royal nightmare if you had to drive through it. It is absolutely impossible to maneuver a vehicle here much less to park one. The streets are so narrow you can maybe fit one dinky toy Eurocar across it, and since the streets are always swarming with pedestrians even that becomes a quixotic endeavor. You would definitely have to bully your way through to get anywhere. The pathetic limos that shuttle the stars in from about three blocks away do so only with police support. Even the hideous “Burn” car crawls slower than the toy dogs marching down the sidewalk looking for a proper place to poop.

When I finally reach the hideous Star Theatres, I realize the extent to which the constellations have it in for me today. I do get shut out of “Mr. Lonely” again, and here’s how it happened. The guy in charge was just being a dick, plain and simple. Here’s to you, you little Tin Hitler, I hope you find yourself reading these words.

Though he had seats in the house, and though he let in every street whore before me, and though I waited politely, he just had to look at that Cannes Cinephile badge. And this little martinet decided that NO Cinephile was going to get in HIS screening. Bunch of dumb market kids? Sure. Every single late press person? Sure. I think some high school kids snuck in and he just kind of looked the other way. Me, he kept waiting.

But then this little twerp was so gutless about his decision to bar me personally from his precious screening he didn’t even have the decency to look me in the eye and tell me to go home. He did the shittiest thing possible, which was to wait, walk away without saying anything, and hope that I would leave. Forty minutes into the movie, I did, even though people walked out after ten, and I could have had a seat. It was never full.

I truly pity a man who would respect these little colored badges so much that he would take his daily joy enforcing rules that don’t need to apply and distinctions that do not matter. The fact is that he had seats, it would not have hurt him to let me in, everyone else in the festival had done so, and he just decided that today he was going to be Mr. Rules. I hope he enjoyed his little power trip. I guess it’s karma for some occasion in my life where I was strict with someone else - some event where I would not bend out of stubbornness or adherence to unimportant regulation.

Now I have nothing to do, and I’ve waited all day to do it. And my plan to not eat anything is really backfiring. I’m starving. And since I’m sleep and food deprived, I’m starting to act a little crazy. It’s bad enough I sit here scribbling in my notebooks all day without even seeing any films - I really feel like I’m unravelling. I’m hungry but I can’t even get myself to eat, and I walk another two hours passing restaurant after restaurant, unable to enter any of them. It all seems pointless. It’s going to be a $5 coke and something completely inedible and generic. What am I doing to myself?

Finally, I succumb. I find this good-smelling shwarma place I’ve passed a few times, and I duck in, hoping the middle eastern angle is enough to distinguish this establishment from the other cuisine in Cannes. Sadly, it is no great shakes, but I am surprised and somewhat delighted to find that the French put fries in their shwarma sandwiches.

I take my food to go, head to a park bench, and eat like a ravenous animal, which at this point, I am. Mid-bite I realize what I must look like - rumpled, sunburned middle-aged American shoving food in my overstuffed cheeks like a demented hamster. I have no mirror to confirm this, but the looks on the faces of passers-by tell me I have a wild look in my eye. This is how Nature says “Do Not Touch!”

My notebook devolves and becomes a solipsistic disquisition on my own melancholy. It doesn’t help that I am at my Low Point, Cannes-wise. There is only tomorrow left, and here I am wasting it. All I’ve done today is pick up my laundry. My only option is to watch two Version Originale French movies at La Licorne tonight. My French is already sad, but it’s much much easier for me to read it than to listen to it. French subtitles on a German movie where they don’t really say much is no problem for me. V.O. French films will pose a bigger problem, as I’ll have to listen more attentively.

My friend Craig, a school friend who now lives in Paris, has come down for a visit today, so I decide I’m taking this day off. I should have joined him and Cecilia at noon - it would have saved me a bad meal. They took a short bus to Antibes, which apparently has much better food. I stayed here and stumbled about because I thought I could get into the Korine film. Now it is already 3PM and my further prospects are dim. I will surrender to the fates for now and hope that tomorrow is a brighter day. Time to goof off with Craig!

At this point you will consider your frazzled narrator relaxing and enjoying some human company for the remainder of the day and into the evening, which ends early and includes real, genuine sleep.

The notebook continues, however, with other observations, which I will relate at this moment.

Yet another positive aspect to this trip has been that it has called my attention to the hideous flaws in European film production and distribution. I’ll admit, I tended to lionize the European industry somewhat, simply because of the higher percentage of excellent European films. That and the respect they accord directors as visionaries made Europe seem almost perfect. Now that I’m here I get a different, moderated view.

For all that French films beat American ones in style and sophistication, they are in just as much of a rut as we are. France is positively flooded with American trash (Shrek 3, Spider-Man 3, etc. are all here right now), so the French film industry ruthlessly mines what it feels it has to itself – apparently moody pictures of guys in turtlenecks with a past, falling in love with women from oppressive Islamic cultures. There is still the very real problem of marketing art films, just like there are challenges with dominating the world with a crappy sequel to “Shrek.” And for every “L’Homme Perdu,” there are 100 worse French films that didn’t have enough - I dunno - smoking and drinking shots to qualify as a strong example of national cinema. It really is just swapping one set of conventions out for another.

But one positive aspect of the European film market (and Asian, too, so maybe I mean more correctly “non-American” market) is that they are interested in doing small to medium business. It is not necessary to have everything be a blockbuster all the time. Everyone wants a “Spider-Man 3” in terms of the money it yields, but the Europeans also know how to deal with lots of pictures that don’t bring in that kind of money, and they make far more with budgets way under the average Hollywood mess. And these are rich guys with yachts, mind you, so it’s not like they are small-time players.

Ultimately, this means more movies shot for less money. And this often means digital. I estimate that maybe as high as 1/3 of the films I’ve seen here were digitally originated. Most of these looked quite good. Being here shows me a cinema that is adapting, both to new technology and to the changing markets. American cinema seems moribund on a business level, not just emotional and narratively bankrupt.

End Day 8

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This is Day 7 of the Cannes Diary 2007

Mercredi 23 Mai 07
Today I have employed a time-honored method of extending one’s laundry with a thorough wash in the bathroom of your hotel. Be sure to pack (or purchase locally) some laundry detergent. You can use the sink for washing, tub for the rinse, and the electric hairdryer to speed up the drying process. A sock will fit over the hairdryer and will take approximately 3-5 minutes to dry completely. I heartily recommend this procedure for the traveler. In any event, I am reduced to this travesty because I cannot find a proper laundromat. Such things do exist in France; I have used them in Paris.

In fact, I had a rather amusing situation in Paris, in which I asked a news vendor for change. My French not being quite so good, I did not know what word to use to ask for “change.” I compensated by holding out a bill and a coin, asking him if I could make THIS - wave the bill - into THIS - indicate the coin. The old guy smirked at me and suggested the proper term: “petit monnaie!” he barked. Obvious! “Little money!” Duh! he made me repeat it until my accent was perfect.

Then he continued. “No, can’t give you that.” Slight twinkle in eye. Bastard? Or off-kilter sense of humor?

I chose the latter. After all, he was bothering to teach me French. And rather than condemn him as a snotty frog, as so many Americans would, I decided my willingness to play along and actually try to pronounce his language properly may have helped international relations overall. We Americans have so much to make up for - George Bush notwithstanding.

In the end, he did tell me where I could get change, so my guess seemed more correct than not. But back to Cannes, where no coin-operated laundromat awaits me. I can dry-clean my clothes for exorbitant prices, or I can soak things in the sink. An early rise (argh) ensures that I will have something to wear later. Why choose? I use the sink for socks and underwear, but my shirts will have to be sent out to the expensive Cannes-La Bocca cleaners.

Back in town I realize I have been ignorant of one of my best resources available. I have been flapping my feet on the hot pavements of Cannes all day, waiting inbetween movies, when I could have been loafing in these air-conditioned hotels. I guess I’ve been somewhat put off by the security everywhere.

A copy of the Hollywood Reporter, freely available from just about any hotel, is the best way to keep the sun off one’s head. Free, clean toilets, lots of reading material, lobbies with air conditioning – how could I have been so dim? Surprising that I have taken so long to work this out.

In any event, I’m soon in line again for the Quinzaine (clearly the venue with the best ratio of watchable films thus far), and I have a full day planned - including a billet for the Salle 60e and Nicolas Philibert’s new film. The QZ line is definitely the worst. Out in the glaring sun and the reflection of several buildings, it’s a real scorcher by 10AM, precisely the time I find myself standing in it. Some satanic force must behind the architecture and scheduling.

The crowd at the Quinzaine

After 30 minutes I realize that I am in the wrong line for the film I want to see. My choice this morning is not the tedious French film I hear others discussing in line, but a Japanese film playing at the Critics’ Week screening.

If you remember, the “Semaine International de la Critique,” or “Critics’ Week,” is a parallel festival, affiliated with Cannes, but only unofficially. Not to be outdone by the Director’s Fortnight or the “Un Certain Regard,” a consortium of film critics also hold their own show during Cannes, known in English as simply “Critics’ Week.” To give you an idea of how people view film here in Europe, we need only look at the poster for the Critics’ Week this year:

This image is brilliant. Here is the critic, who has been slapped across the face by the film. The film has somehow reached out there and confronted him in a way that has a physical effect on him. And look at his face. He is smiling. In admiration. In wonder at the effectiveness of that film. What better image can there be for the way that cinema works? Good cinema, anyway? If it’s not kicking your ass like this then why bother with it?

Anyway, I scramble two streets over for the Critics Week screening. This new line is in the shade and nowhere near as long. Good thing, too, because the film I would have ended up in at the QZ was about a French guy who has a past and no doubt features some Middle Eastern conflict.

I make fun, and fairly constantly, about this aspect of the festival. Yet in all seriousness, at least Europe is aware that there is some kind of cultural clash going on in the world, and at least the French (for all the trouble they have with rioting Muslims) are able to express some of that in their cinema. The American cinema is too timid to take on the subject of Islamic cultures (except as convenient towelhead stereotypes acting as terrorists - c.f. “Iron Man”), even though we’ve been in a fruitless ridiculous war for over 5 years with Islamic cultures. So although the synopses of these Cannes films are practically identical, and although the attitude towards Islamic cultures is still one of exoticism, it is at the very least an earnest attempt to understand relevant issues present in everyday life. At least in the cities, it is.

Some cute teen just hiked up her skirt to hop over the fence here. I received a stellar view of her undergarments. Oh, la, la, les françaises.

These teens are all taking cuts so they can smoke together. People here sure have a funny idea about queuing. Now two more teens took cuts and a second teen bent over and offered a spectacular view of her boobs. At this juncture you, dear reader, must have me pegged as a terrible pervert. I’ll not deny anything, but I’ll also stress that these little moments have made an impression on me simply because they have been so plentiful and I am so unaccustomed to them. My little American provincial Calvinist/Victorian brain simply cannot handle it, and I am enjoying that immensely.

The Miramar (the venue for the SIC), like so many of these theatres, has comfortable seats and a good screen. It’s not the best, but if this and La Licorne are the crappy theatres, then all American venues are super dumps. Cannes puts even the highest end LA theatres at serious disadvantage. And I don’t even think these people are trying that hard.

FUNUKE SHOW SOME LOVE, YOU LOSERS – Dir. Daihachi Yoshida
The director of “Funuke” describes his film as a “burlesque.” In practice this seems to mean a contemporary Japanese broad comedy in the vein of “Taste of Tea” or “Survive Style 5,” though not as surreal.

The story concerns Sumika, a terrible would-be actress with a real rage problem who must return to the small country town she grew up in for the funeral of her parents. There she must live with her brother, his wife, and her younger sister Kiyomi. She is unwanted in Tokyo (her last audition ended when she threw a chair at the casting director), unwanted at home (although she bullies everyone mercilessly) and completely without direction. Sumika is like an unhappy cyclone that breezes through and wrecks everything in her path.

Sumika, second from the right, tormenting Kiyomi again.

A terrible family, peculiar small country town, stylized shooting in HD that includes garish color sequences at the beginning - if American films could only dream of approaching this simplicity, we might have more to watch.

The interactions between the two sisters – one a vain but terrible actress, the other a quiet schoolgirl who draws unflattering comics detailing the older sister’s life (which comics are subsequently published and bring the older sister humiliation and grief) – these relationships are as painful as they are funny, often awkwardly so. A slow shift is introduced into the film, whereby you laugh outwardly at the outrage of the setup, but then begin to feel strongly about the characters.

Definitely a sleeper of the festival, and a film that could teach a few other filmmakers a lesson or two.

Shown with the completely detestable short, “Rabbit Trouble,” a CG heap that culminates in a shallow gag. Why do they do it? Filmmakers often ruin perfectly good shorts by making them end in a punchline - like a terrible joke your unfunny uncle insists on telling in inappropriate situations. Let’s not even talk about this one - it’s just too upsetting. And to describe it without a chorus of trombones wailing - “wah-wah-wah!” - cannot possibly describe the utter disappointment that the filmmakers have spent so much money and so much of our time (even scant minutes) with this cheap trifle.

Shut out of Harmony Korine’s “Mr. Lonely” again! Not surprised. I try to sneak into a Market screening of the film, but after waiting for two hours at the head of the line, a group of us are shut out. Journalists and Market kids get to go in, of course. Moments later they walk out, but the bulls at the door do not let me take their places.

Nothing to do until 7PM tonight, so I attempt to go home and pick up my laundry. I seriously consider killing time at a market screening of Nic Roeg’s latest film. He’s in his 80’s now, and I’m sure he has totally lost it.

PUFFBALL – Dir. Nic Roeg
Have you been watching what Nic Roeg’s been up to lately? Oh, please don’t. It’s quite upsetting. The last time I saw a Roeg film was almost 20 years ago when he was making messes like “Track 29.” At the time I was attracted to any movie in which people behaved peculiarly, so I was interested. Once I went back and saw his 70’s films I realized that the 80’s work was the beginning of the end. But I like many Roeg films, and I’ll even watch his B.O. disasters like “Eureka” and find something in them.

With a name like “Puffball,” I thought he had truly gone mad, and that this would be a family film about a kitten. When many other curiosity-seekers lined up at the downtrodden and outright seedy “Star” theatre on the Rue d’Antibes, I thought that perhaps the kitten thing was improbable. Later, I wished that it had been about a kitten.

By the way, the “Star” theatres undo everything I said about the pristine and startling quality of Cannes film venues. It is every bit as terrible as, for example, The Beverly Center Theatres in Los Angeles, which I consider my gold standard for crappiness. That I have to go slumming it at he “Star” is a sad commentary on how low I’m sinking at this festival. “Import/Export” at the Lumiere is the high point, still.

The lady architect is thinking of getting sexy soon.

It’s a big mushroom, of course, not a kitten. The puffball of the title, that is. But the film isn’t really about picking mushrooms, either, sadly. A spoiled lady architect is renovating an old country cottage filled with memories. But the batty next door neighbors include three generations of witches who desperately want a baby boy – presumably to replace one who died in a fire at the cottage years ago. Oh yes, and somehow Odin is involved, as is an old druidic stone and Donald Sutherland, who shows up grinning wildly like he’s been popping Xanax between takes.

The photography is full of Roeg’s trademarked zooms and reframings, but it all looks weak from a guy who used to be a D.P. himself. And it is disjointed in a way that reminds you less of the brilliant storytelling in “Bad Timing” (1980) and more of a job simply not well done.

Ooops. I take the wrong bus and end up in the wrong area. I have an hour and three-quarters until the screening, but that’s not going to be enough. I’m as far up as Les Terrasses, and I end up walking down some until the next bus stop. I crossed a freeway I had never seen before and that’s when I began to panic. Had I been on the right bus I would be at Coubertain now, having picked up my laundry and able to get back in time. I stink like a pig from running around all day. I just moved way over on the bus bench where I’m waiting for the next arrival, because some girl just sat down and I worried my stink waves could kill her.

Why don’t the locals seem to have the hygiene problem I seem to have developed? At home in L.A., which is far more arid, I never have these problems. Cannes has somehow stimulated my stench glands, and I am more than usually aware that I am - as we say - not so fresh.

My little notebook is running out, and the binding is breaking anyway. I will have to find a replacement soon. I have filled it with so many tiny scribbles the locals must think me a proper madman, ready to start raving and screaming about UFOs at any moment.

With so much time alone with just me and the notebook I feel I am getting kind of strange. I smell terrible and I say nothing to anyone except to scrape out a few words in French when I must. I say “pardon” a lot. I had heard my companions mention the Nicolas Philibert movie this morning, so I hoped I would see them at this screening, but it turns out they have already seen it at an earlier press screening. I am alone, once again.

An English lass and her French friend are actually having a decent, intelligent conversation in front of me in this line. It was only yesterday I was in this exact same place, in line for the Salle 60e, listening to Jess and Grayson drone on about themselves. These two, in marked contrast, are my heroes - talking animatedly about films that seem worth watching. No “Death Proof” for these girls.

I worry they can smell my hideous odor, but I am also fascinated by how vacuous they aren’t compared to their American counterparts, so I may be inching closer, just to hear them talk.

RETOUR A NORMANDIE – Dir. Nicolas Philibert
M. Philibert’s first job out of college was apparently as an assistant director on a film adaptation of “Moi, Pierre Riviere…” a 19th century murder confessional unearthed and edited by Michel Foucault. Thirty years later after the film, Philibert tracks down all the non-professional actors who were used in the film.

When this film goes into high Philibert style – retarded folks at a special school, hog butchering, people staring for long periods – it is at its best. The images are serene but awkward, interesting in every corner, and somehow iconic.

Second best is the Michael Apted “Up” films mode, whereby Philibert has his actors show pictures of themselves in the film and talk about those experiences way back when.

Least successful is when Philibert himself becomes the subject of his own film (the Michael Moore mode?) and it dies a painful strangulated death.

I couldn’t even say what this is a picture of.

It’s a trend on the rise, for sure. Errol Morris’s best work has been marred by the director’s intrusion into the material, and as he seems to be more and more willing to make a personality out of himself, his films are less compelling. Since Philibert is actually so very good (both “To Be and To Have” and “In the Land of the Deaf” were fabulous) it does not make sense that he’d suddenly turn the camera on himself, the least interesting aspect of “Retour.”

It’s vain. Even the final moments of the film, where Philibert reveals his most personal connection with the film, would have been strengthened by removing the shots of him straightening his glasses or studiously paging through musty documents in an archive. Glad I saw it, but definitely minor work.

When the film lets out it is 10:30PM. At the bus stop people are pushing like hogs trying to get in the pen. I already smell bad enough – I’m certainly adding to the unwholesomeness of this atmosphere. The bus driver will allow people on board until the stench of humans is so unbearable no one can tolerate it. Then he will drive on, causing us all to suffer as much as we possibly can. Only when the bus is a sweltering stewpot of body odors and sweat will he shut off the engine – and the A/C – just to punish us. Because we are all such stupid, selfish apes, we will not stand in line orderly enough to ease the process.

At least I’ve made the last bus out, though, and I do not have to walk the several kilometers back to the hotel. And when I return at least there is underwear and socks dried out from the late night washing. My shirts are another matter. I crawl into the trundle bed, as my companions are fast asleep. I only see them in light of the red power indicator on the hairdryer in the bathroom now.

End Day 7

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This is Day 6 of the Cannes Diary, 2007

Mardi 22 Mai 07
Nothing. I mean, totally dead nothing, zero to watch today. Cinephile screenings are dogs and the market is embarrassing. Only one film to consider and that is

BRAND UPON THE BRAIN – Dir. Guy Maddin

This is only the second film to be produced by Seattle’s “Film Company,” a concern by which insane millionaires Gregg Lachow and Jaime (pronounced “Jamie”) Hook greenlight directors, not films. The budgets are micro-sized, but there are no stipulations other than that the production films everything in Seattle.

Maddin shot this hallucinatory melodrama on Super-8 and blew it up to 35mm with his characteristic kinetic editing - on display in his films including “Heart of the World,” and “Cowards Bend the Knee.” The film is his first silent, as well, having no synchronous sound whatsoever.

In special engagements the film has played with a live orchestra, foley unit, narrator, and castrato singer that provide all the sound necessary for the film. This is still the preferable way to see the picture, as it makes the viewing something of a spectacular event. But as these screenings are likely expensive and time-consuming, one should not necessarily wait if a screening is available.

Kicking ass, Maddin style

“Brand…” is ostensibly the story of an isolated lighthouse/orphanage and the girl detective who disguises herself as her own brother. As one can expect with Mr. Maddin, the experience of watching the film is something more than the sum of its parts. At turns aware of its own melodrama and yet capable of building real tension, both hilarious and deeply troubling, the film is the latest chapter in Maddin’s exploration of earlier film language and aesthetics.

At one level “Brand” seems like an artifact – a film from the late twenties we just did not know about and which was recently discovered in some dark cave next to “London after Midnight.” In other ways its sensibility is thoroughly contemporary. Not to be missed.

I saw this film in Los Angeles, under the conditions described above - live Foley, live orchestra, and in the lovely Egyptian Theatre. I only mention it here because it was one of the only things worth seeing today. If I had seen it, it wouldl have been in a shabby Market screening, rather than on the giant luminous screens of the Palais. Tant pis, as the French would say, because today is the day for some of the worst films ever to show.

DEATH PROOF – Dir. Quentin “Losing What Little I Had” Tarantino

Let us begin this section with the caveat that I don’t like QT’s films. They seem loud and hateful, and relish in the worst parts of being a human being – They are basically celebrations of justified ugly anger and feeling good about beating people up.

Eeeyikes, at the risk of psychoanalyzing QT (the subject of another fascinating article I am sure) let us suffice to say that “Death Proof” is a rather weak entry even in the canon of a fairly weak director. Even if you like the director, “Death Proof” comes off as a desperate maneuver by someone who is really trying to please but has forgotten how.

This car is not the only thing going down in flames.

OK, Here’s the gist of that fascinating article, just so I can claim to be the first one who proposes this idea. “Death Proof” is just one big hate-fuck of a film. It’s likely that all of QT’s films are, but as this one is the least competent in quite a while, the mechanisms are laid bare. If we consider the cinema of Kubrick, Lynch or Haneke, all of whom take an amoral, distant view of human behavior and attempt to understand it rather than revel in it, QT’s films come off like inducements to mob brutality rather than understanding of what makes us tick.

Notice how the my analysis on previous days of both Mungiu’s and Seidl’s films have to do with less identification with the protagonist and more seeing what the protagonist does and how they respond. Is Seidl trying to make you feel as though you are Paul? Well, maybe you haven’t seen the film, but if you had, the answer is no. And yet you still empathize with Paul (problematic though he is) and you still have hopes that Paul will get away from his hideous stepfather. Even Paul can be humiliated, and some part of your heart goes out to him when he is.

QT, on the other hand, wants you to feel the rage of someone as she crushes another guy’s head into the ground under her heel. The point of view the director is attempting to construct is that of a gang rapist patting you on the shoulder and telling you it’s your turn – and that its OK, she really is a whore and deserves it. QT is interested in egging you on with your murderous fuck-you-all-up impulses without any interest in examining where those impulses come from. Kubrick looks at the ape and says “By golly, no matter how sophisticated we think we are – that thing is still in us.” QT looks at the ape, gives it a high-five and says “fuckin’ A!”

There is an extended entry in this diary that deals with QT overall, but we’ll leave that for another time. This day is definitely “Death Proof” day, with a number of screenings of the picture at top venues.

Marred by interminable stretches of insipid dialogue by some of the most vapid people ever to plague the screen, QT shoots his bar girls as if they were part of a nature documentary – but a dull one on boring people. Then we get a sudden spray of silly violence by which all the girls die (a momentary relief) and it’s time to introduce four more chatty girls. But these are different. They are badass.

Keep in mind that the aesthetic of “badass” is also part of QT’s mania. In real life most of us try to avoid the badass, not because we respect him, but because the dumb ape will probably try to take our stuff when it’s not his right to do so. No one loves a real-life badass, we all just fear him and hope he goes away. For QT to glorify such a type is a real appeal to the lower limbic system of the brain. Badass people in real-life always give you a sense that they are really super-insecure and are trying to overcompensate. The badass reaction to the previous statement is to punch you, further validating the diagnosis.

QT is in love with badassery, all right, and badass girls get him even hotter than badass guys. How have positive qualities like “confidence” and being “capable” transformed to the ugly qualities of badass? More later on this topic, as well.

Kurt Russell literally lights up the screen when he appears. I don’t remember him ever being so good. Perhaps it’s because the soporific quality of the surrounding actresses and QT’s love of his own dialogue would make Cookie Monster look like a serous contender for the acting prize. But no, I’m going to give it up for Kurt Russell – he’s working hard, and gives us the only interest or charm in the entire two hours. In fact, if we could prepare a cut of “DP” (pun intended on the title) that excised everything except Snake Pliskin, it might be a work of genius.

Next there are twenty more minutes of scenes designed to cure consciousness that take place in diners and driving in cars. The girls all speak like different colored versions of QT himself, and the director has the unmitigated gall to test our vomit reflexes by having his characters name-check one of his favorite films like a product-placement.

It’s particularly annoying and egregious, too. If I meet a person in real life who raises their voice and in mock hysteria intones “What? You haven’t seen “Vanishing Point??? It’s only the greatest film ever!” Then I dearly want to slap that person. It’s also QT’s desperate attempt to take an obscure film that he loves and elevate it to the highest status just by mentioning it in his own films. Ho-hum.

Next there’s another violent section, leading to a derivative car chase and the culmination, which is kicking the crap out of Kurt Russell. End of film.

The big thing at Cannes was that QT had added material to “DP.” This material consisted of a lap dance scene that was omitted in the “Grindhouse” release of the film and a black and white section showing Kurt Russell playing with the dangling feet of one of his intended victims. Neither scene adds much if anything to the film, and seem to be explications of the director’s interests in women. The dangling feet, in particular, should be of interest to other foot fetishists. QT has admitted often that he has a thing for feet. If you don’t also, you’ll find this as enjoyable as waiting for a bus.

Young people under 25 seem to “get” QT and love his films, perhaps because they haven’t seen very many good movies. A girl in line for the bus one day told her companion “You see, at first, he’s the predator. But then… he becomes the prey.” She mentioned this complex structure, as it was her primary reason for liking the film. I really should let that comment stand alone as the absolute summation of “Death Proof.” What else is there to say?

PARANOID PARK - Dir. Gus vanSant

Chris Doyle’s cinematography is back! “Hero (“Ying Xiaong,” 2002, Zhang Yimou)” looks quite good, but where are all Doyle’s experimental shots? Let’s not talk about Doyle’s staid, constricted American films, like “Liberty Heights (1999)” or “The Lady in the Water (2006).” Of course we do follow more backs of heads down hallways, as in the last film Gus Van Sant made about high school. Naturally it’s filled with young boys getting undressed, showering, and skating. In a way, it’s a chicken hawk’s dream.

But it is also full of interesting visualizations, formal play with time, unusual ways of seeing, and specific and hard-to-quantify emotional states. Van Sant does a great job of fixing his character in time and space while he ponders the next move, or simply to emphasize the boredom and disconnectedness he feels about having sex with his girlfriend. The horror he feels at seeing the crawling upper torso of the rail yard bull he has dismembered is conveyed with equal clarity as the combination of disinterest and amusement he regards Macy, a girl who clearly fancies him.

Winner of the “60th Anniversary Prize,” the Cannes jury has seen fit to award the special one-time award to last year’s winner of the Palm d’Or. “Paranoid Park” was clearly one of the best films I saw at the festival, and I understand the judges’ enthusiasm over it.

Too cool for school. Note Academy 1.33 aspect ratio.

There is a common theme in GVS’s latest films. There is a marked celebration of young men – physically and unemotionally, but not mentally. It’s also apparent in Larry Clark’s films, in particular “Whassup Rockers!” (2006), also a film about skaters. In all of these films the characters’ amorality and blank affect is a key component, as is a particular kind of eroticism – young nubile bodies paraded before an appreciative lens.

On the one hand, it is kind of an alarmist tactic (which seems to be Clark’s main kick) – “Parents! These are your children! YOUR kids! This is what they are LIKE!” Clark’s “Kids” (1996) was most certainly all about shocking parents into realizing what their progeny were doing while their parents ignored them. This is less true with “Rockers,” but one can see the trend extending all way back to Clark’s “Tulsa” series, and perhaps even before. Clark has always been interested in showing a shocked bourgeoisie documentary evidence of the people he’s not afraid to meet and befriend.

GVS has less of an interest in shocking the bourgeoisie and more of an interest in portraying the lives of teenage boys without the false voices of mainstream entertainment. The kinds of high school kids (usually played by 25 year olds) that normally populate American TV and films are such distortions that GVS’s portrayals are always refreshing.

But on the other hand these films – and the young men they portray – provide a context for a kind of Perfect Gay Sex Object, the way that mainstream films might offer heterosexual audiences a Sex Kitten or a Beefcake image.

An aside: Bardot – a sex kitten if there was one – owes her career to bikini photos at the beach at Cannes. It is all coming together.

The PGSO is young, attractive in a wild rough-and-tumble way, expresses himself physically (skateboarding, a full-body sport) and – perhaps most important – he has few if any moral hang-ups. He is, in short, a kind of dream boy – ready, willing, and able.

All of GVS’s protagonists - in both “Elephant” and “Paranoid Park” - are about 5 years away (maybe less) from being kin with Warhol’s factory hustlers, and they spend about as much time onscreen with bare chests, showering, and toweling off (Consider Warhol’s brilliant “Lonesome Cowboys” (1968) for comparison). Almost blank, they seem to exist as loci for gay desires the way that a kittenish oversexed female ingénue exists to focus straight desires.

Of course I say “gay” because men have directed these pictures. The audience at the Cinephile screening was composed largely of teenage girls, who also respond to these kinds of characters, and lots of teenage boys who apparently want to identify with them as well. In fact, the passive, blunted affect of the main character in “Paranoid Park” seems to be the height of skaterdom’s “cool:” easygoing, keeps to himself, and only expresses himself through an exhibition of physical abilities.

End Day 6

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