Director/writer Roy Andersson’s absurdist feature scores top honor
By Jill Lawless
VENICE, Italy (AP) --Swedish director Roy Andersson won the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion on Saturday for his absurdist drama "A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence." That counts as a feel-good ending to a contest whose fare often grappled with war, death and depression, both emotional and economic.
The festival's other avian contender, the widely praised Michael Keaton comeback movie "Birdman," went home empty-handed, but still looks set to be an awards-season contender.
Andersson's series of bleakly comic vignettes — imagine Monty Python directed by Ingmar Bergman — had some critics in raptures but left others scratching their heads. Set in a drab modern Sweden with occasional bursts of surrealism and song, "Pigeon" loosely follows two sad-sacks trying unsuccessfully to sell vampire teeth and other jokey novelties.
Andersson, 71, said earlier in the week that his goal was to find poetry in the banal. Accepting his award, the director said Italian films — especially Vittorio de Sica's neorealist masterpiece "Bicycle Thieves" — had a major impact on him.
"You have such a fantastic film history," he told his Italian hosts. "And I know that in Italy you have taste."
Joshua Oppenheimer's powerful documentary about the legacy of Indonesian massacres, "The Look of Silence," won the runner-up award, the Grand Jury Prize.
The festival's Silver Lion for best director went to Russia's Andrei Konchalovksy for "The Postman's White Nights," a largely silent drama set among villagers on a remote Russian island.
Rising Hollywood star Adam Driver — who appears in the upcoming "Star Wars" film — and Italian actress Alba Rohrwacher took the acting prizes for playing a couple whose transition to parenthood goes chillingly wrong in "Hungry Hearts."
The festival jury, led by composer Alexandre Desplat, gave a screenplay award to Iranian director Rakhshan Bani-Etemad's Tehran-set "Tales," and a special prize to Turkish director Kaan Mujdeci for "Sivas," a drama about a neglected boy who forms a bond with a fighting dog.
Despite its scenes of death and everyday cruelty, Andersson's very funny film was one of the gentler entries in a festival whose films often dealt with suffering, struggle and strife.
There was Ethan Hawke's conscience-troubled drone pilot fighting the war on terror in Andrew Niccol's "Good Kill"; the starving Japanese soldiers driven to madness in Shinya Tsukamoto's "Nobi: Fires on the Plain"; and Viggo Mortensen's teacher dragged into Algeria's battle for independence in David Oelhoffen's "Far From Men."
An economically bruised America was the backdrop for Ramin Bahrani's Florida-set foreclosure tale "99 Homes" and Ami Canaan Mann's riding-the-rails romance "Jackie and Ryan."
Two of the most talked-about performances were by actors playing men battered by life. Al Pacino was a small-town Texas locksmith trapped in the past in David Gordon Green's "Manglehorn." And Keaton used memories of his "Batman" years to brilliant effect as an aging actor trying to regain his creative spark in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's satirical "Birdman.
Juror Tim Roth said "Birdman" was a good film that just didn't make the cut in the jury's deliberations.
But, the actor said, "there is nothing better than seeing Michael Keaton coming and kicking some ass."
The world's oldest film festival, now in its 71st year, prides itself on Italian sophistication, with a romantic setting — apart from the mosquitoes — on Venice's lush Lido island. Pacino, Emma Stone, Owen Wilson, Uma Thurman, James Franco and Charlotte Gainsbourg were among the stars who walked the red carpet outside the Palazzo del Cinema.
But these are hard times for Venice and other film festivals, which are traditionally a way for movies to debut with a splash and build awards buzz. Competition for the big movies has grown fierce. Venice is up against rivals including Toronto and Telluride, both of which overlap it.
Festival director Alberto Barbera said he got "95 percent" of the films he wanted this year — but he lost out on a couple of big ones, including David Fincher's "Gone Girl," which will premiere at the New York Film Festival.
Actor John Leguizamo, in Venice with modern-dress Shakespeare adaptation "Cymbeline," said festivals like Venice were still essential.
"I think they remind Hollywood, or tell Hollywood, what they should appreciate," he said. "Festivals are the guardians, the protectors of quality."
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this — and those many "Babadook" memes — unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More