Conversation with humanity in the language of cinema 11 days Cannes live almost around the clock. Early in the morning, people with tags on their chests and identical dark yellow briefcases run like ants through the streets of a sleepy town. During the day they...

Conversation with humanity in the language of cinema

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days Cannes live almost around the clock. Early in the morning, people with tags on their chests and identical dark yellow briefcases run like ants through the streets of a sleepy town. During the day, they scurry through the halls, trying to do the impossible: to be in time everywhere. After all, no matter how the snobs later grimace: Cannes is not the same, whether it’s the times of Fellini, Visconti, Truffaut, the bar of the festival is always raised a little higher than is customary at any of the forums on the planet...

Echoes of war on the French Riviera

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Cannes was echoed by the Iraqi bombings. Strained relations between France and the United States implicitly influenced both the program and the selection of guests. Even the first American picture in the main Elephant competition is essentially anti-American. Styling an indifferent reportage, she broadcasts the background and events of one day at the infamous Columbine College, where two students shot fellow students. Director Gus Van San shows the tragedy as an everyday event. In the parody of the American movie The Triplets from Belleville (Sylvain Chaumette's brilliant animated film can be considered an ironic paraphrase of Trier's painting), the Statue of Liberty looks like a self-satisfied fat woman holding an ice cream in one hand and a Big Mac in the other.

But there are exceptions. After the drums of the Matrix, it was the turn of the Titanic. Eternal champion James Cameron feels at home everywhere. As a special dish, Cannes prepared a "special event" for the guests - "Ghosts of the Abyss" by the recognized Oscar winner.

The film was shot in I-Max 3-D technology. Simply put, it is a voluminous movie, similar to what was once shown at the Oktyabr cinema. Fasten your seat belts and put on your goggles. Some iron contraption may jump out of the screen at you. You involuntarily bend down. Cameron tells the story of a journey on the Russian research vessel Mstislav Keldysh through the deep ocean waves. Together with the filmmakers we descend to a depth of 3000 meters. Then straight to the Titanic. Among the rusty, overgrown with microorganisms, but still magnificent remains, we see the shadows of passengers, crew, captain, interior decoration, cabins.

Cinema has always moved in the direction from technological to aesthetic discovery. Cameron's film is a compelling move that opens up incredible possibilities for the new cinema. True, while technology, a brilliant attraction overshadow the very essence of cinema. But there are joyful moments for us in the film. Unusual pride for ours. Cameron praises the quality and equipment of the Russian ship. And in general, the Russians in the film are very nice, although they do not speak English. But they sing great songs in the galley.

As if to counterbalance the power of the American movie machine, the French use the festival grounds to bolster their national pride. They arranged a magnificent evening in memory of the French Fassbinder - Maurice Piala, who died in January of this year. Piala is an artist who paints a portrait of the soul with shadow and light, who shot one of the brightest European films - "Under the Sun of Satan" with Depardieu and Sandrine Bonner. Without him, the family of French filmmakers feels orphaned. The family got together for the evening. I literally almost broke my neck. Around: Claude Lelouch, Gerard Depardieu, Sandrine Bonner, Isabelle Huppert, Patrice Chereau (jury president), Jean Rochefort, Vincent Perez and Philippe Noiret with a white rose in a tuxedo lapel. Depardieu gave an inspirational speech about the eternal life of Pial, calling his colleagues only by their first names: Isabelle, Sandrine, Philippe. It is not customary to name names in the family.

OZONE hole over the "Pool"

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in the cinema, the French continue to search for self-identification. The education of the senses is still the most compelling of the themes of the latest French cinema. But, following the path paved by Flaubert and Maupassant, a new generation of directors is trying to pour new wine into old wineskins. Harvest 2003.

The most ambitious of the "supernova French" is François Ozon, the "cynical demiurge" as critics called him. Ozone is "married" to cinema by calculation. But, they say, such marriages are the most successful. You can't refuse the luck of a charming director. After "Rat House", "Criminal Lovers", "Drips on Hot Rocks" and "8 Women", teenagers, housewives, professional festival juries, and gay communities love him.

To name the painting "Pool" after the famous film of the same name by Jacques Dere with Delon and Schneider is almost a challenge.

The spirit of an old detective thriller hovers over the waters of another pool. The popular English novelist Sarah Morton, at the invitation of her publisher, travels to the French province to get rid of a creative crisis. Unexpectedly, the broken daughter of the publisher appears in the house. As in "Homeless", the process of rapprochement of "worlds" begins. In general, quite banal, in the spirit of French cinema, the story of a murder, burying a corpse and daily swimming in the pool of a luxurious young Ludivine Sagnier. If not for two circumstances.

The first is the incredible and ageless Charlotte Rampling as a writer. Watching her existence on the screen is a pleasure, cleaner than other action games. The second is the ending, which makes it clear to the viewer that he ... did not understand anything. And all the history in the house is the fruit of Sarah's mind. Another plot for an unfinished novel. The young heroine Sanya with tanned skin and golden fluff, with daily changing lovers, with mental trauma is also just a reflection of her, Sarah, complexes, traumas and hidden desires.

Charlotte Rampling says: “We shot the film in chronological order. Therefore, I gradually and deeper immersed myself in the story, in the character. It turned out to be incredibly interesting to play a flickering plot in which reality turns into fiction, and fantasy takes on the flesh of reality. I studied biographies and works of famous women authors, including Agatha Christie, Ruth Randall, Patricia Knightsmith. And she embodied some of their traits in the heroine. Like them, Sarah Morton is single. She has masculine habits (for example, a glass of whiskey in the morning). François even convinced me to cut my hair. He deceived everyone. This story is not about a murder or even about the relationship of two women, but about the intricate relationship between reality and fiction. The connection between the writer and his work is mysterious and unpredictable. François and I literally built this complex character piece by piece. Four months almost daily worked on the role before filming. So it was easy for me to shoot. I, like Sarah, merged with my fiction.

Trier laboratory

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Ogville by unruly, unpredictable Lars von Trier is the most anticipated film at Cannes 2003. After the press screening of the almost three-hour film marathon, the journalists, “overfed” with cinema and events, gave a formal ovation. However, some left during the viewing, noisily slamming their chairs. So always with Trier. His sophisticated "Europe" was shocking, "The Idiots" was bewildering, and "Dancer in the Dark" was both a scandal and a triumph at Cannes 2000.

Trier is an anti-realist, a terrorist in relation to the laws and precepts of cinema. Any of his films is a challenge, a discovery. "Dogville" is a movie card. From above, we examine the space in the pavilion, drawn in chalk: the names of a couple of streets, squares of apartments, a school and a shop. Untrembling asceticism of means (lack of scenery and outdoor shooting, manual, slightly trembling camera) - and condensed conventionality. Actors open invisible doors, entering imaginary apartments. But if it is necessary according to the plot, a window with curtains will appear in the house, pushing them apart, you can see the sunset. If necessary, at the moment of climax you will listen to a 20-minute dialogue in a dark car. Because Trier is a perfect perfectionist and does not care about the convenience of the viewer.

This is movie theater. Echoes of the theater of Bertolt Brecht. In the Threepenny Opera, I remember there was a song by the pirate Jenny. She grieved that she was washing glasses all day long, and everyone was insulting her. But her pirate will arrive on a ship with a huge gun - and all offenders will be punished. Here, the role of the Zongs is played by the meetings of the commune of the city, at which the local “public opinion” is formed, after which the story moves on. But gradually, the emotional swings of the heroes - the inhabitants of the town - inflame the atmosphere, burning down the feeling of conventionality, the game on the Trier film scene. In the end, this already unbearable heat will burn the invisible town. And the people will die.

This film is a philosophical tale with a prologue and nine chapters. With unceasing lulling author's speech. With a dotted line of literary tradition from Goethe to Dürrenmatt and Camus, which says: in order to reveal the diseases of society, it is necessary that the Alien, Outsider, Lady, Mephistopheles appear. And smooth life bursts. Alien - a stranger Grasse (Nicole Kidman) is looking for shelter from gangsters and shelter in a town hidden in the mountains. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” the commandments repeat. “Treat others as you would like them to treat you,” teaches America's messiah Carnegie. And the resigned angelic Grace tries her best: she is friends, loves, sympathizes. And in his free time: he cleans, weeds, sits with children, talks with the elderly, takes care of the sick. In general, everything is like in American cinema. But the inhabitants of the town, who happily felt like "brothers and sisters" of the fugitive, imperceptibly turn into her jailers.

There is a complete set of celluloid stamps: rejection of strangers, gangsters and a beauty, a quiet town and loud shooting. But the main thing is the familiar taste of philistine, only devoid of the usual decor. In the atmosphere of the town hypocrisy, spilled in the air, shows through in every word and look. Here people are chameleons, they take on the color of circumstances. For example, in spring they are pink, together with the blossoming of nature, they are ready to do good, to sympathize with the poor girl. But autumn comes, with the cold of cruelty enclosing their hearts and faces in an impenetrable shell.

Trier continues to conjure in his laboratory. The stories they tell are always more than just stories. This is a form of dialogue. Moreover, in his interlocutors, he sees a minimum ... humanity. Prescribing bitter medicine for all of us, Trier certainly feels like a doctor. "Dogville" is only part of a trilogy, so the "treatment" will continue...