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: 04-05-2004
Fri, 05-28-2004 - 9:48am
No it wasn't taken out of context. Read this from an entertainment site:

"Despite their popularity, Moore's works have been criticised for being sloppy with facts. The complaints reach back to Roger & Me, when he was accused of altering the chronology of plant closings and other events for dramatic effect, and have continued with each film and book.

Spinsanity, an internet-based watchdog that claims to sniff out misleading political rhetoric, says Moore uses "lies, distortions, and nonsensical arguments to mask cheap attacks and promote his own political agenda".

At times, Moore shrugs off the attacks as motivated by right-wing hopes of damaging his credibility or, in the case of liberal critics, jealousy over his success. He also has pleaded poetic licence. "How can there be inaccuracy in comedy?" he asked CNN's Lou Dobbs in 2002."

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/02/02/1075570342335.html

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-05-2003
Fri, 05-28-2004 - 12:16pm
I would certainly say this about Rush "lies, distortions, and nonsensical arguments to mask cheap attacks and promote his own political agenda"
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-03-2003
Fri, 05-28-2004 - 2:35pm
And is Rush making "documentaries" as well? nt
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Fri, 05-28-2004 - 3:09pm
Usually, the way to prove that something was not taken out of context is to show it IN context. You've just posted another article that takes it out of context. Here it is straight from the transcript, which shows that he is refering to the book, Stupid White Men, and not his entire opus of films - or any of his films, for that matter.

Also I'm sayng neither that Moore is entirely accurate, nor that documentaries are neceessarily held to the same standards as straight journalism. I'm just setting the record straight on this Lou Dobbs interview.


http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0204/12/mlld.00.html

DOBBS : I was amazed. Salon.com just took you to task on this book, pointing out glaring inaccuracies, which -- what in the world...

MOORE: Some of these, I think they found some guy named Dan was named Dave, and there was another thing. But you know, look, this is a book of political humor. So, I mean, I don't respond to that sort of stuff, you know.

DOBBS: Glaring inaccuracies?

MOORE: No, I don't. Why should I? How can there be inaccuracy in comedy? You know.

DOBBS: That does give one license. I think you may have given all of us a loophole.

MOORE: When Jonathan Swift said that what the Irish do is eat their young, in other words, that's what the British were proposing during the famine, I think that, you know, you have to understand satire

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-01-2004
Fri, 05-28-2004 - 3:42pm
That explains it. The article got it out of context.
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-01-2004
Fri, 05-28-2004 - 3:45pm
Thank you for locating this. I knew the quote was in response to his book "Stupid White Men" and I can't ever recall him saying that "Bowling for Columbine" or Farenheit 9/11" were comedies.

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