The Venice Film Festival begins today – and reconciles the complex with minimalist independent films
When Steven Spielberg was still dreaming of becoming a director, a relative got him a five-minute audience with John Ford. “What do you know about art?” the Hollywood doyen asked him with a stern look and left him describe the paintings in his office. Spielberg, who recognized only Indians and cavalry soldiers in the Western scenes, never forgot the harsh lesson Ford taught him: “It’s not until you pay attention to where the horizon line is in a picture and why it might not be in the middle that you become one.” become something like a filmmaker.”
Is it unfair to think first at the Venice Festival of the film that director Alberto Barbera regretted slipping through the rags? Unfortunately, Spielberg’s fictionalized story of his own youth, The Fabelmans, can only be seen in Toronto, although both festivals have long shared many of the main attractions. But in November, when it opens in cinemas, the world will be able to admire anyway how the probably best-known director makes his way to the cinema himself to the cinema. A special casting coup was announced a few days ago: Ironically, fellow director David Lynch, who embodies the alternative to Spielberg’s mainstream like no other, will play the role of John Ford.
The 79th edition of the Venice Film Festival opens today with an equally eagerly awaited US film. Noah Baumbach, legitimate descendant of Woody Allen in the intellectual comedy genre, has adapted literary material for the first time. And it’s not just any novel, and by no means a particularly funny one, but Don DeLillo’s White Noise, which rose to the ranks of a modern classic soon after its 1985 release. Adam Driver plays the main character, a Hitler researcher at a liberal university, and Greta Gerwig his fourth wife.
The catastrophe scenario of a chemical accident, which has to be staged in a complex way, may have deterred aspirants, but Baumbach has a powerful corporation behind him: Netflix has signed an exclusive contract with the director, whose “Marriage Story” was honored in the Venice competition in 2019. “When I started my career in film, I dreamed of finding a creative home,” the streaming service quotes him as saying. It’s an amazing statement for one of independent cinema’s most prominent figures. Should there be artistic freedom, of all things, in the million-dollar business of streaming entertainment, which the big film studios can hardly afford anymore?
It’s not likely, especially since Netflix lost two million subscribers last quarter. But Venice seems convinced. It was the first of the big A festivals that Netflix gave a stage to despite the Cannes boycott. Last year’s competition included the eventual Oscar winner “The Power of the Dog”. With four productions, Netflix is now showing most of its Oscar contenders in competition. In addition to White Noise, these are Andrew Dominik’s Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Bardo, and Athena, a French social unrest drama directed by Romain Gavras, son of Costa-Gavras. But that’s not all: Nicolas Winding Refn’s miniseries “Copenhagen Cowboy” will also be presented in Venice.
You can understand what Netflix gets out of it: initially boycotted by many cinemas and still criticized for the loveless screen exploitation of its products, the group is gaining in reputation. But anyone who has followed the program that is anything but rich in important feature film premieres in the last twelve months and has little interest in series can also say to themselves: Why not simply cancel the service and rather go to Venice once a year? And there is more to see there than Netflix, including US cinemas.
Frederic Wiseman, 92, is a documentary legend. Now he surprises with a feature film: “A Couple” is based on the letters and diaries of Sophie Tolstoy, the wife of the famous writer. In this role, Nathalie Boutefeu walks through a magnificent garden and along the sea – and reminds us that reality and fiction are often the same in cinema. In early silent films, this was not even argued about.
The range of cinema that is being celebrated here could not be greater: The industry press is circulating a budget of 100 million dollars for “White Noise”. Wiseman’s miniature against a natural backdrop, on the other hand, costs practically nothing.
And if you put two people in front of the right landscapes, you may have already laid the basis for a love-horror drama like “Bones and All”: Luca Guadagnino’s road movie brings back Timothée Chalamet, the young star who only appeared on “Dune” last year. brought a long-unseen crowd of screaming teenagers to the Lido. Taylor Russell is his partner in another promising entry from the US.
Jafar Panahi wove two love stories into his new film “No Bears”, which he was able to send abroad before serving a six-year sentence for “propaganda against the regime” in Tehran. Since he had to live with this threat, his cinema has only gained in freedom. Here he himself plays the role of a director who wants to direct a film team in Turkey from an Iranian border village. An assistant director visits him every night with the footage shot and returns with new ideas about the story of a couple planning an escape to France. At the same time, the filmmaker falls into disrepute among the villagers as an alleged accomplice of a forbidden local couple.
Rarely has a film festival depicted the enormous proportions of what cinema is so strongly: with Noah Baumbach, the luck of the filmmaker who, after 30 years in the business, was only able to realize his first large-scale production in the bosom of a global corporation. With Frederic Wiseman, the freedom of the 92-year-old documentarian who knocks on the door to feature film. And finally the sovereignty of Jafar Panahi, who, shortly before his imprisonment, outwits the dictatorship.
