French Riviera Travel News

Archive for the ‘Cannes 2009’ Category

Two films took on the ’60s this weekend at the Cannes Film Festival with radically different perspectives. For Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman directors of “Soundtrack for a Revolution”, the decade was defined by the quiet heroism of the civil rights movement. For Ang Lee, director of “Taking Woodstock” the real revolution was internal as old social strictures gave way to exuberant self-expression. So, twice this weekend I walked away from the movie thinking “Did that really happen? Were we really like that?”

“Soundtrack for a Revolution” showed how the  songs of the civil rights movement shored up the courage those who  insisted on equality for black people in the face of beatings, lynchings, hosings and arrests. Interpreted by modern artists such as Joss Stone and John Legend, the old marching melodies “We Shall Overcome” “We shall not be moved” evoke an era when non-violent protest finally dragged the American South out of apartheid. The scenes of police turning dogs on black children, the photo montage of murdered civil rights workers, Martin Luther King speaking as if possessed: we’ve seen the images before but the emotional intensity seems to reach across the decades demanding respect for the aging heros of America’s ‘revolution’.

Ang Lee looks on the lighter side. In “Taking Woodstock” the famous festival serves as a catalyst that propels the hero, Eliot, out of his parents’ suffocating embrace and into acceptance of his own homosexuality. Eliot Tiber was a main player in bringing Woodstock to Bethel, NY and was one of the writers of “Taking Woodstock” recounting the whole behind-the-scenes effort.  There are some hilarious scenes and a pitch-perfect rendering of the period dialect: “far out”, “that’s very cool”, “groovy”. Jonathan Groff as festival organizer Michael Lang is dead-on as a 60s hustler. Lee even captures the spaciness and wonder of an acid trip.

And at the end of this delightful movie, you can’t help but ask yourself, “How did we get from there to here?” How did the Woodstock generation elect George Bush? How did the spontaneous sexuality and unselfconscious nudity mutate into porn and plastic surgery? What happened to hairiness?  How did we get so fat? Why couldn’t the “three days of peace and music” last a lifetime?

Poverty sucks, whether in the Australian outback of “Samson and Delilah” or in the central Harlem of “Precious”.  Seeing these two strong entries in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Official Selection raised some interesting questions about the nature of poverty and what to do about it. Although the subject matter was bleak in both cases, each filmmaker found cause for hope without betraying the material.

Samson and Delilah are aborigines living in hot, insect-ridden isolation, suffering ‘ain’t-no-food-in-the-fridge’ poverty. Government handouts keep them from starving to death but director Warwick Thornton meticulously records the  tedium and fury of dead-end lives. White people are mostly absent from their lives, creeping in only to weasel away aboriginal paintings to sell at a huge profit. Battling violence, hunger and addiction the two teenage protagonists eventually find a measure of solace in each other.

Precious, of the eponymous film, has plenty of white people around trying to straighten out her life and plenty of burgers to fatten her up. As a Harlem teenager, pregnant with her father’s child, Precious’ main battle is with her ferocious mother. Played with demonic energy by Mo’nique, she is the mother of all welfare queens. (So this is why President Clinton insisted on ending welfare). White people are there to be massaged into continuing the welfare checks but ultimately it’s a government literacy program that saves Precious. Her white principal guides her into the program and a white social worker, played by Mariah Carey, pushes Precious to confront her horrific past.

Neither Delilah nor Precious end up alone. Delilah has the severely limited Samson and Precious has her babies. Each movies ends with a hint of the redemptive power of art; Delilah applies herself to an aboriginal painting and Precious seems determined to find her writer’s voice. It’s a woman’s world after all.