News: Cannes Film Festival Hands Out Its Honors

     Over the last ten days or so, the world's most prestigious film festival, the Cannes film festival, has been going on in France. Today though, the festival, which had a fair amount of big name premieres this year, as well as some unwanted media attention for controversial Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier scandalous "I am a Nazi" comments (for which he was banned from ever attending the festival again), wrapped up with its traditional end-of-festival awards. The way the festival awards films is it places them in different categories of competition, with the films considered to be in the "major leagues" put in the Palme d'Or competition, and it has a selected jury watch every eligible film. After seeing each of the films in competition, the jury (which this year was headed up by Robert De Niro) argues with one another until they decide in which films receive which awards.

     So then, who was this year's big winner? Terrence Malick's highly anticipated "The Tree of Life", which releases world wide this Friday, took the festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or. The film, which stars Brad Pitt and Sean Penn, actually received mix scores from the reviewers at the festival, but it apparently hit a cord with the jurors. Being an American film with big name actors and a highly acclaimed director, this is also a film to watch at the end of the year for the Oscars, but the crossover between Palme d'Or and Oscar Best Picture is small. In fact, it has only happened once, in 1955, when a film originally meant for television, "Marty", miraculously took both highly regarded top prizes. A few other Palme d'Or winners have managed to do pretty well at the Oscar's, with Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" being the most famous, but no others have managed to win both, so it's hard to say how this affects "The Tree of Life"'s overall Oscar potential.

     Some of the other big winners of the festival include Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn, who picked Best Director for his action/"B"-movie homage flick, "Drive". The film stars Ryan Gosling, along with a lot of other fairly big names, and probably would have been the general consensus Palme d'Or winner had the critics been allowed to decide. Personally, I have not seen any of Mr. Refn's previous films, but from the description of the film and its rave reviews, this is now one film that is high atop my anticipated list. Another big winner was Jean Dujardin, who picked up the Best Actor award for "The Artist". Yet another film earning high marks, "The Artist" is a black-and-white film about the tail end of the silent-age of cinema, which the film itself is almost completely done in pantomime. Even before the film debuted in Cannes, the Weinstein's picked it up for U.S. distribution, which given their track record (this was the team behind last year's "The King's Speech" victory), may make this a end of the year awards season player. Finally, the jury, maybe in a rebellious stand for the right of freedom of expression, were not too scared off by von Trier's unfortunate remarks to award the film any prizes, giving it's Best Actress to Kirsten Dunst in "Melancholia". Given the Academy's general xenophobia, it's hard to say that (even with the good reviews) any of these three films will end up to be Oscar contenders when all is said and done. It's true that all three films are not in foreign languages ("Drive" and "Melancholia" are in English, and "The Artist", being a silent film, is not in any language at all), but unless these films get a lot of critical backing consistently throughout the year, I have a hard time imaging any one of them beating out any of the big-shot movies such as, say, "The Tree of Life". The good news though is just how many well-received films there were at this year's festival. Compared to last year, where the main word critics used to sum up the festival was "underwhelmed", this year looks to be a much more promising year for unique, groundbreaking cinema.

     For the curious, the complete list of this year's winners is given below.

Palme d'Or: "The Tree of Life"
Grand Prix (aka Runner-up): (tie) "The Kid With a Bike" and "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
Best Director: Nicholas Winding Refn for "Drive"
Best Actor: Jean Dujardin for "The Artist"
Best Actress: Kirsten Dunst for "Melancholia"
Best Screenplay: Joseph Cedar for "Footnote"
Prix du Jury: "Polisse"

Camera d'Or: "Las Acacias"
Palme d'Or (Short Film): "Cross Country"