Mohammad Rasoulof‘s The Seed of the Sacred Fig, which I saw at the Grand Lumiere a few hours ago, is a political metaphor film — an embrace of Iran’s anti-mullah, anti-sexist “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, otherwise known as the Mahsa Amini street protests.

The historic rebellion was triggered by the 9.16.22 killing of protestor Jina Mahsa Amini while in police custody. Furious reactions went on for months.

It follows that the motivation behind the widespread Cannes cheering (and I got an earful of it following today’s 3 pm screening) is two-fold.

One, admiring the film equals supporting the movement, and nobody wants to sound blase or neutral about this, myself included. And two, supporting Rasoulof during his time of trial and nomadic uncertainty has been deemed vital, as he recently escaped from Iran in order to dodge eight years of prison time, which he was sentenced to over the content of this film.

The story is basically about the older, bearded, barrel-chested Iman (Misagh Zare), a Tehran civil servant recently promoted to inspector. He’s married to Najmeh (Soheila Golestani), whose nature is basically submissive and go-alongish, and they have two college-age daughters, the politically outspoken Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and the sullen and resentful Sana (Setareh Maleki).

Iman’s odious job partly involves interrogating malcontents (principally students) who’ve been arrested for protesting, and in some cases placing the lives of the accused in jeopardy.

And yet Iman isn’t initially presented as a flat-out villain — he’s a defensive-minded bureaucrat who’s mainly terrified of incurring the wrath of his hardline boss. And yet he is in lockstep with the Iranian regime and therefore a bringer of harsh authority.

The first half of this three-hour film is about the tensions stirred by the protests and particularly Iman’s daughters as they try to protect a college-age friend who’s been hurt in a street protest.

The second half — here’s where the problem kicks in — begins when Iman’s pistol, which his work colleagues have given him for protection, suddenly disappears. Who stole it and why? It seems surreal that one of Iman’s daughters might be the thief, but somebody’s clearly responsible.

Iman’s strategic reactions become more and more authoritarian and then paranoid, and we’re encouraged (along with his wife and daughters) to feel more and more alarmed by his punitive thinking, which has been exacerbated by lying.

It all comes to a head when Iman drives his family to a rural Iranian village.

Boiled down, The Seed of the Sacred Fig is two movies — the first half comprised of complex social realism, and the second half (stolen gun) driven by metaphorical symbolism and the ‘22 Jina protests. It’s really two separate films, and while their content comes from the same place the styles don’t blend.

And the 180-minute length really isn’t necessary.

Critic friendo: “Cannes critics are investing heavily in praising this film…they’re going along with this emotional wave that everyone’s feeling up and down the Croisette. I’m thinking it might win the Palme d’Or.”

HE: “It’s not good enough to win the Palme d’Or. The two halves don’t blend together. It’s two separate films. It’s serious and thoughtful, but no one’s idea of a great movie.”

Critic friendo: “That’s what bothered me. Rasoulof should have adhered to the realism of the first 90 minutes. And yet everyone’s raving like nothing’s wrong and everything’s glorious. They’re all trying to duck the flawed second half.”

On my 11th and next-to-final day of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, here’s my best-of-the-best rundown, and in this order:

1. Sean Baker’s Anora

2.  Halfdan Ullman Tendel’s Armand (yes, I promise to post an actual HE-styled review)

3.  Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light

4.  Magnus von Horn’s The Girl With The Needle

5.  Ali Abassi’s The Apprentice

6.  Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance

7.  Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez (deserves respect and a certain measured approval as far as it goes)

8. Paul Schrader‘s Oh, Canada (subdued dignity, excellent writing, Richard Gere’s caustic performance).

Which of these will have the biggest impact in the States? The Baker, Audiard and Abassi.

The abrasive nature of Kirill Serebrennikov‘s Limonov: The Ballad and the generally bizarre mood and extreme brushstrokes of Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Kinds of Kindness and Francis Coppola‘s Megalopolis…not my cup.

I’m sorry for failing to catch Andrea Arnold‘s Bird…every time I checked for opportunities the app reported COMPLET or the venue was in Cannes la Bocca, the next town over which is a huge pain to get to.

At one point I was determined to catch Caught by the Tides…not so much now.

I reported the other day about being blocked by festival security from seeing Three Kilometers to the End of the World.

I was never interested in Wild Diamond, which is about a young girl looking to make her mark in reality TV.

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It’s 12:45 pm and Mohammad Rasoulof‘s Tbe Seed of the Sacred Fig, the last noteworthy film of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, screens less than three hours hence.

But my head is still spinning from last night’s surprisingly moving and undeniably artful All We Imagine As Light, a feminism-meets-impoverished-social-realism drama from Payal Kapadia, a 38 year-old, Mumbai-born, obviously gifted auteur.

Shot in Mumbai with a third-act escape to a beach resort, All We Imagine As Light is all about subtle hints, moods, observations and milieu. I knew within 60 seconds that it would deliver profoundly straight cards in this regard — one of the seven or eight humdingers of the festival.

It’s a quiet, soft-spoken, women-centric film but without any current of vengeance or payback or “look at what pathetic fools men are”…there are hints of militant #MeTooism but little in the way of thrust.  

What got me was the observational simplicity and restraint. I was deeply impressed with what can be fairly described as a reach-back to low-key Indian social realism, which is anything but the flamboyant Indian genre known as masala and regarded in some circles (I’m a little fuzzy about this term) as Dacoit cinema, which flourished in the mid 20th Century.

All We Imagine As Light, a title that’s very difficult to remember, focuses on three struggling women of varied ages who work in a second-tier Mumbai hospital (Kani Kusruti‘s 30something Prabha, Divya Prabha‘s younger Anu, Chhaya Kadam‘s 40something Parvaty).

There are only two noteworthy supporting males (a timidly amorous doctor and a bearded man recovering from having nearly drowned) — both are passive and of relatively little consequence.

The three women are all living in the massive, overflowing, sea-of-ants sprawl of Mumbai, and the tone is basically one of resignation and frustration or, if you will, “we’re all unhappy but social codes are very strict and so we believe in staying in our lanes…restraint and decorum…but we’re going a bit crazy underneath.”

And you can tell from the get-go that Kapadia knows what she’s doing.  Her film is solemn, visually plain, matter-of-fact, unsentimental — the work of a formidable, singular filmmaker who knows herself and isn’t into showing off. This is a truly masterful arthouse flick.

Languages spoken in Mumbai: Marathi (35.30% or 4.4 million people), Hindi (25.90% or 3.5 million people). Urdu and Gujarati are spoken by 11.73% and 11.45% respectively. Plus Tamil, Marwari, Bhojpuri, Telugu, Konkani, Bengali and Malayalam.

English is extensively spoken and is the principal language of the city’s white collar workforce. A colloquial form of Hindi, known as Bambaiya — a blend of Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Konkani, Urdu, Indian English and some invented words — is spoken on the streets.

For 11 days I’d been staying away from restaurant cuisine, confining myself to common-man vittles (sandwiches, fruit, coffee, yogurt, sparkling water, Coke Zero) in HE’s Napoleonic-era crash pad.

And then all my restraint collapsed last night, or more precisely this morning at 12:30 am, following a 10:15 screening of Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light, which I found phenomenal.

The after-midnight joint was the famous La Pizza, which serves until 2 am or thereabouts. I dove into an oven-hot Marguerite halfer plus a sizable buffalo mozarella & tomato salad. I rarely eat after 9 pm as a rule and certainly no later than 10 pm, and there I was violating this sensible regimen by three and a half hours.

From David Mikics’ 5.22.24 Tablet article about Nellie Bowles‘ “Morning After The Revolution — Dispatches From The Wrong Side of History“:

“Remember the heady days of 2020? Progressives trained by the richest universities in the land suddenly had the chance to remake America in their image, the way they had always dreamed of doing. The result was so obvious and crushing a failure that one is no longer supposed to talk about it.

“Four years later, the power elite have discovered that their cosplay revolution is seen as merely ridiculous. Minority groups don’t want the new names that have been issued to them. Straight people prefer not to be called cisgender, and gay people don’t like being submerged in a tide of heterosexuals who style themselves queer. Even The New York Times, that high conclave of official euphemisms, has begun to soft-pedal chilling locutions like ‘gender-affirming care for minors,’ instead referring honestly to puberty blockers and body-altering surgery.

‘Nellie Bowles’ ‘Morning After the Revolution‘ is a grand tour through the craziness that followed the killing of George Floyd and continues to this day, despite the majority of Americans shaking their heads in bewilderment.

“Bowles, a former Times reporter, started out as a progressive seeker, curious and hopeful about the new thinking, and she is still seeking solutions to racism, income inequality, and attacks on women’s rights. But she also sees the absurdity of much of what passed for progressivism, yet was actually narcissistic, neo-racialist, and aggressively inhumane.”

If you were in your mid teens when John Hughes‘ The Breakfast Club opened in early ’85, and are now well into your 50s and trying to deal with the oncoming horror of your 60-plus phase, The Breakfast Club probably “means” something to you on some level. It would be odd if it didn’t.

By the same token Andrew McCarthy‘s Brats (Hulu, 6.13) will probably hit home to some degree.

David Blum‘s original New York article about the Brat Pack was on the cover of the 6.10.85 issue. Subhead: “They’re Rob, Emilio, Sean, Tom, Judd and the rest — the young movie stars you can’t quite keep straight. But they’re already rich and famous. They’re what kids want to see and what kids want to be.”

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The only “big” screening left is Mohammad Rasoulof‘s The Seed of the Sacred Fig, which will debut at the Grand Lumiere on Friday, 5.24, at 3 pm.

It was announced earlier this month that Iran’s mullahs had sentenced Rasdoulof to eight years in prison as well as a fine, a flogging and confiscation of his property. Shortly after Rasoulof and “some crew members” escaped from Iran to somewhere in Europe (presumably Paris). Rasoulof is here in Cannes and will attend tomorrow’s premiere screening.

Hollywood Elsewhere will be there with bells on — talk about a big emotional moment.

I’m less certain about attending the Sacred Fig press conference on Saturday, 5.25, at 10:15 am. My return flight to JFK leaves from Nice Airport at 2 pm, requiring arrival no later than noon, so catching the last sensible bus from the Cannes gare (departing at 10:56 am, arriving just before noon) would be a tight situation.

Three films today, all at the Debussy: Celine Sallette‘s Niki at 2 pm, Gael Morel‘s To Live, To Die, To Live Again (an AIDS drama feels a bit out-of-time…Longtime Companion opened a quarter-centry agop) at 7:45 pm, and Payal Kapadia‘s All We Imagine As Light at 10:15 pm. (The Kapadia also screens on Friday morning at 9 am.)

HE is taking a respectful pass on Giles Lellouche‘s Beating Hearts, which screens today at 4:15 pm.

The Richard Burton encounter happened in 1978, when Kevin Costner was 23. He and wife Cindy Silva were flying back to Los Angeles from a honeymoon in Puerto Vallarta. Go to the 10:15 mark…

This was taken as the Feinberg-Costner interview began. I have a bizarre habit of baring my fangs while posting on my phone. I have to work on this.

…and in recent years have tended to vote for films that have promoted the right kind of politically correct message, especially since the woke virus began to infect everything six years ago.

I therefore wouldn’t be surprised if Greta Gerwig‘s jury declines to give the Palme d’Or to Sean Baker‘s wonderfully un-wokey Anora and hands it instead to Jacques Audiard‘s Emilia Perez, primarily because of the trans thing.

Failing this, they will most likely give the Best Actress trophy to Karla Sofía Gascon, the transitioned biomale actor who plays the titular character. There’s really no question that Anora‘s Mikey Madison gives a more compelling, dynamic, high-throttle performance, but cultural political matters are a bigger deal these days.

It is also worth recalling that Palme d’Or winners have often triggered WTF responses in the past. Case in point: Ken Loach‘s I, Daniel Blake, which won eight years ago.

When Ken Loach‘s I, Daniel Blake won the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or, I posted the following: “WHAT? Wrong call, gents. A good film, but not my idea of a really good one, and a long way from greatness. It’s a sturdy, downish Loach-wheelhouse thing about an older craftsman (Dave Johns) with a heart condition getting the humiliating run-around by the system. Except it’s also about an obstinate fellow who’s more committed to venting frustration than playing the system for his own benefit. It’s a sad tale but the world is full of guys like this.”

On 5.13 I had an argument with a critic friend about Blake — here it is:

Me: “You need to calm down on I, Daniel Blake. He’s a carpenter, a joiner, a delicate craftsman, and a would-be employer offers him a job around the two-thirds mark and he turns it down because he’d rather just keep pretending to look for work so he can keep getting government checks?

“Don’t tell me it’s because he’s afraid that working will give him a heart attack because he’s already leading a life of considerable stress plus the anguish of feeling depressed. When he said ‘no, thanks’ to that job, I checked out. No sympathy. If his heart is going to fail anyway then it’s better that it fail while he’s working and earning a living with a sense of pride than to die a miserable government dependent.

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Nikki Haley’s statement about intending to vote for Donald Trump is shameful. I felt respect for her during the Republican primaries, but that’s out the window now. She’s can go straight to hell. Repeating: Chris Christie was the best of the Republican primary challengers — a blunt-spoken classic Republican who talked straight and plain about The Beast and the horrific, anti-democracy threat that Trump poses.

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