After watching several films in Cannes Guy Rundle went to a party in a marquee. It was an all white marquee, most of the folks were in white, the DJing was white, even the black people were white. Guy Rundle. The question is, is anyone actually watching them? I can quite agree that every national cinema needs to go through this stage. Every cinema viewer, too. Let no-one say they know cinema who has never seen Rome: Open City.
But, even with a few magical bells and whistles, does it have to be repeated endlessly? The slow accumulation of detail, the idea of cinema as witness to reality, and on and on and on. This ponderous manifesto, which runs through half the movies on offer, has become the house style of festivals selecting from the non-west, call it whatever you like. From the US? Played for laughs, for style. And that becomes the aesthetic division of labour, produced by the selection committee in the same spirit of worthiness that has my old friend Sienna Miller spruiking for Haiti across the airwaves.
It is the third world as worthy guarantor of all that is authentic. You can see how the rhetoric runs, out loud or otherwise. The west is decadent, and lost to entertainment, a hopeless cause. Only the others can save us, not we ourselves. Whatever the thang, I bailed on A Screaming Man close to the third hour. Bought by distributors who need throughput, overwhelmingly to the cable TV market. Sold and spruiked by production houses and, more importantly, national funding bodies, to keep their whole show on the road.
Particularly so, because Cannes was developed as an alternative to the Venice Film Festival, which had been taken over by Mussolini in the 30s. Argghhh to that. There was no point diving into the competition, I had already spent a pleasant half hour watching Space Girls in Beverly Hills.
No, not p-rn. If only. Rather, it was one of those films that are entirely psychotic from start to finish, as are the people watching it, most of whom are the cast.
