As I wandered through the crowds outside the Palais de Festival building on the first night of the 61st annual Cannes film festival, my prematurely weary eyes landed upon a strange sight: a female Charlie Chaplin impersonator lugging a suitcase across the Croisette. This faux Charlot seemed even more wan and weary than we’ve come to expect from street performers who somehow believe that wearing greasepaint Hitler moustaches are socially acceptable. Perhaps my little tramp had been bullied or trampled by passing gawkers or security personnel. Or perhaps she’d been tossed out of a local hotel to make way for a Weinstein Company underling. Or perhaps she’d seen the two films that festival programmers had
deigned to screen first, thereby making the first night seem especially
lengthy.
Thankfully, neither was bad, as is often the case for opening fare. But few would consider Blindness and Waltz With Bashir upbeat. I’m sure some of the tuxedoed folks, maybe even our Chaplin, might’ve preferred it if the fest had opted to start the festivities with the Sex and the City movie, which was rumoured to be the opening film until programmers decided they really weren’t that into it.
In Blindness (4 stars) – director Fernando Mereilles and screenwriter Don McKellar’s sensitively rendered and appropriately grueling adaptation of the novel by Jose Saramago — a group of nameless people are incarcerated in a dilapidated ex-prison after being inexplicably stricken blind by what they call the “white sickness.” As the floors of their new home grow ever more slippery with shit, they suffer nearly every imaginable form of degradation. The veneer of human dignity is stripped away as the inhabitants prey upon each other. But just at that point that all seems lost, a friendly dog appears. (Hey, you get your solace wherever you can find it.) And though it’s hard not to shake the feeling that the film will play better to readers of the book — McKellar’s script skillfully condenses what seemed like an unadaptable text and Mereilles’ visual and aural strategies are both wise and audacious — Blindness is uncommonly powerful and should be regarded as a triumph for the many Brazilians and Canadians involved. Alas, judging by the grumbling among some of the press corps, this may turn out to be a minority view.
Ordinarily, such a harrowing experience should be followed by a tonic, or at least a stiff gin and tonic. Instead, up next is Waltz With Bashir (3 stars), an Israeli animated film that plays like Waking Life with bonus war atrocities. In Ari Folman’s dreamy and disturbing mix of documentary, graphic novel and mix tape — I hope it’s not the only time I get to hear OMD’s “Enola Gay” this week — the filmmaker and other veterans of Israel’s war with Lebanon in the early ‘80s struggle to cope with the return of repressed memories of what they did and saw. The most shocking concern genocidal acts against Palestinian civilians – the audience was left suitably ashen-faced by the movie’s last moments, which add horrific real video to cap off Folman’s exercise in illustrated real audio.
Once again, the glitz and glamour of Cannes stands in stark contrast to what’s actually unspooling in the cinemas. While the rest of the competition slate over the next ten nights does not include a Romanian abortion drama (that’s so 2007), festgoers can expect to see more than their share of squalour and misery. I for one am up for the challenge, especially when the downers come courtesy of the Dardenne brothers, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Jia Zhang-ke, Philippe Garrel and many more arthouse luminaries represented in the unusually fat-free schedule. More on those premieres in the days to come, though even I feel daunted by the prospect of seeing not one but two 280-minute epics. While buzz for Steven Soderbergh’s Che biopic with Benicio Del Toro (which the director is likely editing as you read this) is building, the mark of the true cinephiles will be in attendance for Raya Martin’s Now Showing, an equally lengthy Filipino movie screening in the Directors Fortnight next week. If I see my Chaplin on the way out of the theatre, I’ll make sure to give her a big hug.