I woke up at 4:30 again this morning and did my usual, which is to go to the Carlton lobby and use the free wifi there to do some work. On the way over — it was about 4:55 by this time — I walked by a small, dimly-lit club packed with the usual vampires. You could hear the cheap music blaring two, three blocks away. And right next to the Carlton yet! Are they keeping Sean Penn up? If I were Penn and the music was keeping me up, I would walk down to the club and spit in the doorman’s face.
Hardcore criminals and sociopaths excepted, is there any lower life-form than clubbers? Drinking and jabbering and hitting on people you want to go to bed with for six or seven hours straight. Indiscreet, loud, coarse. A couple of assholes were walking down a dark street near my place — guys who’d obviously been at it all night — and they were talking so loudly you’d have to call it shouting. No respect for the time of night or people sleeping nearby or for God’s general rule, which is that only the aimless and the Godless prowl around in the wee hours.
Walking west on the Croisette a couple of minutes later I heard an American guy say to a couple of friends, “I can’t fucking believe you…300 for a lap-dance?” (That would be 450 US if was talking euros.) I ran into an unattractive prostitute with big feet a minute later. She offered the usual enticements. “What I really need is a bottle of water or a can of Coke,” I replied. “You know where I can get that?” I was feeling thirsty, dehydrated. A door man at the vampire club wouldn’t let me in to buy a Coke or a glass of Perrier. “You won’t let me in for two minutes in so I can buy some water because I’m thirsty?” I said to him. What an arrogant waste of skin. I finally managed to talk the night clerk at the Noga Hilton into selling me a large bottle of Evian. It cost 10 euros or $15 U.S. This town is dangerous.

The moral undercurrent in Nuri Bilge Ceylan‘s Three Monkeys — a quietly devastating Turkish family drama about guilt, adultery and lots of Biblical thunderclaps — is in every frame. It’s about people doing wrong things, one leading to another in a terrible chain, and trying to face or at least deal with the consequences but more often trying to lie and deny their way out of them. Good luck with that.

Hatice Aslan, Yavuz Bingol in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Three Monkeys.

I was hooked from the get-go — gripped, fascinated. I was in a fairly excited state because I knew — I absolutely knew — I was seeing the first major film of the festival. Three Monkeys is about focus and clarity in every sense of those terms, but it was mainly, for me, about stunning performances — minimalist acting that never pushes and begins and ends in the eyes who are quietly hurting every step of the way.
It’s a very dark and austere film that unfolds at a purposeful but meditative (which absolutely doesn’t mean “slow”) pace, taking its time and saying to the audience, “Don’t worry, this is going somewhere…we’re not jerking around so pay attention to the steps.”
A 50ish politician named Servet (Ercan Kesal), fighting off sleep as he drives on a narrow country road, hits a man and kills him. Freaked, he drives off without calling anyone. The next day he convinces the quiet-mannered Eyup (Yavuz Bingol), his longtime driver who’s abut the same age, to confess to the crime and do the jail term, promising to give him a lot of money in addition to paying his salary to his wife Hacer (Hatice Aslan), and son Ismail (Ahmet Rifat Sungar) while he’s in stir.

Except Servet soon takes advantage of Eyup’s absence of having it off with Hacer in a what-the-fuck recreational sense. (He’s a politician, after all.) The plot thickens when Ismail, a morose downhead to begin with, learns of the affair and starts twitching with anger and grief and guilt, not knowing what to do or say. Then Eyup gets out of jail and immediately starts to sense the after-vibe. Then we realize that Hacer hasn’t indulged with the boss out of lust or boredom or to keep him sweet but because she’s obsessively in love with the creep. (Good God.) Then matters get even worse.
Every step of the way you’re reading the characters, absorbing what they’re feeling or looking for, guessing what they might do, feeling their vulnerability, pulling for them, wanting to see it all come out right or at least end in a way that won’t result in more pain or ruination.
Ceylan and his cinematographer Gokhan Tiryaki are into filling their frames with muted but luscious browns, grays, blacks (lots of black) and faded greens. The visuals are such a bath that Three Monkeys almost deserves a standing ovation for this alone. But it’s the unstinting sense of engagement with the moral cost of what’s being done and lied about and covered up that matters. It’s heavy material, all right, but it’s not a reach to call it the stuff of classic tragedy. The script (by Ceylan, Ebru Ceylan and Ercan Kesal) is right up Will Shakespeare’s alley.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan

And ohhh, that thunder! Four or five times it growls and rumbles like God’s angry symphony. Lightning, too, at the very end.
I think Three Monkeys is fundamentally a political film because it’s telling an eternal political truth, which is that people with money and power rarely pay for their wrong-doings — they simply arrange for someone down the food chain to take the rap. And then sometimes they fuck the rap-taker’s wife for good measure.
The (mostly) static camera work and powerful quietude of Three Monkeys reminded me every so often of Cristian Mungiu‘s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, which played here last year and won the Palme D’Or.
I’m not sure if Three Monkeys is a masterpiece — I’m still sifting it through — but I knew all along I was watching an exceptional, very powerful, high-end thing. It’s the kind of film that plays like gangbusters inside the Grand Palais but will barely be seen in commercial cinemas, and may even irritate the ADD crowd. It’s not going to do much business in the States, I’m guessing — some critics, I’m told, were saying they bored with it as they talked things through at the bottom of the steps outside the Salle Debussy — but it looks to me like a sure contender for the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme D’Or.

You absolutely have to put Hatice Aslan at the very top of the list of Best Actress winners here. I don’t care what comes along between now and Friday the 23rd — her performance is knockout stuff. Ditto Yavuz Bingol for Best Actor. I read somewhere that Ceylan, in the tradition of Robert Bresson, doesn’t use professional actors; I read somewhere else that he uses friends who are actors– just not famous ones. I’m sure someone will point out what an ignoramus I am for not knowing this stuff chapter and verse.
It’s obviously early to be talking Palme D’Or winners, but when a film has the Unmistakable Right Stuff, you know it right away. Moral fortitude, razor-sharp vision and stylistic sure-footedness of this calibre are impossible to ignore.
Originally a photographer, Ceylan seems to me like the Satyajit Ray of Turkey. His hallmarks, to quote from a recent Turkish Daily News article, are “a strong minimalist shooting style, themes of alienation and” — I didn’t know this until recently — “strong autobiographical elements.” The piece adds that Ceylan’s cinema “is not for those who view cinema as a form of entertainment, but for festival-followers who revere art-house filmmaking.”

Except — hello? – great art-house movies are something very close to entertainment. They take you out of yourself and into a realm that adds to your empathy and understanding of life’s infinite sadness. They turn you on with their mesmerizing style and condensed capturings of instantly recognizable human folly. When films of this sort really deliver they satisfy in ways that stay with you for decades. They add meat to your bones.

My suitcase is still in the hands of Air France baggage retrieval. A French-speaking gentleman — probably, I’m guessing, the delivery guy hired by Air France to deliver retrieved luggage — called this morning, but our attempts at communication were a complete failure. (His English was non-existent; my French is pathetic.) I’ve been wearing the same clothing since Monday morning. I have to figure this out, so I may be out of the loop until later today.
I’m nursing a vague interest in attending a 3 pm Kung Fu Panda press conference. I’m definitely seeing Nuri Bilge Ceylan‘s Three Monkeys at 4:30. pm (Salle Debussy) and Steve McQueen‘s Hunger at 7:30 pm (Ditto.). A couple of parties are happening later this evening.

Variety‘s Justin Chang has joined the growing throng of Blindness panners. “The personal and mass chaos that would result if the human race lost its sense of vision is conveyed with diminished impact and an excess of stylish tics in Blindness, an intermittently harrowing but diluted take on Jose Saramago‘s shattering novel.
“Despite a characteristically strong performance by Julianne Moore as a lone figure who retains her eyesight, bearing sad but heroic witness to the horrors around her, Fernando Meirelles‘ slickly crafted drama rarely achieves the visceral force, tragic scope and human resonance of Saramago’s prose. Despite marquee names, mixed reviews might yield fewer eyes than desired for this international co-production.”

The timing of John Edwards‘ endorsement of Barack Obama, which I heard about 90 minutes ago, is, I admit, a stroke of good timing. It blows Obama’s West Virginia loss (downmarket racist rubes realizing it’s now or never to try and stop the black fella) off the proverbial front page. Clinton will hang tough until early June, but never have her true colors flown more brightly.

“Somehow we are locked at the hip to Hillary Clinton, who won’t stop her manic tarantella until her party whirls into ruins, like the run-amuck carousel in Alfred Hitchcock‘s Strangers on a Train. [Her] campaigning has come to: a monotonous exercise in showboating solipsism, like Shirley MacLaine as the geriatric mother in Postcards from the Edge, hijacking her daughter’s party and kicking up her heels to sing ‘I’m Still Here!’

“Even with strong wins in Appalachia, Hillary has no true rationale for her candidacy, other than her inflamed gender and her putative Washington ‘experience’ — which has yet to produce a tangible legislative achievement. Her persistence is now keyed to her hope (chillingly close to a curse) that her rival will make a major gaffe or be besmirched by some unknown past scandal. And her message maliciously undermines Barack Obama, the presumptive nominee, by targeting his presumed weakness in the general election.
“But the gifted Obama is just getting started on the national stage, while his opponent, John McCain, is a clumsy, fusty, narcissistic waffler whose party is in disarray and revolt against him.” — from Camille Paglia‘s 5.14 Salon column, titled “She Won’t Go Easy.”

Myself and Cinematical’s James Rocchi at last night’s journalist dinner at La Pizza. Shot taken by Glenn Kenny and posted on his new blog, Some Came Running. Rocchi and I look glum and fatigued, I admit. Then again, we were that! Kenny wrote that the pic portrays “the pulse-pounding excitement that suffuses the evening before the first day.”

An American Pavillion panel discussion about “Buzz Builders,” sponsored by Skype, concluded about 90 minutes ago. Alex Ben Block moderated with Variety‘s Mike Jones, IFC.com’s Alison Willmore and Indiewire‘s Eugene Hernandez participated along with MCN’s David Poland on a live video hook-up. A few interesting subjects were tossed around, including a speculation by Poland that the Hollywood Reporter may be toast in three years’ time.

(l. to r.) IFC.com’s Alison Willmore, Variety‘s Mike Jones, Indiewire‘s Eugene Hernandez, moderator Alex Ben Block.

Hernandez took a bow for delivering extremely fast coverage of festival news and events, such as posting about this morning’s Jack Black/Kung Fu Panda stunt 30 minutes after it ended.
Block asked the panelists where they stood on respecting review embargos, the between-the-lines implication being that internet bloggers have a rep for playing fast and loose on this score.
In the q & a portion I brought up the fact that a N.Y. Daily News feature writer recently jumped the embargo by running a sweetheart review of Sex in the City and nobody said boo, but if an online columnist had done the same the c.w. would have been “there goes the internet again, being untrustworthy.” I voiced doubts about New Line/HBO allegedly being surprised by the NYDN review. Poland voiced a belief that that “of course” they okayed it in advance, adding (a) that this is nothing new and (b) that both he and I have run similar-type friendly reviews in advance of embargo dates.
Poland said that the difference between print and online film writing is a “lack of editing” and seasoned judgment. He mentioned a propensity on the part of the former to emphasize (or certainly allow for) “personality journalism” a la Nikki Finke‘s Deadline Hollywood Daily. (As well as — let’s be candid — yours truly.) Jones added that “some” of the online reporting about the WGA strike (he didn’t mention Finke by name but this seemed the implication) was “wrong…a lot of screenwriters lived through these reports and got their hopes up.”

Skype-fed image of MCN’s David Poland during panel

Poland lambasted the N.Y. Times for running a recent Michael Cieply story about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crustal Skull suffering bad internet buzz, which he said was a non-story. And yet the exhibition word on the film is real, I contend, having been told myself by a trusted source about a negative reaction from a Southern-based exhibitor, and also having heard loose talk along these lines from an industry source whom I’ve known for several years.
Both Hernandez and Jones mentioned the importance of judgment and “context” in the reporting of news stories. Jones particularly referred to Anne Thompson‘s Variety reporting about Warner Bros.’ decision to kill Picturehouse and Warner Independent as a fine example of such standards.
I mentioned later that although Thompson’s seasoned understanding of the business makes her a first-rate reporter and analyst, the fact remains is that Defamer‘s Stu Van Airsdale was more correct in his piece about the imminent demise of Picturehouse than Thompson was in her subsequent article which said that Picturehouse’s Bob Berney and W.I.’s Polly Cohen were “likely” going to share the running of a merged operation. My point was that you need to read everyone and consider everything.
Poland said that Warner Bros. simply changed its mind about keeping Picturehouse/W.I. at the last minute, although a reliable-sounding report has been published saying that the decision to whack the two companies was made about a week before it was announced.
Poland said later that an online hurdle thus far is that “there’s no money” in blogging for many if not most writers who toil in this medium. Or at least, “not enough to live on.” And yet “having a seat at the table” is what everyone wants, he said, including the N.Y. Times.
He also said he “would be very surprised if The Hollywood Reporter is still [around] three years from now.” (I think he meant in its present form, but maybe not.) Poland posted a Hot Blog column a year or two ago about how THR needs to get with the program and become a big-time online trade site, and that he would be a good choice to manage this transition and maintain it thereafter, or words to this effect.

A remake of Abel Ferrara‘s Bad Lieutenant will begin shoting in the late summer with Nicolas Cage reinterpreting Harvey Keitel‘s coked-out, self-destructive Manhattan cop and — talk about a curious but totally dynamite call — the great Werner Herzog directing. Inspired! I love it sight unseen.
The only uh-oh is that it’s being partly slapped together by the very “bad” (in a manner of speaking) Israeli producer Avi Lerner, who’s long been regarded as more of a wheeler-dealer in the Dino de Laurentiis-Eli Samaha-Giancarlo Perretti tradition of movie-producing by way of an Oriental rug salesman mentality. The more respectable Edward R. Pressman is also a producer on the film. Nobody pushes Herzog around, but the general rule-of-thumb is that a movie is only as good and smart as the lamest link in the chain.
Has this rule ever been proved wrong? Yes — when legendary schlockmeister Willam Castle helped produce Roman Polanski‘s classic Rosemary’s Baby.

N.Y. Times critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis have written that “for many” — code for themselves and other top-dog elites like Jim Hoberman, John Powers, Glenn Kenny, Scott Foundas, et. al. — Cannes-spotlighted directors like Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Le Silence de Lorna), Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Three Monkeys) and Lucrecia Martel (The Headless Woman) “are the real stars of Cannes. In America their names may be met with blank stares, but here they walk up the same red carpet as some of the most prominent Hollywood filmmakers and celebrities. And this may be the ultimate measure of the festival√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s integrity as well as a reminder of its noble traditions.”

There’s at least one solid defense of Recount screenwriter Danny Strong, who’s been criticized in Edward Wyatt‘s 5.14 N.Y. Times story for having unfairly portrayed former Secretary of State Warren Christopher as “one of the great all-time wimps” (my quote) during the spin battle over the Florida vote in the 2000 presidential election, which Strong brings up.

He tells Wyatt that “one of his primary sources” on the Christopher-wimp angle was ‘Too Close to Call,’ a book by Jeffrey Toobin, reports Wyatt, “who served as a consultant on the film. In it Mr. Toobin argues that by the end of the first week, both Christopher and Gore campaign chairman Edward Daley were ‘making the case for surrender.'” Is there anyone out there who believes Toobin isn’t a good reporter or, being that, an astute judge of character?