Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11' Wins at Cannes

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Registered: 03-25-2003
Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11' Wins at Cannes
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Sun, 05-23-2004 - 3:13am
'Fahrenheit 9/11' Wins Top Prize at Cannes

By A. O. SCOTT

CANNES, France, May 22 - At the awards ceremony that wrapped up the 57th Cannes Film Festival on Saturday night, the jury gave "Fahrenheit 9/11," Michael Moore's stinging critique of the Bush administration's foreign policies, the Palme d'Or, the festival's top prize and one of the most coveted honors in international cinema.

The announcement, made by jury president Quentin Tarantino, met with enthusiastic cheers from the audience in the Grand Théâtre Lumière, where Mr. Moore's film had received what many thought was the longest standing ovation ever at Cannes when it was screened here last Monday. "What have you done?" Mr. Moore asked Mr. Tarantino as he accepted the prize, looking both overwhelmed and amused. "You just did this to mess with me, didn't you?"

It was a night of many surprises: a 14-year-old boy won the award for best actor; the first Thai film ever placed in competition shared a jury prize with an American actress; and all three French films in competition were given awards.

But Mr. Moore's victory outdid all of them. For one thing, Cannes is notoriously indifferent to documentaries. "Fahrenheit 9/11" was one of only three nonfiction films allowed in competition in nearly 50 years.

The meaning of Mr. Moore's Palme, however, extends far beyond the cozy, glamorous world of Cannes. "Last time I was on an awards stage in Hollywood, all hell broke loose," Mr. Moore said in his acceptance speech, referring to his antiwar remarks at the Oscars last year. His new film, which does not yet have an American distributor, has already begun to stir passions in the United States, as the election approaches and the debate over the conduct of the war in Iraq grows more intense.

With his characteristic blend of humor and outrage - and with greater filmmaking discipline and depth of feeling than he has shown in his previous work - Mr. Moore attacks Mr. Bush's response to Sept. 11, his decision to invade Iraq, and nearly everything else the president has done.

"I did not set out to make a political film," Mr. Moore said at a news conference after the ceremony. "I want people to leave thinking that was a good way to spend two hours. The art of this, the cinema, comes before the politics."

He also said that Mr. Tarantino had assured him that the political message of "Fahrenheit 9/11" did not influence the jury's decision. "On this jury we have different politics," he quoted Mr. Tarantino as saying. It is also a film financed by Miramax, which distributes Mr. Tarantino's movies.

Mr. Moore noted that four of the nine jurors were American: Mr. Tarantino, Kathleen Turner, the director Jerry Schatzberg, and the Haitian-born novelist Edwidge Danticat. "I fully expect the Fox News Channel and other right-wing media to portray this as an award from the French," Mr. Moore said. Only one juror, the actress Emanuelle Béart, is a French citizen.

"If you want to add Tilda," he said referring to the British actress Tilda Swinton, "then you could say that more than half came from the coalition of the willing." (The rest of the panel was made up of Benoit Poelvoode, a Belgian actor; Peter von Bagh, a Finnish critic; and the Hong Kong director Tsui Hark.)

The jury's other decisions ranged far and wide over the competitive slate, recognizing both audience-friendly commercial movies, and challenging art-house films, and acknowledging the strong Asian presence at the festival this year.

The second prize went to Park Chan Wook's "Old Boy," an action-filled South Korean revenge drama. The Thai film, "Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Tropical Malady," a dreamy fable, irritated some critics with its slow pacing and enthralled others with its mysterious sensuality. It shared the jury prize with Irma P. Hall, the landlady in Joel and Ethan Coen's "Ladykillers."

Ms. Hall, hospitalized in the United States, was not able to attend the ceremony. Nor was Yuya Yagira, the young Japanese actor honored for his role in Hirokazu Kore-Eda's "Nobody Knows." Mr. Yagira had exams to take back home, so Mr. Kore-Eda accepted the award on his behalf.

The prize for directing, was given to Tony Gatlif, an Algerian-born French filmmaker, for "Exiles," a ragged, sexy road picture about a young couple's journey across Europe and North Africa. Agnès Jaoui, the director of the sophisticated French comedy "Look at Me," shared the screenwriting prize with her ex-husband Jean-Pierre Bacri, who appears with her in the film. The prize for best actress went to Maggie Cheung, who plays a recovering addict in Olivier Assayas's "Clean."

http://nytimes.com/2004/05/22/movies/23canne.html

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iVillage Member
Registered: 05-10-2004
Tue, 05-25-2004 - 7:47pm
This isn't about listening to other's POV. It's about someone getting filthy rich on a documentary miscontruing facts of information all the while getting an award for such crap. I am sorry but his work is that IMHO, he twisted every single thing around in BFC. He has even been quoted in this current movie for leaving out an important piece of factual information to lead the audience in disception toward his own POV. I don't have to like what he does or his work and that is my right. I am not saying he can't do what he is doing but if anyone wants me to take him seriously and see his POV, I will gladly watch, and then proceed to laugh in their face. I don't call someone calling a documentary factual information when in reality it's nothing more then a spin on his narrow-minded and dellusional mind, art.
Avatar for car_al
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Tue, 05-25-2004 - 8:03pm
<<...documentaries in their true form are storytelling using real events.>>

ITA!

Also, what many here fail to realize is how much they bring of themselves to any work of art. Their own prejudices - good or bad - will color how they see it. Which is fine, it doesn’t invalidate the work, if it’s disliked.

C

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-03-2003
Tue, 05-25-2004 - 8:32pm
While they may be storytelling using real events, when they use events which were fabricated or taken completely out of their pertinent context they cease being "real events", and therefore are not "documentaries". That's one of the distinctions we're making here.


~mark~

Avatar for independentgrrrl
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 05-25-2004 - 10:00pm
<>

Of course they do! Liberals say so, so it must be true. And the same goes for the evil SUVs. They also kill people. Again, liberals say so, so it must be true. ;)

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Wed, 05-26-2004 - 1:22am




<<...documentaries in their true form are storytelling using real events.>>


"Real events" include real facts, and thén a filmer can do as s/he pleases and have an art

Djie

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-10-2004
Wed, 05-26-2004 - 11:47am
Thanks for posting that article again. I was begginning to repost it myself because I couldn't figure out how some people were defending Moore's "interpretation" and distorted and rather edited footage and then go on to say, "it's all how you interpret it". That's horse dung, if you read the article describing such examples of his distortion, such as Bush flying Bin Laden's family off to safety right after 9/11, and leaving out a key fact or information such as he did, of course it seems Bush was trying to protect the head huncho behind 9/11 when indeed, that is completely false. UGH! That kind of rubish makes me sick.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Wed, 05-26-2004 - 12:31pm

Time mag. & others also picked-up on the Saudi info. MM didn't make this up out of thin air.


>"there are the questions about the President's actions immediately after 9/11. Specifically, why did he allow planeloads of Saudi nationals, including members of the bin Laden family, out of the U.S. in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks? Who asked him to give the Saudis special treatment?"<


Quote from........

 


Photobucket&nbs

Avatar for car_al
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Thu, 05-27-2004 - 2:57am
Djie, I can't open your message. It doesn't have the underline before your name for me to click on. Perhaps it only comes up for subscribers and I'm not one.

C

Avatar for car_al
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Thu, 05-27-2004 - 3:07am
You’re making these distinctions and trying to attribute them to a film that none of us have seen yet. I think we’ll all have a chance to decide the films merits on our own.

C




Edited 5/27/2004 3:12 am ET ET by car_al

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Thu, 05-27-2004 - 3:12am




Gosh.....again eh....sigh! Sorry about that nuisance. Thanks for mentioning it :)


I guess all you can do is click on the one before my post and then click in "read next".




Djie

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