Beyond the Multiplex: Cannes

Palme d'Or shocker! The jury hands top honors to Loach for his Irish epic -- and consolation prizes to Almodóvar and Iñárritu.

By Andrew O'Hehir

Read more: Andrew O'Hehir, Cannes, Movies, Movie Reviews, Arts & Entertainment, Reviews, Beyond the Multiplex

"The Wind That Shakes the Barley"

May 30, 2006 | CANNES, France -- Red carpeting was stacked in haphazard rolls in the internal corridors of the cavernous, and hideous, Palais des Festivals on Sunday night. A guy with a scraping tool was on his hands and knees, laboriously removing the L'Oréal sponsorship logo from the marble staircase between the third and fourth floors. Although the Croisette, the palm-lined beachfront boulevard extending east and west of the Palais, was still jammed with tourists, the front lawn of the Grand Hotel, noted at the height of the festival for its combination of high-level wheeler-dealers and dog shit (a coincidence, I assure you), was almost empty. Cannes was rapidly returning to its year-round identity as an overpriced retreat for the would-be fabulous.

By most accounts this has been a decent edition of the Cannes International Film Festival, but one without world-changing great films. I pretty much agree, but then, I've never been here before, so what the hell do I know? One American journalist who has been to Cannes 25 of the last 26 years told me that such is almost always the verdict, and that the festival's "great films" only start to look that way in the rearview mirror. Last year, Michael Haneke's sinister thriller "Caché" got quite a buzz going on the Riviera, but no one could have foreseen that it would become the hottest French film import to reach American screens in many a moon.

Whether it was great or mediocre, this year's festival certainly provided a sting in its tail. We all expected that a jury chaired by Wong Kar-wai, reigning demigod of the art-film universe, would violate orthodoxies and provide some surprises. But surprises come in different grades. When the Grand Prix, the jury's second-place prize, was awarded to French director Bruno Dumont's brutal, minimalist war drama "Flanders," a collective murmur, fairly close to a groan, arose in the press room. But honoring "Flanders," an oblique and audacious film that divided critics and alienated many viewers, might be called an expected surprise from this jury. (For the record, I'm with the minority who actually admired "Flanders," although it's a difficult film to enjoy.)

No one expected the surprise that arrived a few minutes later, when the Palme d'Or, Cannes' biggest prize, was awarded to a straightforward historical drama made by a 69-year-old English leftist. Even Ken Loach, the director of such Brit-indie classics as "Raining Stones" and "Riff-Raff," seemed startled by this turn of events, although he rose to the occasion gracefully. "I've forgotten all my French," he said (in perfectly passable French) to the throng inside the Grand Théâtre Lumière, "but it's wonderful to be here, at the very heart of world cinema."

Loach's film, "The Wind That Shakes the Barley," is an epic about Ireland in the 1920s, when the nation was forged in a revolution against British rule followed by a fratricidal civil war. Loach seemed eager to make sure that no one present would miss its potential contemporary relevance. "Our film is a very little step in the British confronting our imperial history," he continued in English. "If we tell the truth about the past, then maybe, maybe, we will tell the truth about the present."

Reviews of "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" were generally respectful but mixed; I'm not aware of any critic who picked it as a major Palme d'Or contender. Wong, however, told a press conference after the Palmarès (the peculiar ritual recitation of the winners at the closing ceremony) that the jury's vote was unanimous and the selection took almost no time. "It was the first prize we decided this morning," he said. "We had one round of voting and we were done."

Actress Helena Bonham Carter, another jury member, said that Loach's film "shattered us. It was emotionally and viscerally moving." French director Patrice Leconte added that despite watching "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" on the first day of the festival, "it stayed in a corner of my heart during all the days afterward, as I watched other films, day by day. It never departed."

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