CANNES 2008: DAY 1

Having attended the Cannes Film Festival for six consecutive years, I have never really doubted the extent to which this annual parade of glitz and glamour captures the popular imagination here in France.  But flipping through channels in a desperate search for something in English, I was treated to not one but two game shows dedicated entirely to questions revolving around the history of the fest.  I am trying to imagine both The Weakest Link and Jeopardy! having only questions all about Oscar in the run up to the Academy Awards. I am one of over four thousand accredited journalists -- the most ever -- to descend on this small seaside town.  On the TGV (i.e. damn fast) train from Paris to Cannes, I was accosted by one of probably hundreds of bloggers and internet journalists that have no press credentials to cover the festival officially but are determined to leverage the star-wattage of the Croisette to boost their sites.  This particular blogger goes by the non-de-plum of Beatrice de la France and with a compact Nokia phone/video camera she began her daily video blog report on Cannes somewhere in the countryside of Provence by turning the camera on herself, myself and any other unsuspecting fellow train travelers, proudly proclaiming her determination to conquer Cannes with little more than that essential little black dress, overly large dark sunglasses and a big dose of chutzpah.

I always have this nagging feeling in Cannes that there is something more pressing or exciting happening elsewhere that I should be seeing or doing, and so I've learned that managing my time (even semi-fanatically) is the key to getting the most out of the festival. Arriving in the late afternoon on the first day means that I had already missed a special press screening of Kung Fu Panda and the chance to watch Jack Black (with bizarre frosty locks) mugging his way through various poorly executed martial art moves in front of an entourage of giant panda bears. Damn!  I manage to elbow my way through the crowds that had gathered hours in advance outside the barricades surrounding the Palais, hoping to perhaps catch a glimpse of Julianne Moore or Mark Ruffalo ascending the red-carpeted stairs for Blindness by Fernando Meirelles, which is the opening film of the 61st Cannes Film Festival. 

Unfortunately, I was too late to get a ticket to Blindness, so, with press badge in hand, there was just enough time for me to gulp the first of many espressos that will fuel my next ten days here before heading off to my first screening of the day, Waltz for Bashir.   I was quite happy to kick off Cannes 2008 with this animated war documentary by former Israeli soldier and animator, Ari Folman.  A slow-build of buzz had began to circulate around the film prior to the Festival, and I am not surprised.

The film is a meditation on the very personal suppressed memories of the director who witnessed the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacre carried out in 1982 by Christian Phalangist militiamen in which several hundred men, women and children were brutally executed. The film focuses on Israeli ex-soldiers, including the director, who were deeply mentally and psychologically scarred by what they had seen but repressed those recollections for decades.  War is surreal and the film appropriately begins with an other-worldly dream: a pack of precisely 26 yellow-eyed rabid dogs tearing through an Israeli city in search of an unseen prey.  With a path of destruction in their wake, they finally come to a halt under the apartment window of the dreamer. They have found their quarry.  And then he wakes. The dreamer knows the root of his dream.  As a combat soldier, he could not bring himself to kill another human being.  So whenever his unit approached a target village at night, barking dogs would be the first to emerge from the shadows.  It was his job to eliminate the dogs. He killed 26 in all. He relates the recurring dream in a bar one night to friend, filmmaker and former brother in arms, Ari.  The two men realize that they can remember only certain things of past events that they shared during the Lebanon War, and others that they can recall may be fictitious.  Ari remembers emerging from the sea at night, along with two other comrades, brandishing rifles and wearing nothing but their dog tags. One is Carmi, who now lives in Holland.  He cannot recall Ari's memory but instead has hallucinations from that time, including one of a gargantuan blue woman who steps aboard his military boat, scoops him up like a baby and floats away with him.  As he lies in the comfort of her lap, a bomber flies over and destroys the ship, killing all aboard. Perhaps too many of the intertwined memories of his former friends have been incorporated (the loud snores that could be heard behind me during the screening were maybe the result of jetlag). 

But the message of the destructive effects and the senseless of war hits home in the final sequence when television footage of mothers mourning the deaths of their husbands and children in Sabra and Shatila, with close-ups of the bloodied, fly-infested faces of innocent civilians proves all the more shocking when placed in stark contrast to the animated scenes of young men shooting wildly at an enemy they don't know, or partying it up on a army transport ship to a soundtrack by OMD. Blame is laid at the feet of Christian Phalangist soldiers but while references are made to how much Sharon might have known at the time are hinted at, the extent of the Israeli government's involvement is never fully explored. Regardless, a movie not about US involvement in Iraq that questions the validity of war is a refreshing change.