A faithful correspondent has sent me two frames with this comment: "The close up on face Severine Caneele at the end of
Humanity (1999), has something to Jack Nicholson
Shining (1980), possessed, defeated by rage (...) the same effect of light-cons dive. I do not know if
Bruno Dumont really thought the scene as well but we can consider it. "
We can in fact: the film belongs to those that bring images and movies, despite the intentions and affiliations verbal affirmed by their authors, or glosses imposed by those for whom film is first scholarship when we need to indulge, and through him we engage in our own lives. We can especially as Bruno Dumont cites Stanley Kubrick among her favorite filmmakers.
We'll remember long: chaired by David Cronenberg, the 52 th
Cannes Film Festival (1999) was the most daring. His achievements brought Hollywood to the door crashing to the point where U.S. producers promised never to walk on the Croisette, sent to the mat a few films carefully premeditated to win, seduce or impress: A True Story
Lynch, The Summer of Kikujiro
Kitano,
Ghost Dog of Jarmusch,
Kadosh of Gitai,
Felicia's Journey Egoyan,
The Virgin Suicides Sofia Coppola or
The Englishman Soderbergh; aside more intriguing
Time Regained Raul Ruiz; to award the Jury Prize at
Letter of Manoel de Oliveira, one of the staging to my mother for all
Almodovar, but especially the Golden Palm at Rosetta
Dardenne brothers, the Grand Jury Prize at
Humanity Bruno Dumont, and price interpretation to the players (all three non-professional) of these films, Emilie Dequenne, Severine Caneele and Emmanuel Schotte.
In
maintenance Liberation of June 2, 1999, David Cronenberg explained himself on all these sensitive points of the controversy at Cannes: "My desire
[was]
meet with the pure subjectivity. [...] We had no political intent [...] it was not an intellectual process. We were not a group of subversive agitators that meets at night in a cellar to make a bomb. [...] The films chosen have been passionately. "
Appearing as provocative a whim, a sort of exception, this festival was the announcement of new requirements: stop renew the tested recipes, pet the Cannes audience or others in the supposed direction of the hair, to accompany the self-celebration writers, actors and critics taboos; to fly to the rescue of victory and evaluate one function entries in the first weeks, "
Hollywood has done to brainwash the world [...]
why bother to organize festivals and does not directly reward movies that yield the most money? This is the mindset of Hollywood. "
What this jury intended it or not, this time he assumed his mediating role. Two years before 2001 - September 11 time instead of space Odyssee - he foresaw that the world and the cinema had to abandon the illusion of fighting clear Good intentions, edifying stories to confront, as in Shakespeare's time, for the ambiguity, opacity, benchmarks in the nights of lost souls and conflict. Even more than
Rosetta that in some ways we continued to enroll with the frail girl, and convulsive heroic struggle against forces and relatively detestable identified
Humanity made viewers lose all reason and all professional intelligence : Le Monde Diplomatique
eg films ranged from squalid, obscene and fascist, and everywhere we tried to get rid the two films and their actors for a day which made the lunch to all those who wanted to preserve that monopoly to build our eyes, accusing them of being things naturalistic, documentary, elitist and pessimistic. The logic would we succeeded a little better with
Humanity with Rosetta
, whose failures were mainly formal.
"
More work is a difficult, complex, deeper, the viewer must work to understand and to access them, the fewer who will want or be able to do so. I do not see this as elitism or arrogance, it's just another way consider the cinema, or literature or music. I have nothing against simple movies that appeal directly to emotions. They are not threatened. [...] A film that criticizes some aspects of human nature or society is not pessimistic to the extent that the filmmaker found energy and desire to make a comment. The real pessimism would not do that kind of movie, think it's hopeless and there is nothing left to say. In some ways, Hollywood is the worst because it avoids any comment on the truth and says that talking is useless, it is better to escape et gagner de l'argent .»
D'un côté le hollywoodien Jack Nicholson, voué à grimacer et gesticuler comme Nicholson, ils vont tous le chercher pour ça: qui peut, qui veut l'arrêter, ni Kubrick, ni Antonioni, ni Polanski, ni John Huston, — Delon sut au moins s'oublier quelquefois dans les mains de Visconti, Losey, Godard, ou Schlondorff. De l'autre, la flamande Séverine Caneele, BEP de couturière, serveuse, cueilleuse dans les champs de houblon, cariste dans une usine de surgelés alimentaires belges, venue se faire sculpter par Dumont le temps d'un film, à l'expresse condition — au seuil du cinéma, ce fut elle qui en posa — qu'il do not film the nude and that the name of the lining of these scenes is explained in words. She regretted that the generic was just at the end of the film, when everyone is gone: she understood things quickly! And to her credit, she ventured
come in a blue dress , Lanvin course, but nobody deigned to touch the waist or hem stitch (after all, as some journalists said she was a seamstress! ) before returning to Hazebrouck marry and buy a used car with its style, which reached its plant to grow licencia. And when she came back a second time this film was for
A Piece of Sky (2001), Bénédicte Liénard on women in prison. Have you seen this movie?
Caneele is not Nicholson and Dumont is not Kubrick. Even if he loves as he loves Bertrand Blier and Fellini, obviously those are not his masters. He loves them, that's all. Only had he not repeat that would see him clearly, his masters are Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub. Still: Bruno Dumont he still resists the call of the goodwill of Kubrick's films in the stomach? Although in 1999 he had not turned
Flanders (2006), whose scenes of war - only the third film, because essentially
Flanders happening in the Picardy region - were the chorus of critics lazily referred to
Full Metal Jacket (1987 ), now after
Platoon (1967) or
Journey to the End of Hell (1978) the reference for any war movie, so that beyond a few excesses which stimulated their feathers, the major differences would have their obvious. Not to mention the American experience of mass media and Cast
Twentynine Palms where, squinting more meaning to my side of Kubrick or just Cronenberg Bruno Dumont visited many aspects of the system and just punishment, not for a round and swollen and for a film under the influence. The magnificent
Hadewijch (2009) reassured and returned to lightning in the night
Life of Jesus (1996),
Humanity and
Flanders too.
Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet . Precisely
Sicilia! was presented this year at Cannes 1999 / Un certain regard où il voisina avec
Les Noces de Dieu de Joao Cesar Monteiro et
The Shade , le premier film de
Raphaël Nadjari . Dans les
Cahiers du Cinéma 538 (septembre 1999) Straub témoigne aussi de ce que, trois mois auparavant, ils ont subi, vu et entendu:
«
Quand on voit ce que ces gens [leurs acteurs]
ont réussi à faire dans Sicilia! , on comprend à quel point la polémique cannoise autour des acteurs non professionnels est honteuse. Il y a une chose que j'ai redécouverte au moment de Cannes: la presse italienne» [but it happened the same thing in ours]
"is just a notch below the release of Dr. Goebbels and Goering. And this happened in four years. You could see things like: "What is that these films have received awards and play in which non-professional actors who are bad anyway and will not make a career in film?" .
I read it in good daily democratic, liberal and bourgeois, which are not yet peer-reviewed journal of mackerel. "Who knows.
© Jack Nicholson Shining by Stanley Kubrick. Severine Caneele in Humanity Bruno Dumont. Click on images to enlarge .
