Jornal da Mostra
Nº 336 > 28ª Mostra > 18/05/2005
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Cannes 2005 - `Manderlay`, by Lars von Trier - renewed provocation for the U.S.; Cronenberg usa - talent for a broader audience; Jim Jarmusch tries to emulate the steps of Sofia Coppola; the Dardenne brothers open the horizons of despair.
Here we see a continuation of "Dogville" where Grace, the erratic daughter of a gangster, finds herself on a farm where slavery is still in existence 70 years after it has been abolished in the United States. It is 1933, and Grace has found her way to the South, to Alabama, and stopped at a plantation - Manderlay, with cotton grown under the law of the whip. To the despair of her father`s gang, she decides to stay on, bring law and order to the farm, and teach the former slaves the fundamentals of liberty and democracy. We are about to interact in yet another of Lars von Trier`s cynical games, once more most irritating to U.S. critics in the words of Todd McCarthy, head critic for Variety magazine. He begins his review of "Manderlay" saying that here, again, is the film maker as a self-styled professor of American History."Manderlay" is also narrated in the tone of a fable, as though Trier wanted to explain to the spectators of a children`s film where the witch is and where the bad ones are in the story. Just as in "Dogville", the scenery is also mapped out on a giant studio board on which the somewhat theatrical posture of the actors magnifies the fantasy of make-believe. Of course, this is all to augment the cynicism of the narrative and summarize the opera by stating that racism never left off with the decrees abolishing slavery. The dialogs are cutting and full of irony. In one of these moments, the daughter of the gangster, artfully played by newcomer Bryce Dallas Howard, in substitution to Nicole Kidman, engages in the following dialog with an ex-slave, confused by the new order for freedom.
He says:"I no longer know how to go about it. When I was a slave, all the slaves had a proper time to eat. We had dinner every night at 7:00 in the evening. And now, it`s all so confusing; we don`t know any more what time we should do what."
And she replies: "Now you are a free man, and free people eat when they like." (sic)
David Cronenberg, the Canadian of explicit violence, architect of instruments of torture, dwells more on the realms of psychological disorders in "A History of Violence/ Uma História de Violência". A regenerated gangster changes his identity and has three children... until an act of heroism (although, in fact, it is no more than assassination in self-defense), brings him notoriety. This is how the live phantoms from his past reappear wreaking vengeance. Although the Cannes Film Festival has announced that for this, its 58th edition, greater worth is to be attributed to authoral cinema, what can be seen, film after film, is that the authors, in their pursuit of a broader audience, are making concessions and have left off being that authoral. This is the case with Woody Allen, with Atom Egoyan, Michael Haneke, and with Jim Jarmusch and the Dardenne brothers that we will refer to later.
Jarmusch casts an astonished eye on his America of pre-fabricated and mechanical emotions with "Broken Flowers". He has resort to actor Bill Murray, the same actor that worked for Sofia Coppola in "Lost in Translation" and repeats his mannerisms. Functional: but it`s just that the curse of a comedian also affects the narrative in "Broken Flowers", and the audience find they are laughing where they should not. Bill Murray plays a Don Juan in decadence.
He can not react when his girlfriend jilts him, nor when he receives an anonymous letter from an ex-girlfriend saying they had a son 19 years before and that the boy is on his way to meet his father. He owes it to a black neighbor (Jeffrey Wright) to be stimulated enough to go away on a journey in search of his girlfriends of the past. This is a good pretext, once more, to see characters lived by Sharon Stone, Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange, and Tilda Swinton. French actress Julie Delpy plays the girl who leaves him at the start of the film. With so many divas on scene, even Jarmusch seems to forget the main character in the narrative and his actions, in the person of his amusing neighbor.
We are at a new time of claustrophobia with the renowned Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Golden Palm in Cannes with "Rosetta", in 1999. Claustrophobis with an open horizon, with escape routes, with hope and, even, a happy ending. The masters of `cinéma vérité` take flight safely in this moving "L`Enfant/ A Criança", about a young couple of delinquents who have a baby to look after. The motherly instinct struggles through to protect the child. The fatherly instinct wants to go out and hunt, to go off once again to join the fight, although he may not have any more hope of surviving in the sordid medium in which he plays tricks and steals. In the countercurrent of those affected by false propaganda in the wonderful digital world, the Dardenne brothers return with "L`Enfant" to use light, effective resources from Super 16mm cameras, on film.
For further information:
www.festival-cannes.org
