Nick's Flick Picks: The Blog
Cannes '96, Expert Witness #7: Amir Soltani
I'm guessing many people reading have had the experience at least once of meeting someone in person whom you first admired and got to know over the internet. At this point, it amazes me how many of the important friendships in my life unfolded this way. One of these #blessed storylines in my life—though I wish we got to see each other more often, and not just while cramming in four-to-six movies per day at TIFF—led me to Amir Soltani, a film critic, festival programmer, public lecturer, and podcaster based in Toronto (none of which is even his day job!). Everyone you meet, not just the people you knew first on the web, should turn out to be as kind and intelligent and reflective and big-hearted as Amir. I first met him through his guest columns at The Film Experience and then started lurking at his own blog (newly relocated to this amazingly swank and impressive site). I was really chuffed when he invited me to have a conversation with him and Tina Hassannia about Jafar Panahi at their Hello Cinema headquarters. And I was so proud of and happy for Amir when he and some friends pulled off the first and sure-to-be-annual CineIran Film Festival at Toronto's Lightbox last November.
Like everyone I've spoken to about Cannes '96, Amir is an eager and catholic moviegoer with eclectic favorites. Also, as with everyone else, his tastes sometimes converge with and sometimes depart from mine. This was never clearer to me than last year, when he was one of my most industrious co-conspirators in the Cannes '95 project that preceded and motivated this year's undertaking. I miss having Amir's daily opinions about every movie we're both watching, so I couldn't help polling him about this year's roster. Of course I wanted to know his thoughts about the one major Iranian entry in Cannes '96, but also about the other films floating around the festival. I was curious, too, how his own latter-day experience as a festival coordinator might have changed his orientation toward the movies...
ND: One more round with my standard opening: Secrets & Lies, Fargo, and Breaking the Waves were the early and persistent favorites for the Palme in 1996. Where do your loyalties lie within this distinguished trio?
AS: It's quite rare that the definitive films from any given year's festival emerge so quickly and manage to remain the most acclaimed and widely discussed films so many years on. That this has happened with the above trio only speaks to their quality. Breaking the Waves is my least favourite of the three, though in fairness, it is also the one I haven't seen in the longest while. Perhaps my opinion of it also suffers from my hotand cold relationship with Lars von Trier, who is always making it difficult for me to go back and revisit his older works. On the other hand, Fargo is one of the most re-watchable films of all time. Is it the warm presence of Frances McDormand or the endearing naïveté of William H. Macy that makes such a cold, bloody film so inviting? The Coens have remained two of America's most singular and provocative voices in the two decades since, but they've rarely matched the narrative precision, emotional depth, and quirky humor of this masterpiece.
That being said, I think the jury made the correct call. I don't have the words to describe quite how much I treasure Secrets & Lies, a film that reduces me to a puddle of tears every time I watch it. The conceit of the story might sound too melodramatic and its characters too ordinary on paper, but the final result is a transcendent, personal experience. You can feel the bittersweet history of that photo studio, and breathe the suffocating air of that new house, and cry for all the lost time in that diner.
I can't help wondering if you, as a Torontonian, have thoughts about Cronenberg's Crash and particularly about the chilly, indelible way it frames your adopted home city.
Toronto is usually a substitute on screen for other urban American settings, so to see the city represent itself in films that cross over to the rest of the world is a delight. It also makes Crash doubly terrifying for me. Having driven on those roads at high speeds myself many times, to witness the crash and subsequent chases on the same streets is frightening. In general, a Cronenberg joint is the last place I'd like to imagine myself inhabiting. As for the film itself, I've been notoriously averse to the cinema of this Canadian giant, with the two notable exceptions of The Fly and Dead Ringers. Crash is neither as daring nor as entertaining as those films, and its air of edginess never quite feels authentic to me.
Read more »
Like everyone I've spoken to about Cannes '96, Amir is an eager and catholic moviegoer with eclectic favorites. Also, as with everyone else, his tastes sometimes converge with and sometimes depart from mine. This was never clearer to me than last year, when he was one of my most industrious co-conspirators in the Cannes '95 project that preceded and motivated this year's undertaking. I miss having Amir's daily opinions about every movie we're both watching, so I couldn't help polling him about this year's roster. Of course I wanted to know his thoughts about the one major Iranian entry in Cannes '96, but also about the other films floating around the festival. I was curious, too, how his own latter-day experience as a festival coordinator might have changed his orientation toward the movies...
ND: One more round with my standard opening: Secrets & Lies, Fargo, and Breaking the Waves were the early and persistent favorites for the Palme in 1996. Where do your loyalties lie within this distinguished trio?
AS: It's quite rare that the definitive films from any given year's festival emerge so quickly and manage to remain the most acclaimed and widely discussed films so many years on. That this has happened with the above trio only speaks to their quality. Breaking the Waves is my least favourite of the three, though in fairness, it is also the one I haven't seen in the longest while. Perhaps my opinion of it also suffers from my hotand cold relationship with Lars von Trier, who is always making it difficult for me to go back and revisit his older works. On the other hand, Fargo is one of the most re-watchable films of all time. Is it the warm presence of Frances McDormand or the endearing naïveté of William H. Macy that makes such a cold, bloody film so inviting? The Coens have remained two of America's most singular and provocative voices in the two decades since, but they've rarely matched the narrative precision, emotional depth, and quirky humor of this masterpiece.
That being said, I think the jury made the correct call. I don't have the words to describe quite how much I treasure Secrets & Lies, a film that reduces me to a puddle of tears every time I watch it. The conceit of the story might sound too melodramatic and its characters too ordinary on paper, but the final result is a transcendent, personal experience. You can feel the bittersweet history of that photo studio, and breathe the suffocating air of that new house, and cry for all the lost time in that diner.
I can't help wondering if you, as a Torontonian, have thoughts about Cronenberg's Crash and particularly about the chilly, indelible way it frames your adopted home city.
Toronto is usually a substitute on screen for other urban American settings, so to see the city represent itself in films that cross over to the rest of the world is a delight. It also makes Crash doubly terrifying for me. Having driven on those roads at high speeds myself many times, to witness the crash and subsequent chases on the same streets is frightening. In general, a Cronenberg joint is the last place I'd like to imagine myself inhabiting. As for the film itself, I've been notoriously averse to the cinema of this Canadian giant, with the two notable exceptions of The Fly and Dead Ringers. Crash is neither as daring nor as entertaining as those films, and its air of edginess never quite feels authentic to me.
Read more »
Labels: Blog Buddies, Cannes, Cannes 96, Coens, David Cronenberg, Festivals, Frances McDormand, Iran, Jafar Panahi, Lars von Trier, Mike Leigh, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Olivier Assayas, TIFF
posted by NicksFlickPicks at 9:30 AM
1 comments
I've known since I moved here that I shared a spiritual link with the 
Miss Julie, despite being an Irish-set and substantially Irish-funded production, also commences in its way CIFF 2014's spotlight on Scandinavian cinema, which encompasses among many other films Ruben Östlund's festival smash 
Tonight the 48th Chicago International Film Festival bestowed a Silver Hugo for Career Achievement on the actress Joan Allen, an Illinois native, Tony winner, co-founder of the 
Early topics included Allen's admission that it took about five years after her first film role (a small part in 1985's 
Around that time, Allen entered a period where her second- or third-tier parts on film and television suited her relative comfort in these media, even as she was headlining and winning major prizes for plays like Lanford Wilson's Burn This, which she played for almost two years, and Wendy Wasserstein's Tony and Pulitzer winner The Heidi Chronicles, where she anchored every scene. Phillips skipped a lot of this supporting-actress journeywoman work in films like 
As for crossing paths with Elizabeth Procter, Allen confessed it was a genuine first for her: "I kind of couldn't believe I was as old as I was, having worked so long in theater, and I had never seen or read The Crucible." Forced to audition for the part (indeed, to read many times for director Nicholas Hytner), Allen felt freed by her lack of pre-conceptions about a role that fellow actors kept describing as a trap: "I guess they felt she easily became kind of holier-than-thou, or too pious or something." Unaware of choices prior interpreters had made, Allen simply made the choices that felt right for the script and found out later whether these were familiar ones—resulting in what I still consider a peak performance in a stellar career. I would say the same of Daniel Day-Lewis's lead work in the same film, which may be no coincidence. "People often ask, 'Hey, aren't you intimidated to work with actors like Anthony Hopkins?' or whomever, but I always feel like, 'No, they'll probably make me better!'" This prospect, of course, works both ways, though as Phillips facetiously chirped, "It's a shame you've had to work with so many hacks! I mean, Kevin Kline? Day-Lewis?"
I, of course, take the view that God did not give me a larynx so that I could sit in Joan Allen's presence and not engage her in conversation. 
The picture at left is not of me queued up early, desperate to buy my tickets to the 
In truth, I'll be taking advantage of those privileges several times during the Festival, allowing myself to be surprised by what's on and available, and obeying my usual practice of avoiding the big fall releases and Oscar contenders as much as I can manage (with, this year, two irresistible exceptions). But in terms of what I've already committed to seeing at 
I might have been weak and bought a ticket to the forthcoming 
Of the first six Palme contenders to screen at 
It has become increasingly obvious that I won't be enjoying any big trips this summer, but there are always new methods for taking matters into your own hands. Needing a break from all of the high-intensity academic writing of the last year, and a different kind of break from the big Oscar projects, and inspired by all the fascinating coverage that came out of this year's Cannes Film Festival, I decided to take unusual advantage of working at a major research university and reassemble a Cannes Film Festival from the past for my own enjoyment. Some people like to restage Civil War battles or the Lewis & Clark Expedition, and I really can't speak to that, but if you want to resuscitate two weeks on the Croisette, here's what you do:
• Visit the official page for the year you have picked at the 
• Retrieve as many of the programmed films as you can get your hands on, through a combination of the public library system, the Interlibrary Loan office, 
• Do your best to ascertain the order in which the Competition films debuted, because it's fun to simulate the particular sequence, contexts, and suggestive associations among different films that a Cannes journalist might have experienced at the time. This can be tricky, but some reading ability in French will help, since 
• For added historical context, read a little of the initial Cannes coverage in Le Monde, Figaro, the Guardian, the Telegraph, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and especially Film Comment to learn what was in the air, culturally and politically and cinematically, at the time your festival fired up. This always yields fascinating tidbits, and if you wind up getting a little advance sense of which films flew and which ones bombed, that's fine, because usually when you show up to a festival, you already have some sense of the buzz around certain titles, including the ones about which everyone stays oddly silent. Just take it as a bad sign if, without variation, you always wind up agreeing.
I decided to return to the 
In general, the Palme was seen as a two-way race between the picturesque pop of The Mission and the austere, differently picturesque, semi-penetrable spiritual agonies of Andrei Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice, which I've also seen though I don't remember it all that well. Both movies grabbed multiple prizes from different bodies beyond just the main jury, controversially chaired by the devoutly mainstream Sydney Pollack. The Ecumenical Jury and the FIPRESCI International critics gave their annual citations to Tarkovsky, while the Technical Grand Prize council, who often cited films by director rather than singling out individual craftsmen, bestowed their plaque on Joffé. Pollack's crew did what they could to distribute the wealth of prizes in other ways, partly by divvying up Best Actress and Best Actor to two performances apiece from different films—the only time that has happened in Cannes history. Still, 1986 is remembered as one of those two-racehorse years on the Croisette, sort of like the 1994 Oscars and, possibly, the 2010 Oscars. Note which side always comes out on top in these situations.
Aside from these two films plus Andrei Konchalovsky's 
Campion won the Short Film competition for her peerless student film 
The biggest story at Cannes that year, proving that some things never change, is that the U.S. had recently commenced a major bombing campaign in Libya, which had already claimed the life of one of Muammar Qaddafi's children (although this report was later exposed to be false). Security was at maximum intensity at Cannes, which gleams just across the Mediterranean from Tripoli, and virtually all the American talent that had previously planned to support their films in person wound up canceling their visits: Scorsese, Spielberg, Shepard, Whoopi Goldberg, Rosanna Arquette, Walter Matthau, Jon Voight. The casually fearless Robert Altman, the more bullishly fearless Eric Roberts of Runaway Train, and Griffin Dunne, the heavily invested star and producer of Scorsese's After Hours, were the only Yanks to hit the Croisette. By all accounts, the paparazzi were pissed, though the jury wasn't impressed enough by the intrepidity of Altman, Roberts, or Dunne to give a prize to any of them (though Scorsese did win Best Director). Military ships patrolled the shoreline at all hours, as did a giant replicated galleon commissioned to advertise the Opening Night film, Roman Polanski's comic farrago 
Among the 20 Palme entrants, I've been able to scrounge up all of them except for Raúl de la Torre's Argentinean political allegory 
If you follow this site at all, you might know that I've worked myself into a tiny lather in recent years – drawing bubbles from my admittedly small soapbox – as both an incorrigible devotee of the Oscars and a somewhat cranky critic of how long, expensive, and over-crowded with nuggets and chatter the so-called "awards season" (or, worse, the "campaign season") has become. It's hard enough when so many of the wrong films seem either pre-targeted for consideration or disappointingly excluded from it. I find my Oscar addictions, which are no one's fault but my own, prompting me to think and write more about movies I don't really care about, just because they're likely to be nominated, than about movies for which I might actually have a thought-out, passionate, more valuable critique to put forward.
Beyond forming these aggravated opinions in recent years, I have jumped to my own conclusions about what is or isn't a "legitimate" event and what seems, by contrast, like a pure publicist's coup, with little to teach anyone about filmmaking. I haven't been consistent or very well-informed in arriving at these knee-jerk opinions, so I usually keep them to myself. Yesterday, though, in a 
