Last week did not turn out as expected. On the morning of Wednesday, May 18, we received the news of Rolands Kalniņš’s death, the centenary of the master ended on May 17, four years and a few days after the event, which is forever recorded in my emotional memory and I would like to believe also in the history of Latvian culture. On May 15, 2018, the seemingly impossible took place – a film Four white shirts was shown in the program of the Cannes Film Festival Cannes Classics alongside works by world-famous classics. 51 years after the shooting, after a complicated, censored distorted fate, the film came into the world, and the breath of the world flowed from it – with the charm, lightness and style so characteristic of French cinema, its new wave, the essence of which is reflected in Roland Kalnins’ work. The then 96-year-old director and cinematographer Miks Zvirbulis had come to the Cannes Film Festival and the world premiere of the film, and it was a surprise even for the makers of the Cannes program. Travel? At such a respectable age? The power of Rolands Kalniņš walking along the corridors of the Festival Palace and attending film screenings was amazing, his intelligence and power of thought – impeccable.
On the morning of May 21, 2022, the closest people of Rolandas Kalniņš said goodbye to him. “The director in a suit with a new tie in the color of the Latvian flag went into the flames of Eternity,” Ingrīda Burāne, a close friend of Rolands Kalniņš, wrote on Facebook. In the background was a song about four white shirts and a conscience. The bow ended painfully, significantly.
However, the life of Rolands Kalniņš – his films – remains with us, as do the memories of some days in May 2018 that continue to resonate – both Four white shirts and in the wide acclaim of his other films. What a bright memory! Thank you, Mr. Kalniņš, for life!
Glamor live
Corrections in my Cannes plans were brought about by a sudden illness, which has not yet allowed us to get an eyewitness impression of this year’s festival – just to follow it remotely. The witty Robert Oltman has a movie Ready to wear / Prêt-à-Porter (1994), in which the director ironically ironizes about the fashion world and its viewer, who writes his reports in the room, has not really seen anything with his own eyes. Much has changed in thirty years, and the crucial role of the presence effect has been minimized by the pandemic, making remoteness the norm. The Cannes Film Festival has also become as professional as possible in providing distance – if you are interested, you can watch live stars at the premieres of all the most important films and pose on the red carpet. These are thoroughly directed rituals that mix, as is customary in Cannes, dazzling glamor with mythology and spirituality – or vice versa. This is a cinema temple, the high castle of cinema! I’m happy, I’m excited! These and similar phrases were repeated on the carpet by several directors (George Miller, Reuben Estlund, and others) in response to questions from the host about how they felt just before the premiere of their film at the Cannes Film Festival. Perhaps the impression created by remoteness suggests that this year the red carpet rituals are especially luxurious, generous, exaggerated – a lot of beauties, which show the fruits of designers’ imagination, many important guests.
Perhaps the anniversary of the culprit (75 for the Cannes Film Festival) is perhaps the human desire to party in full swing, recovering the “missed” festival of 2020 and the muted version of 2021.
Destroyers over the castle
And what could be better than this: Demonstrations by a group of French Army fighters – a flight over the Festival Palace, marking the colors of the French flag, thus seeming to surprise even Tom Cruise and the films Top Gun. Maveriks/Top Gun: Maverick group. What more could you want if you want to pay tribute to a Hollywood star who, after a thirty-year hiatus, has returned to the role of the talented fighter Maverick, who made him a Hollywood icon. It was a movie Top Gun (1994), directed by Tony Scott. Publications describing the Cannes Film Festival are popular for recording the length of applause after the premiere. Applause for the new Maverika session in the Limerick Hall lasted five minutes. It must be said, however, that the audience in the hall, which also houses Tom Cruise and the film team, is ready to rejoice in the happiness of the presence alone. The new Maveriks, shot by director Joseph Kosinski, surpassing the 1994 film in terms of dynamics. The press especially emphasizes the fact that Tom Cruise has acquired the skills of a combat pilot in preparation for the role. The film will also be shown in Latvia from May 27.
Of course, Top Gun. Maveriks is not a film for the Cannes Film Festival competition, like George Miller Three Thousand Years of Longingwhich, as written VarietyThe Cannes audience was inspired by the six-minute standing seasons. Also for this big-budget Hollywood movie made by a good director, George Miller (Mad Max: Fury Road etc.), Cannes has become a great platform for publicity. The film features the amazing Tilda Swinton and Idriss Elba, the story of a scientist who buys a bottle of long-lived gin (Idriss Elba) in the Istanbul market, who begins to entertain a lady with her life story. The film will be shown in European cinemas at the end of August. Undoubtedly, there is another explanation for this “over the edge” feeling that comes from watching red carpet rituals. Cans with their own instruments, including glamor, are reminiscent of the indispensability of the cinema as a place for showing films. After the pandemic, viewers have still not returned to full-length cinemas.
Wrinkles on the forehead
Writing about films without seeing them is not a brainchild, so I will only mention the film by Swedish director Rubben Estlund from the competition. Triangle of Sadness. As reported The Hollywood Reporter, the film earned a seven-minute standstill – a record! Reuben Estlund is one of the most important contemporary directors – he has the ability to turn the realities of current life, banal stories into conceptually saturated generalizations. The two previous films of the director that were screened at the Cannes Film Festival and won awards – Major force (2014) and The Square (2017) – and masterpieces. Major force is a drama of masculinity crisis – a story about a family vacation in the Alps, which goes wrong Square is a virtuoso irony about the stratification of Swedish society and the contemporary art market. Square In 2017 it was brought to Ruben Estlund Golden palm branch. That’s why The triangle of sadness is certainly one of the most intriguing competition films of the Cannes Film Festival, which the director has made for five years.
During the making of the film, the production stress caused by the pandemic has not been dispelled, and the director’s ambition – to film on the yacht once owned by the magnate Aristotle Onasim – is already a headline. Those who have managed to see the film in Cannes are shocked and blessed at the same time. The film is called a revealing satire, in which the director also generously plays with elements of physiological shock. It remains to be seen how the rich and powerful of this world – the oligarchs, the models, the global influencers and the like – have fun on an elite supergacht, then on a lonely island. Hope to see you The triangle of sadness in the autumn at Riga festivals. And, yes, the triangle of sadness is the part of the forehead that is wrinkled out if they are not in a hurry to fight it with botox.
Presence of war
The Cannes Film Festival takes place in harsh weather, the signs and turbulence of which cannot be avoided. Before the premiere of George Miller’s film, a naked woman with the Ukrainian flag painted on her chest ran screaming on her red carpet, her body stained with blood red. “Stop raping us!” shouted the activist. The accident was seen live in the distance, and the guards flashed the naked woman out of the sight of the public. Knowing the security system of the Cannes Film Festival, it can be said that it was a carefully planned campaign. It is simply impossible to run on the carpet – neither dressed nor naked.
The presence of the Russian war in Ukraine continues to resonate. The question remains whether the Cannes Film Festival should have included a film by Russian director Kirill Serebrenikov Tchaikovsky’s wife. It was shown on the first day of the festival and has earned a correct, positive evaluation as a story about the composer’s wife’s obsession with marital status, as well as a story about a woman’s place in 19th century society. The film is structured from the point of view of the main character, praising the work of actress Alona Mikhailova – it in the progressive Russian press (New Gazette Europe, Medusa). The long-time president of the European Film Academy, the outstanding Polish director Agneska Holland, Variety “I would not have included Russian films in the program instead of the creators of the Cannes Film Festival, even though Kirill Serebrenikov is a talented artist.” I think this is a respectable opinion. Serebrenikov’s texts at the press conference have also provoked a sharp reaction. At the end of it, the director extensively complimented the oligarch Roman Abramovich, questioned the validity of sanctions for this defender of art and Serebrennikov himself, and essentially confirmed the limitations of his point of view.
The tension continues, nothing is over. The winners of the Cannes Film Festival will be announced on Saturday, May 28th.
–
