Macabre premonitions of Heath
By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, June 4, 2009 - 4 Comments
It’s shocking how eerily Heath Ledger’s last screen role foreshadowed his tragic death
Sixteen months have passed since Heath Ledger died of an accidental drug overdose. But seeing his final screen role unveiled at the Cannes Film Festival last week still came as a brutal shock. In The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, Terry Gilliam’s surreal tale of a travelling theatre company, Ledger is cast as Tony, a slick hustler who joins the ragtag troupe after making a dramatic entrance. Our first glimpse of the actor, foreshadowed by a tarot card of the Hanged Man, shows him dangling off a bridge in London with a noose around his neck, presumed dead. And that’s just the first of several scenes in Gilliam’s film that, in hindsight, serve as macabre premonitions of the actor’s fate. “Could we get any darker?” asks Gilliam, during an interview with Maclean’s in Cannes. “I’ve become fatalistic about everything. It’s very weird about this movie. The ideas, the dialogue were very prescient.”
Gilliam was midway through shooting Parnassus when Ledger died. He had just completed the London portion of the Canada-U.K. co-production, and was preparing to film the remaining scenes in a Vancouver studio. After the news hit, he was ready to abandon the movie. “But so many people around me said, ‘You can’t do that.’ They just kept hammering me.” And within five weeks, Gilliam had recruited a tag team of loyal friends—Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell—to complete Ledger’s role. The sleight of hand made surreal sense: conveniently, most of Ledger’s unfinished scenes take place behind a magic mirror, in a fantasy world conjured by Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer).
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Through the looking glass in Cannes
By Brian D. Johnson - Saturday, May 23, 2009 at 9:47 PM - 0 Comments
A scene from Alain Renais's 'Wild Grass'
Aside from inventiveness with which filmmakers portrayed brutal violence, the other prevalent trend in Cannes this year was the camera’s tendency to turn on itself. So many movies contained references to cinema, and quite a few had stories that revolved around a film within a film, or at least a show within a show—notably Pedro Almodovar’s Broken Embraces, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, Tsai-Ming Liang’s Visage, Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro and Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. It makes you wonder if world cinema is fleeing the world, and happy to lose itself in its own reflection, like the characters who plunge through the funhouse mirror of Gilliam’s Imaginarium. Quite the vicious circle. You’ve got several thousand film critics obsessively watching films that are obsessed with film. One of the French soldiers in Tarantino’s movie is a film critic. And Isabel Coixet’s Map of the Sounds of Tokyo drew a big laugh from a mass audience of critics with this line: “How can you trust a guy who spends all day in a cinema?” Precisely.
In this incestuous mix of art and life, nothing was spookier than seeing Heath Ledger’s last performance in Imaginarium. His character makes his entrance dangling from a noose. And the film contains references to dead movie stars like Valentino and James Dean finding immortality on the silver screen—allusions that now seem like morbid premonitions. But then movies lend themselves to meditations on mortality. And these days, when every auteur seems obsessed with the Death of Cinema, it was thrilling to see a film by an old man that celebrates its life—Les Herbes Folles (Wild Grass), a gem by 86-year-old French master Alain Resnais, who’s most famous for Hiroshima Mon Amour. Resnais’s movie emerged as the festival’s sleeper hit, and after catching up to it late in the week, I can see why.
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Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp and the late Heath Ledger to light up Cannes
By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 1:47 PM - 0 Comments
The Cannes film festival has just announced its official program today. And it looks like a strong line-up, heaving on established auteurs, and with the requisite spash of Hollywood glamour. The main competition is heavy with work from master filmmakers, includings Pedro Almodóvar, Ang Lee, Lars Von Trier, Ken Loach, Michael Haneke, Alain Renais—and Jane Campion, who premieres her first feature in six years. Ang Lee will unveil Taking Woodstock, which stars Canada’s Eugene Levy as Max Yasgur, the farmer whose patch of land hosted the world’s legendary rock festival. Bratt Pitt should provide some celebrity wattage as the star of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds. And Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell may show up to celebrate their work in filling out the late Heath Ledger’s unfinished role in Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassass, which is screening out of competition. The festival will open with Up, a 3D animated feature from Pixar.
There appear to be no Canadian features in official selection, although I still have to double check the French-language titles. Here’s the complete list from Cannes, and more details can be found on the official Cannes site.
THE COMPÉTITION :
Opening Film : Peter DOCTER – UP – Out of Comp.- 1h44
***Pedro ALMODÓVAR – LOS ABRAZOS ROTOS (Broken Embraces) – 2h09
Andrea ARNOLD – FISH TANK - 2h02
Jacques AUDIARD – UN PROPHÈTE – 2h35
Marco BELLOCCHIO – VINCERE – 2h08
Jane CAMPION - BRIGHT STAR – 2h00
Isabel COIXET – MAP OF THE SOUNDS OF TOKYO -1h44
Xavier GIANNOLI – A L’ORIGINE – 2h30
Michael HANEKE – DAS WEISSE BAND (The White Ribbon) – 2h24
Ang LEE – TAKING WOODSTOCK -1h50
Ken LOACH – LOOKING FOR ERIC – 1h59
LOU Ye – CHUN FENG CHEN ZUI DE YE WAN (Spring Fever) – 1h55
Brillante MENDOZA – KINATAY - 1h45
Gaspar NOE – ENTER THE VOID – 2h30
PARK Chan-Wook - BAK-JWI – (Thirst) – 2h13
Alain RESNAIS – LES HERBES FOLLES - 1h36
Elia SULEIMAN – THE TIME THAT REMAINS – 1h45
Quentin TARANTINO – INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS - 2h40
Johnnie TO – VENGEANCE – 1h48
TSAI Ming-liang – VISAGE (face)- 2h18
Lars VON TRIER – ANTICHRIST – 1h44
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Closing Film : Jan KOUNEN – COCO CHANEL & IGOR STRAVINSKY – Out of Comp. – 2h00 Continue… -
Being Charlie Kaufman
By Brian D. Johnson - Saturday, May 24, 2008 at 9:26 AM - 0 Comments
At the press conference after the Cannes premiere of Synecdoche, New York, Charlie Kaufman’s feature directing debut, the screenwriter who hatched Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind looked understandably nervous. From the first question, asking why on earth he put a word in his title that most American won’t be able to pronounce, never mind understand, he was on the defensive. Synecdoche, in case you slept through that English class, is a figure of speech in which a part stands for a whole. It rhymes with the New York town of Schenectady—hence play on words in the title.
Here’s a video glimpse of the press conference, featuring Kaufman, Michelle Williams, Emily Mortimer, Catherine Keener and Philip Seymour Hoffman (rhymes with Kaufman). This is Michelle Williams’ first public appearance since the death of Heath Ledger
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Photo Gallery: Toronto Film Festival 2006
By Jeff Harris - Tuesday, September 12, 2006 at 1:51 PM - 0 Comments
Juilette Binoche epitomized the “blonde bombshell” look at Breaking and Entering
premiere, along with…
Juilette Binoche epitomized the “blonde bombshell” look at Breaking and Entering
premiere, along with co-star Jude Law — who had an impish grin for festival paparrazzi. The Dixie Chicks came to town with a hot documentary that followed the backlash after their dig at President George Bush. From Ashton Kutcher to Zach Braff, see all the celebs that invaded Toronto this past September.
