palliative care, murder, the inevitable death of elderly parents or the shocking and sudden death of children, the death of love, the death of a king, the slow decay of old age, and the death on a massive scale at the extermination camp of Auschwitz.
All this, alongside the lack of will to survive. In an historic or intimate setting, in a forest near Mount Fuji in Japan (Gus Van Sant’s Sea of Trees), or in a hospital room in Rome (Nanni Moretti’s Mia Madre), in a luxury spa in Switzerland for the rich and famous (Sorrentino’s Youth) etc. Festival-goers could simply not escape this fate.
The darkness of all these film directors’ thoughts worked in unison, combining to depict an atmosphere of universal pessimism, as if they all provided a kind of meta-commentary on the state of our world.
Even more striking, there was not one redeeming element in those films, not a single one offering some solace, except perhaps for those who decided to treat death in a fantasy or far-away world, such as Matteo Garrone’s excellent Tale of Tales, Yorgos Lanthimos’ surrealist Lobster, and Hou Hsiao Hsien’s beautiful The Assassin set in medieval China.
The Taiwanese director has not made a film in eight years, but offered the Croisette the only glimmer of hope when his highly trained assassin (the mesmerising actress Chu Qi) struggles to fulfil her contract and kill her target.
A world where redemption has become an old forgotten concept is what the Cannes Film Festival has delivered in 2015.
Excerpted from: ‘Death at Cannes’.
Courtesy: Aljazeera.com
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