At the age of 71, the oldest event on a crowded movie calendar, the Venice film festival is forced to fight to keep pace with its upstart younger rivals. Fittingly, this year’s edition opened with an acid Broadway caper about an over-the-hill actor who elects to chase kudos and art as opposed to mainstream success.
Directed by Mexico’s Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Birdman, or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance was widely judged to be a fine first salvo for the 71st Venice film festival. Elsewhere, however, the organisers face claims that their event lacks star names and big titles. In taking the high road, Venice risks being overhauled by subsequent events in Toronto and New York.
“It’s true that there is competition, and it has increased over the past three years,” admitted festival director Alberto Barbera. “But competition does not mean conflict. We are not here to show our muscles and be the first in the race. Our mission is to support film-makers and quality films. That’s what really matters.”
At the opening press conference, the festival organisers found room for a brace of empty chairs to acknowledge the enforced absence of a pair of dissident film-makers, currently incarcerated in Russia and Iran. But the chairs might also have represented the two most conspicuous gaps in the 2014 line-up. Barbera conceded that Venice had attempted to secure the world premieres of both Paul Thomas Anderson’s eagerly anticipated Inherent Vice and David Fincher’s adaptation of the best-selling novel Gone Girl. Instead, both pictures will now screen at next month’s New York film festival.
The organisers, however, are intent on making a virtue of the loss. “I don’t like the idea of a festival made up only of big established auteurs or the sorts of films you expect to see at festivals,” Barbera told Screen International this week. “We should do real exploration work.”
Potential highlights from this year’s competition include the American drones thriller Good Kill, starring Ethan Hawke, Ramin Bahrani’s repossession drama 99 Homes, and a pair of Al Pacino vehicles in Manglehorn and The Humbling. But the best films may well turn out to be the ones that slip under the radar and catch the public unawares.
“We are here to discover new voices, new faces, new subjects,” insisted jury chairman Alexandre Desplat. “We hope to find powerful and original points of view. That’s why the festival exists. To discover new objects.”
In its appointment of Desplat, it seems that this year’s event has already broken new ground. The French film composer is the first musician ever to have chaired a major festival jury. “It’s a bit delicate to call it a courageous decision to bring me in,” he cautioned. “That makes it sound as if I’m some plagued item.”
Meanwhile, the red carpet was being laid ahead of the world premiere of Birdman, which stars Michael Keaton, Edward Norton and Naomi Watts as a band of posturing actors who spar and bicker their way towards opening night. Inarritu’s film has impressed critics with its stylistic ingenuity, playing out in a series of long, impeccably choreographed takes that put huge demands on the cast.
“Before we started shooting, I sent them all a picture of Philippe Petit when he crossed the twin towers on the wire,” Inarritu explained. “I always felt that the picture was the key to this film. We were crossing the film without a net. When you get to the other side, it feels just like a miracle.”
