From The Times
May 15, 2008
Angelina Jolie stars in Changeling, directed by Clint Eastwood
The Cannes Film Festival has the chaotic magic of an old-fashioned steeple-chase. The favourites always fall at the first hedge and the race seems to go on forever. The competition for the biggest cinema prize this side of the Oscars is now 61 years old, and for independent auteurs the trophy is huge. The Palme d’Or has the power to finance those £5 million thinking projects that are increasingly hard to fund.
There are 22 films in official competition this year, and roughly 35,000 story-hungry journalists with a desperate need to tell Clint about where he got it wrong. I don’t know why the Palme d’Or exerts this cruel grip. The 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival last year was a stunning demonstration of celebrity pulling power but a ghastly disappointment on screen. The tabloid froth and pop looked brilliant on the red carpet but the films withered on screen.
Gilles Jacob and Thierry Frémaux – the Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev of the Cannes monopoly – have dramatically revised their faith in tinsel. The two oligarchs have wisely reinserted a cerebral spine into the festival. They have recalled tried-and-tested favourites: auteurs such as the German maestro Wim Wenders, the perennial Cannes champions Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne and a sprinkling of lofty American mavericks including Steven Soderbergh, James Gray and Clint Eastwood...
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