-Joey's Two Cents: I'm very excited for this one...thoughts?
Showing posts with label cannes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cannes. Show all posts
Has Cannes been a boon to a few films at the Box Office?
Apparently so, according to The Hollywood Reporter:Did winning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival do the trick for Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life?
Over the weekend, the Brad Pitt-Sean Penn starrer debuted in the U.S. to a per screen average of $93,320—a record for a Fox Searchlight title. Searchlight’s previous best was $80,000 for Black Swan.
Opening Friday in four theaters in New York and Los Angeles, Tree of Life grossed an estimated $372,920 through Sunday. Including Monday--the Memorial Day holiday--the moody drama grossed an estimated $488,920 for a per screen average of $122,230.
Searchlight senior vice president for distribution Sheila DeLocahe said the film’s performance was all the more impressive considering its running time is two hours and eighteen minutes. And Searchlight relied almost entirely on publicity to generate interest in the drama, versus an expensive media campaign.
“Winning the Palme d’Or really pushed it forward,” said DeLoache, adding that Tree of Life has become a must-see event title.
The last American film to walk away with the top honor was Michael Moore’s documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 seven years ago.
Tree of Life isn’t the only film feeling the Cannes glow. Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, the festival’s opening night film, continued to do strong business in its second weekend at the domestic box office.
Released in the U.S. by Sony Pictures Classics, Midnight in Paris grossed $2.6 million over the four-day holiday weekend from 58 theaters, bringing its cume to a stellar $3.5 million. The film placed No. 7 overall.
Last weekend, Midnight scored the third best location averages of all time--$99,834--when opening in six theaters.
Both Midnight in Paris and Tree of Life should do good business on Monday, since it’s the Memorial Day holiday.
Tree of Life had a long and twisted journey to the big screen. Producer Bill Pohlad, whose River Road Entertainment made Tree of Life, originally intended to open the movie in late 2009, but Malick wasn’t done in time.
And Tree of Life still wasn’t ready to play at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010. Simultaneously, the distribution company Pohlad founded with Bob Berney folded, which meant Tree of Life needed to find a new home. Several months later, Tree of Life landed at Searchlight.
DeLoache said evening shows were sold out in all four theaters. And Tree of Life is setting a house record at the Sunshine Cinema in New York, where it grossed $70,227 in its first two days, all but matching the three-day weekend record of $71,300 for Searchlight’s The Wrestler.
Searchlight said Tree of Life must be handled carefully, and that Searchlight is planning a slow and deliberate rollout. This coming Friday, the film moves into eight new markets, playing in a total of 18 theaters.
On July 1, Searchlight is planning a national release for Tree of Life, meaning a total theater count of 200 to 300.
Here's a rundown of what films got picked up (and by whom) at Cannes...
...via Variety:U.S. distribs sprang into action during Cannes, snapping up both festival specialty pics and pre-sales on big-budget commercial titles. The Weinstein Co. and Sundance Selects were the busiest buyers, while new players FilmDistrict and Open Road are starting to flex their pickup muscles.
Cannes festival films-
"The Conquest" - Music Box
"We Need to Talk About Kevin" -- Oscilloscope
"House of Tolerance" - Sundance Selects
"Kid with a Bike" - Sundance Selects
"Poliss" - Sundance Selects
"Sleeping Beauty" - Sundance Selects
"Footnote" - Sony Classics
"Dragon" - TWC
"The Artists" - TWC
Pre-sales
"Great Hope Springs" - Sony
"Snitch" - Summit
"Iron Lady" - TWC
"The Wettest County" - TWC
"Looper" - FilmDistrict
"Arabian Nights" - FilmDistrict
"Playing the Field" - FilmDistrict
"The Killer Elite" - Open Road
"Goodbye First Love" - Sundance Selects
"Sacrifice" - Samuel Goldwyn
-Joey's Two Cents: I'm always in favor of films getting picked up and being given a chance to find an audience, so the more the merrier to me...thoughts?
Go figure...The Tree of Life wins the Palme d'Or!
Behold the prizes:Official Competition Palme d'Or: The Tree Of Life (dir: Terrence Malick)
Grand Prix (Runner-up to main award): (tie) Kid With A Bike (dir: Dardenne brothers), Once Upon A Time In Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
Best Actor: Jean Dujardin (The Artist)
Mise en Scene (Best Director): Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive)
Best Actress: Kirsten Dunst (Melancholia)
Prix du Scenario (Screenplay): Joseph Cedar, Footnote (Israel) Prix Du Jury: Poliss (dir: Maiwenn)
Palme d'Or Court Metrage: Cross Country (dir: Maryna Vroda)
Camera d'Or (Best First Film): Las Acasias (dir: Pablo Giorgelli)
-Joey's Two Cents: The top prize going to The Tree of Life was mildly surprising, but it was always going to be an all or nothing endeavor (shame on me for predicting otherwise). Overall, I was right about the acting awards, which I'm kind of proud of, and counting my alternates, I hit on Director as well...thoughts?
While we wait for the Palme d'Or announcement...
Soon enough, we'll know the identities of the honorees, but first thing's first...here are my updated predictions for the big prizes, since they've been requested of me. Do note that I'm mixing in the buzz I've heard with some of my own theories and just a little bit of guesswork as well. Bombs away:Palme d'Or: The Artist (Alternate: Drive)
Grand Prix: We Need to Talk About Kevin (Alternate: The Tree of Life)
Jury Prize: This Must Be The Place (Alternate: Sleeping Beauty)
Best Director: Lynne Ramsey for We Need to Talk About Kevin (Alternate: Nicolas Winding Refn for Drive)
Best Actor: Jean Dujardin for The Artist (Alternate: Ryan Gosling for Drive)
Best Actress: Kirsten Dunst for Melancholia (Alternate: Tilda Swinton for We Need to Talk About Kevin)
Best Screenplay: The Artist (Alternate: The Tree of Life)
Now, for the already announced winners, via Variety:
Aki Kaurismaki's ''Le Havre,'' Pierre Schoeller's ''The Minister'' and Jeff Nichols' ''Take Shelter'' shared awards Saturday at Cannes from the Fipresci Intl. Federation of Film Critics.
Also announced Saturday, Cannes' Ecumenical Jury awarded its main Prix to Italian Paolo Sorrentino's Sean Penn starrer ''This Must Be the Place.''
Fipresci plaudits go to one outstanding film in Cannes Competition and Un Certain Regard and a third in either Directors' Fortnight or Critics' Week.
Cannes Competition contender ''Le Havre'' finds Kaurismaki at the top of his deadpan comedy game, delivering a crowd-pleasing tale toplining Kaurismaki regular Andre Wilms as a shoeshine who takes an African stowaway under his wing.
Cannes Competition favorite among international critics, at least through Friday, ''Le Havre'' is sold by The Match Factory, and produced by Sputnik, France's Pyramide Prods. and Germany's Pandora Film Prod.
''Minister'''s Fipresci nod as best film in Un Certain Regard comes as something of a surprise: Schoeller's follow-up to ''Versailles,'' it garnered good reviews as an convincing description of the all-consuming soul-destroying grind of high public office - here France's transport minister, played by Olivier Gourmet.
But the subject is far fresher in France , where politicians have traditionally gone about their business in private - than in the U.S. or U.K. context.
Defending the award, French Fipresci jury member Laurent Atnin said ''The Minister'' was totally different from Nicolas Sarkozy portrait ''The Conquest,'' also at Cannes.
''The Minister'' is ''a surprise from the start to the end, a psychological portrait of a fictional political figure which confirms Schoeller after 'Versailles' as a very promising talent,'' Atnin said.
Acquired by Sony Pictures Classics before its upbeat reception at Sundance, psychological thriller ''Take Shelter'' adds the Fipresci plaudit to a growing prize trawl, including Thursday's Cannes Critics' Week Grand Prix.
Playing Competition Thursday, ''Place'' features a dominating performance by Penn as an aged rock star turned Nazi hunter.
Ecumenical Special Mentions went to ''Le Havre'' and Lebanese Nadine Labaki's Un Certain Regard player ''Where Do We Go Now,'' her follow-up to ''Caramel.''
Co-produced and sold internationally by Pathe, ''Now'' turns on the Muslim and Christian womenfolk in a village who band together to defuse sectarian violence between their hothead men.
A ''real revolt'' against continuing conflict in Lebanon, Labaki said after receiving the mention, ''Now'' is a ''cry from the heart.''
The Ecumenical jury mention would help its message reach wider international audiences, she added.
-Joey's Two Cents: Those predictions above aren't too dissimilar from what they looked like when the festival started, which is a testament to the quality of the slate overall...thoughts?
Aki Kaurismaki's ''Le Havre,'' Pierre Schoeller's ''The Minister'' and Jeff Nichols' ''Take Shelter'' shared awards Saturday at Cannes from the Fipresci Intl. Federation of Film Critics.
Also announced Saturday, Cannes' Ecumenical Jury awarded its main Prix to Italian Paolo Sorrentino's Sean Penn starrer ''This Must Be the Place.''
Fipresci plaudits go to one outstanding film in Cannes Competition and Un Certain Regard and a third in either Directors' Fortnight or Critics' Week.
Cannes Competition contender ''Le Havre'' finds Kaurismaki at the top of his deadpan comedy game, delivering a crowd-pleasing tale toplining Kaurismaki regular Andre Wilms as a shoeshine who takes an African stowaway under his wing.
Cannes Competition favorite among international critics, at least through Friday, ''Le Havre'' is sold by The Match Factory, and produced by Sputnik, France's Pyramide Prods. and Germany's Pandora Film Prod.
''Minister'''s Fipresci nod as best film in Un Certain Regard comes as something of a surprise: Schoeller's follow-up to ''Versailles,'' it garnered good reviews as an convincing description of the all-consuming soul-destroying grind of high public office - here France's transport minister, played by Olivier Gourmet.
But the subject is far fresher in France , where politicians have traditionally gone about their business in private - than in the U.S. or U.K. context.
Defending the award, French Fipresci jury member Laurent Atnin said ''The Minister'' was totally different from Nicolas Sarkozy portrait ''The Conquest,'' also at Cannes.
''The Minister'' is ''a surprise from the start to the end, a psychological portrait of a fictional political figure which confirms Schoeller after 'Versailles' as a very promising talent,'' Atnin said.
Acquired by Sony Pictures Classics before its upbeat reception at Sundance, psychological thriller ''Take Shelter'' adds the Fipresci plaudit to a growing prize trawl, including Thursday's Cannes Critics' Week Grand Prix.
Playing Competition Thursday, ''Place'' features a dominating performance by Penn as an aged rock star turned Nazi hunter.
Ecumenical Special Mentions went to ''Le Havre'' and Lebanese Nadine Labaki's Un Certain Regard player ''Where Do We Go Now,'' her follow-up to ''Caramel.''
Co-produced and sold internationally by Pathe, ''Now'' turns on the Muslim and Christian womenfolk in a village who band together to defuse sectarian violence between their hothead men.
A ''real revolt'' against continuing conflict in Lebanon, Labaki said after receiving the mention, ''Now'' is a ''cry from the heart.''
The Ecumenical jury mention would help its message reach wider international audiences, she added.
-Joey's Two Cents: Those predictions above aren't too dissimilar from what they looked like when the festival started, which is a testament to the quality of the slate overall...thoughts?
Which 10 films have the strongest chances of walking away with the top prize at Cannes?
Well, everyone's got their opinions right now (and mine are certainly different from this), but Total Film has 10 flicks as the ones to look out for. Personally, I'm of the thinking that the jury could go in a strange direction and choose Drive or go classic and pick The Artist, but that's just me. Here's the list of 10, with elaborations after the cut:The Tree of Life
Polisse
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Le Gamin Au Velo
Melancholia
Sleeping Beauty
The Artist
The Skin I Live In
Drive
This Must Be The Place
What's the early buzz on Drive after its first Cannes screening?
Well, /Film has the first reactions, and they're pretty positive:The first Cannes
Check out a few reactions after the break.
A few initial Tweets, which might be chalked up to post-screening festival highs, hit right after the film was out. Let’s kick things off right. Guy Lodge from In Contention says: “DRIVE (A-) I won’t lie to you: I pretty much want to have sex with this movie. Hot, clipped, nasty, beautiful. Best thing in Competition.”
An additional Twitter sampling offers:
Eric Kohn: Walking out of DRIVE, feeling kinda wobbly. In a good way.
FirstShowing: “Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive – Totally frickin’ awesome. Violent, but badass, great soundtrack. Ryan Gosling
Rope of Silicon: “‘Drive’ was a great way to end my time here in Cannes, really enjoyed and fans of Refn are in for a treat.”
IonCinema: “Cannes 2011: Refn’s DRIVE. More focus on the driving gloves than the cars. This one has got a mean streak and softer side: cult classic.”
Mike D’Angelo (Onion AV Club): “Let’s see if I can be the first person in your feed to say: DRIVE, holy shit.” and “Let’s see if I can be the first person in @albertbrooks ‘s feed to say: Dude, HOLY SHIT.”
But ‘holy shit’ can mean a lot of things. Not long afterward, Mr. D’Angelo got down to a slightly more measured take, which still makes the film sound like a success:
Drive (Winding Refn): 76. Patchy and shallow, but the highs are just insanely high. Half a dozen of the year’s best scenes. Genre bliss… And it’s not THE DRIVER II, either. Surprisingly little auto action. It should really be called LOOK given how predicated it is on faces…
And Jeff Wells chimed in with,
“Drive” isn’t as good as ” Thief,” but it’s respectably and sometimes very thrillingly in the same ballpark. Spare, hard, very high octane… All stand back & admire Albert Brooks for his older, smart-mouthed tough guy with a toupee in “Drive”…yay, Albert!… Ryan Gosling’s hard-guy, Steve McQueen character in “Drive,” but what there is he plays the he’ll put of. His first action film…wham!
Chase from Gordon and the Whale sounded one of the sour notes I’ve seen so far: “DRIVE made me really, really sad; I wanted to like it so much.”
-Joey's Two Cents: I've felt like this might be a dark horse for some awards citations since before the fest started, so perhaps I was on to something...thoughts?Lars von Tries gets himself bannes from the Cannes Film Festival?
From The Hollywood Reporter:The Cannes Film Festival has officially declared Lars Von Trier a persona non grata, effective immediately, after the controversial Danish director called himself a Nazi and expressed sympathy for Hitler at a press conference on Wednesday.
Von Trier has since apologized for the remarks, claiming he was provoked by journalists. But on Thursday, the Cannes Festival's board of directors held a meeting and voted to ban von Trier from the Festival.
"The Festival de Cannes provides artists from around the world with an exceptional forum to present their works and defend freedom of expression and creation," the Festival said in a statement. "The board of directors profoundly regrets that this forum has been used by Lars von Trier to express comments that are unacceptable, intolerable, and contrary to the ideals of humanity and generosity that preside over the very existence of the festival. The Board of Directors firmly condemns these comments and declares Lars von Trier a persona non grata at the Festival de Cannes, with effect immediately."
It is unclear if Von Trier's ban will be lifelong or if the director can rehabilitate himself. The Cannes Festival office refused to comment beyond its statement. This is the first time in recent memory that Cannes has blacklisted a director.
It is all the more astounding because von Trier is one of Cannes' favorite auteurs. Melancholia marks his ninth appearance in Cannes Competition. He has won the festival's top prize for Dancer in the Dark in 2000, and has twice taken the runner-up Jury Prize for Europa (1991) and Breaking the Waves (1996).
-Joey's Two Cents: Well, he certainly said something stupid...thoughts?Do we have any clue how Robert De Niro's jury at Cannes might vote?
Well, not really (and Lars von Trier's new film 'Melancholia' just debuted today to strong reviews, making this a somewhat stacked festival so far, which can only make the decisions harder), but The Wrap has some details on what's going on with the jury on Day 8 of the Cannes Film Festival:Pundits have begun to speculate about which film might win this year's Palme d'Or – but there's always a wild card in this card of Cannes speculation, because the award is chosen by a small group of people whose tastes and working relationships aren't always easy to determine.
That's why a report from Jeff Wells is so fascinating. Wells says he's spoken to "a journalist friend with some inside knowledge of the character of this Cannes jury," and that his pal laid out the dynamic. Jury president Robert De Niro, his source says, is "not likely to try to lobby for personal choices or views" (which presumably means he won't carry the same clout as reportedly assertive past jury presidents like Robert Altman and Roman Polanski).
The other jury members – actors Jude Law, Uma Thurman and Martina Gusman, producer Nansun Shi and director Mahamat Saleh Haroun – are not mentioned in Wells' report. The big questions, of course, are whether this info is accurate – and if it is, whether it tells us anything about what film might win. And the answers might be who knows?and probably not, though it's fun to speculate.
(Ian Gavan/Getty Images photo, left to right: Olivier Assayas, Linn Ullmann, Jude Law, Martina Gusman, Uma Thurman, Robert De Niro, Nansun Shi, Mahamat Saleh Haroun and Johnnie To.)
But what about the other kind of prize that a film could win coming out of Cannes – the prize of financial success? Scott Roxborough and Stuart Kemp survey that field at the Hollywood Reporter, though their headline ("Will Festival Films Deliver at the Box Office?") is a bit misleading, since the article talks about a bunch of marketplace films, but not a single one that's actually booked in the festival.
That said, their conclusion is that Paul W.S. Anderson's "Pompeii" is the big one, though they don't rule out the possibility that the slate of numerous international buyers might end up burnt by the high prices paid.
Other possible hits are star-driven: Dwayne Johnson in "Snitch," Meryl Streep in "Great Hope Springs."
Speaking of stars, one of the unwritten rules is that they'll show up when their movies debut on the Croisette. But this year, Anne Thompson has identified a Cannes trend, and she doesn't like it.
On Monday night, she says, Terrence Malick (not a "star" in the narrowest sense, but certainly a Cannes luminary) didn't show up for the press conference for his film "The Tree of Life," then he skipped the red carpet before his gala premiere and slipped into the theater without facing the press, flashbulbs or fans.
And on Tuesday, Mel Gibson was a no-show at the press conference for "The Beaver" – though unlike Malick, he did walk the red carpet for the film's premiere later in the day, but did so without stopping to speak to the press.
Says a disapproving Thompson: "One has to hope that Cannes director Thierry Fremaux nips this trend in the bud."
Finally, if you haven't heard enough about "The Tree of Life," a couple of new musings are worth checking out. Mike D'Angelo's take on the film at the Onion's AV Club wants to be a flat-out rave (an hour in, he says, "I was fully convinced I was bearing world-premiere witness to the equivalent of 'Birth Of A Nation' or 'Citizen Kane' or '2001: A Space Odyssey' — an instant benchmark against which the entire medium would henceforth be measured") but by the end he's forced to admit, "the space I’d cleared for it in my list of the five or ten greatest movies ever made remains empty."
For those who are dismayed that "Tree of Life" was booed at its initial press screening, meanwhile, Landon Palmer offers an instructive list of six other films that were booed at Cannes.
The dishonor roll: Lars von Trier's "Antichrist," Sofia Coppola's "Marie Antoinette," Vincent Gallo's "Brown Bunny," David Lynch's "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me," Fellini's "The Voice of the Moon" and Antonioni's "L'Avventura," which Palmer calls "probably the most notorious Cannes booing in the festival's history, primarily because the film has since been placed in a pantheon amongst the best of all time."
-Joey's Two Cents: The final days of the festival are going to be very interesting, to say the least...thoughts?
Terrence Malick's Tree of Life has been planted at Cannes...what now?
Well, the wait ended today...'Tree of Life' finally revealed itself. Terrence Malick's long delayed opus screened at the Cannes Film Festival as well as to select people in places like New York and Los Angeles. The verdict? Even more mixed than we expected, it seems. There will be more said about the film in the coming days (and even below in this article), but I wanted to just turn our attention to the possible Oscar implications of this. With the festival so far propelling Woody Allen's 'Midnight in Paris', Michel Hazanavicius's 'The Artist', and Lynne Ramsey's 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' to the forefront in terms of quality, there are some new contenders to consider in early predictions. Likewise, Julia Leigh's 'Sleeping Beauty' and Gus Van Sant's 'Restless' debuting to less than stellar reviews and seemingly being out of the race before it's even really began has shaped things as well. Where does that leave Malick's 'Tree of Life'? Well, I think the end result is that it's probably not going to gain the traction necessary for a real shot at Oscar glory, though don't count it out of the tech categories. Could this change when the critical community en masse chimes in next week when the film opens in the US? Of course...and even more so when the precursors begin in the 4th quarter of the year.
Where this all leaves us is right back where we started, essentially. Anyone looking for the flick to burst on the scene and begin a long march to Best Picture is sorely disappointed today, but those of us still feeling out the race to come just saw the field widen considerably.
Personally, I'm going to be removing the film from a lot of my early predictions next time around, but that's just me...
Want more on 'Tree of Life'? Well, then hit the jump for more!
Here's the Deadline story on the festival debut of 'Tree of Life':
While the foreplay between the Cannes Film Festival and Terrence Malick's complex rumination The Tree of Life has been going on for well over a year, it finally climaxed with this morning's 8:30 AM press screening. There was such anticipation for this film that the cavernous 2300-seat Lumiere Theatre at the Palais was completely full a half hour ahead of showtime -- unprecedented. Reactions afterwards seem to be mixed. There was a smattering of loud boos when the picture went to black at the end, but then good (but not spectacular) applause once Malick's name came up onscreen. One columnist immediately emailed a friend, "the film is terrible," while another critic rushed to print calling it "major."
The movie splits its time between the lives of a family in 1950's Texas with cosmic images of how the Universe was created, a couple of dinosaur cameos and bigger metaphysical questions about our existence than anyone can answer in a 2-hour, 18-minute movie, even Terrence Malick. 
Four-time Oscar nominated cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki was behind the camera and did a sterling job juxtaposing between small-town Texas and the evolution of the world, no easy task. Certainly what's on display in this much-delayed work is vintage Malick, the kind of auteur Cannes loves (he won Best Director here for Days Of Heaven in 1978), but it can't help but divide audiences the way many great art films do. It can be compared in ways to Stanley Kubrick's 1968 masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey, which also split audiences at the time but now is regarded a true classic (not surprisingly, 2001 special effects wizard Douglas Trumball consulted here too).
Some people have the patience and curiosity to endlessly explore movies like this like they would a great painting, others just want the normal popcorn fare. This isanything but that as principals, including star (and producer) Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain, tried to explain at the press conference that followed the screening. Missing was co-star Sean Penn, who is en route from Haiti to Cannes for tonight's premiere (and the preem of his other film here later in the week, This Must Be The Place, as well as Wednesday night's Cinema For Peace dinner at the Carlton where he is being honored for his humanitarian work) according to producer Bill Pohlad, who also appeared on the panel with producers Grant Hill, Sarah Green and Dede Gardner (Pitt's producing partner). Most notably absent though was Malick himself, a highly unusual occurence at a Cannes press conference. This is a director-driven fest if ever there was one. Green explained away the absence of the ultra-reclusive helmer. "Mr. Malick is very shy. He likes to think his work can speak for himself," she said, and when pressed further, it was emphasized "he's really shy." The fact is Malick is here for the premiere and will be walking the red carpet tonight, which is an easy thing in Cannes since at premieres directors just wave, pose for pictures and soak up the adulation. One thing they don't have to do is talk. Searchlight co-president Nancy Utley told me a few weeks ago that Malick would be travelling to Cannes but likely unavailable while he was here. He never gives interviews, not even in the official press notes.
It really didn't matter, since most of the questions were about Malick anyway, even with Pitt sitting right there in the middle. Pitt explained how he loved Malick's directorial style. "I could go on about him for a couple of days. He was more interested in capturing what might be happening on that day (rather than what's in the script), waiting for the truth to come. There was only one light on the set, the rest was all natural and handheld. I don't know that I could do this a lot. It was exhausting, but you see what you get," he said. Of this experience Pitt also added, "It's changed everything I've done since. For me, the best moments are not pre-conceived or planned. I now try to go off script and see what happens."
Pitt said he and Plan B Entertainment partner Gardner jumped on board because they wanted to see Malick's script made. "I was surprised by the structure. It's quite ingenious merging the micro with the macro and finding parallel truths in it," he said. As for the version that was meant to originally come to Cannes last year but was eventually deemed "not ready" compared with the version being debuted today, Pohlad said "there isn't a huge difference, but there were refinements."
The film is certainly stirring up talk here, so Malick, the Garbo of directors, will get his wish. People will decide for themselves. As I mentioned in a piece yesterday, Chastain told me Sunday she likes to tell people "this is a movie that could change cinema." After seeing The Tree of Life, I would say that would only be possible if studios start giving extrordinary visionary but eclectic directors like Malick big budgets to bring their personal art to the screen -- and that ain't happening in Hollywood's corporate culture anytime soon. Bottom line is every now and then one slips through the system, gets made, even released with the director's vision intact. And that's why we've finally got this one to argue about up and down the Croisette today.
Before the fest started, many in the media were predicting Malick, with his film sight-unseen, could be the one to beat for the Palme d'Or. It's certainly possible, but with so many of Cannes' favorite auteur directors still to come this week, the race for Sunday's top honors is just heating up.
Here's what The Wrap had to say about the reception of Malick's film, both at Cannes and here at home:
"The Tree of Life" didn’t just dominate moviegoers conversations in Cannes today. Sure, Terrence Malick's years-in the-making film was the talk of the Croisette, from an 8:30 a.m. screening that required a second theater to handle the overflow, to an evening premiere that attracted the likes of Faye Dunaway, Gwen Stefani, Isabelle Huppert and of course Brad and Angelina.
But Fox Searchlight also screened the film repeatedly in London, in New York and in Los Angeles, lifting the veil on a movie that once upon a time was thought to be on track for a late 2009 release, or at least a 2010 Cannes berth.
The Cannes audience was famously divided: Sasha Stone's first take from that morning screening is here, and her longer review here. And other critics seemed to agree about a few things: the film is not commercial, it's stunningly beautiful, and it's like nothing else you've seen.
Todd McCarthy called it "an exceptional and major film" in a review that began like this: "Brandishing an ambition it’s likely no film ... could entirely fulfill, 'The Tree of Life' is nonetheless a singular work, an impressionistic metaphysical inquiry into mankind’s place in the grand scheme of things that releases waves of insights amidst its narrative imprecisions."
Justin Chang said the film "represents something extraordinary" (which I guess is different from being something extraordinary) and said it was "a transfixing odyssey through time and memory that melds a young boy's 1950s upbringing with a majesterial rumination on the Earth's origins."
Lisa Schwarzbaum was more divided: "A (typically) fascinating but confounding jumble of two works in one … the luminously precise and the woo-woo spiritual-lite."
Guy Lodge said he was left "stimulated but unmoved," adding, "his most open-armed and structurally undisciplined film to date, it might yet prove his least rewarding."
And Jeff Wells, while declaring that the film runs aground somewhat after a dazzling opening stretch, nonetheless scolded those who dared to boo after the first Cannes screening: "I think it's beastly to boo a film as hauntingly beautiful and immensely ambitious and spiritually directed as this one."
The trouble with all of this is that Malick is so significant a filmmaker, and the lengthy delays before he finally showed "The Tree of Life" were so long, that reviewers have been all but forced to rush into print with instant verdicts. And after seeing it on Monday morning in Los Angeles, I'd say that this is clearly a film that needs time to settle, and quite possibly additional viewings as well.
But in keeping with the fact that this is, to borrow a phrase from the Hot Blog, "Just Another Malick Monday," I'll say this: the view from these shores is that "The Tree of Life" is magnificent and maddening, frequently dazzling and occasionally disappointing.
It takes the lyrical sequences that ran through "The Thin Red Line" and "The New World" as counterpoint to the action – all those whispered voiceovers over shots of rustling grass, wind blowing through trees, water and sky – and tells almost the entire story in that fashion. The main plotline, of Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain and their three kids in the 1950s, is told in fragments, not scenes; we drop in the middle of the action, or on the edges of the action, and then leave before anything is settled.
"The Tree of Life" is a dreamscape built on the words of the mystical medieval monk Thomas a Kempis, and the music of Berlioz and Brahms and Bach and Ligeti. At its best, it finds a true "way of grace," a phrase taken from a crucial Chastain voiceover; at its clunkiest, it slows to a crawl to overembellish a story that can’t bear the weight.
It can be inspiring and it can be infuriating, and it will almost certainly be too weird for a mainstream audience and too weird to win (though maybe not to be nominated for) Best Picture. It will likely be in the mix for a variety of awards, for its editing and its art direction and above all its cinematography, which is absolutely stunning.
In April, when Searchlight launched a new website for the film, "Two Ways Through Life," I called the site weird and tantalizing, enigmatic and haunting, vague and impressionistic. It turns out that the site is also a completely accurate representation of the film itself.
"The Tree of Life" deserves more time; it deserves not to be reduced to the question "did they boo?" and a series of instant reviews and an opening-weekend box-office figure.
This one, I suspect, will be dominating moviegoers' conversations for some time to come.
-Thoughts?
Elizabeth Olsen at Cannes
Source: thestylesite
Elizabeth Olsen, sister of the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, wearing The Row (her sisters collection) top and skirt and Giuseppe Zanotti sandals.