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Here Are The Winners of the 2021 Cannes Film Festival

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

2021_Cannes_Film_Festival

When it comes to Cannes, it’s often a fool’s errand to try to predict what will win.  The critics and the viewers will definitely have their opinions of the films that they see but, in the end, it all comes down to the members of the Jury and the Jury almost always seems to go their own way.  Probably the easiest way to sabotage a film’s chances at Cannes is to announce, early-on, that the film is a lock for Palme.

For all of the acclaim that greeted The French Dispatch, Red Rocket, Flag Day. and a few others, the 2021 Cannes Jury, led by Spike Lee, gave the Palme d’Or to Julia Docournau’s Titane.  I can’t wait to see Titane as I absolutely loved Ducournau’s previous film, Raw.  Annette, which was kind of the love it or hate it film of the festival picked up the award for Best Director.  As much fun as some of us had imagining a world where Simon Rex was named Best Actor for Red Rocket, the jury went with Caleb Landry Jones for Nitram.  

What does this mean for the Oscars?  Probably not much.  Of course, winning at Cannes can help a film’s Oscar chances.  Most recently, it probably helped out both Tree of Life and Parasite.  I could imagine Caleb Landry Jones maybe getting a boost as far as a possible Best Actor nomination is concerned, depending on how Nitram is received in the States.  But, in the end, Cannes is usually viewed as being a bit too quirky and unpredictable for it to be a dependable precursor.  When it comes to film festival acclaim, the Oscars tend to pay more attention to Telluride and Venice.  In the end, it’ll probably be films like The French Dispatch and Red Rocket that benefit the most from being acclaimed (if not awarded) at Cannes.

With all that in mind, here are the winners!

Official awards

In Competition

The following awards were presented for films shown In Competition:

  • Palme d’Or: Titane by Julia Ducournau
  • Grand Prix:
    • A Hero by Asghar Farhadi
    • Compartment No. 6 by Juho Kuosmanen
  • Jury Prize:
    • Ahed’s Knee by Nadav Lapid
    • Memoria by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
  • Best Director: Leos Carax for Annette
  • Best Actress: Renate Reinsve for The Worst Person in the World
  • Best Actor: Caleb Landry Jones for Nitram
  • Best Screenplay: Ryusuke Hamaguchi & Takamasa Oe for Drive My Car

Un Certain Regard

  • Un Certain Regard Award: Unclenching the Fists by Kira Kovalenko
  • Un Certain Regard Jury Prize: Great Freedom by Sebastian Meise
  • Un Certain Regard Ensemble Prize: Bonne mère by Hafsia Herzi
  • Un Certain Regard Prize of Courage: La Civil by Teodora Mihai
  • Un Certain Regard Prize of Originality: Lamb by Valdimar Jóhannsson
  • Un Certain Regard Special Mention: Prayers for the Stolen by Tatiana Huezo

Golden Camera

  • Caméra d’Or: Murina by Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović

Short Films

  • Short Film Palme d’Or: All the Crows in the World by Tang Yi
  • Special Mention: August Sky by Jasmin Tenucci

Cinéfondation

  • First Prize: The Salamander Child by Théo Degen
  • Second Prize: Cicada by Yoon Daewoen
  • Third Prize:
    • Love Stories on the Move by Carina-Gabriela Daşoveanu
    • Cantareira by Rodrigo Ribeyro

Honorary Palme d’Or

  • Honorary Palme d’Or: Jodie Foster and Marco Bellocchio

Independent awards

FIPRESCI Prizes

  • In Competition: Drive My Car by Ryusuke Hamaguchi
  • Un Certain Regard: Playground by Laura Wandel
  • Parallel section: Feathers by Omar El Zohairy (International Critics’ Week)

Ecumenical Prize

  • Prize of the Ecumenical Jury: Drive My Car by Ryusuke Hamaguchi
  • Special Mention: Compartment No. 6 by Juho Kuosmanen

International Critics’ Week

  • Nespresso Grand Prize: Feathers by Omar El Zohairy
  • Leitz Cine Discovery Prize for Short Film: Lili Alone by Zou Jing
  • Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award: Sandra Melissa Torres for Amparo

Directors’ Fortnight

  • Europa Cinemas Label Award for Best European Film: A Chiara by Jonas Carpignano
  • SACD Award for Best French-language Film: Magnetic Beats by Vincent Maël Cardona
  • Carrosse d’Or: Frederick Wiseman

L’Œil d’or

  • L’Œil d’or: A Night of Knowing Nothing by Payal Kapadia

Queer Palm

  • Queer Palm Award: The Divide by Catherine Corsini

Prix François Chalais

  • François Chalais Prize: A Hero by Asghar Farhadi
  • Special Mention: Freda by Gessica Généus

Cannes Soundtrack Award

  • Cannes Soundtrack Award:
    • Ron Mael & Russell Mael for Annette
    • Rone for Paris, 13th District

Palm Dog

  • Palm Dog Award: Rosie, Dora and Snowbear for The Souvenir Part II

Trophée Chopard

  • Chopard Trophy: Jessie Buckley and Kingsley Ben-Adir

Here’s The Trailer for Blue Bayou!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Earlier this week, Blue Bayou made quite a splash at the Cannes Film Festival, with many critics predicting that it might not only be a contender for the Palme d’Or but also an Oscar contender as well.

We’ll find out about the Palme d’Or tomorrow. For now, though, check out the trailer!

Film Review: The Woman In The Window (dir by Joe Wright)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Joe Wright’s The Woman In The Window is a film that was kicked around a bit before it was eventually released.

Based on the best-selling novel by A.J. Finn, The Woman In The Window was filmed in 2018 and was originally set to be released in October of 2019.  At the time, there were many who predicted that this would be the film for which Amy Adams would finally win an Oscar.  However, after a few poor test screenings, the release of Woman In The Window was pushed back.  The film’s producer, the now-infamous Scott Rudin, reportedly brought in Tony Gilory to re-shoot a few scenes.  The film was finally set to be released in May of 2020 and, needless to say, it was no longer expected to be an Oscar contender.  Then, the pandemic hit and, like so many movies, The Woman In The Window was left in limbo.  With its theatrical release canceled, the film was eventually purchased by Netflix.  Netflix finally released it in May of this year.  With all of the delays and the bad buzz, the critics had plenty of time to sharpen their knives and I don’t think anyone was surprised when the film got scathing reviews.

Though the film was completed long before the lockdowns, The Woman In The Window does feel like a COVID thriller.  Anna Fox (played by Amy Adams) is a child psychologist who is afraid to leave her Manhattan brownstone.  She has agoraphobia, the result of a personal trauma.  She’s not only scared to leave the safety of her apartment but she’s also terrified of anyone else getting inside.  She spends her days spying on the neighbors, drinking wine, and watching old movies.  Of course, that’s also what many people in the real world spent most of the past year doing.  As I watched Anna freak out over some trick or treaters throwing eggs at her door, I was reminded of my neighbor who, a few months ago, nearly had a panic attack because she saw someone walking past her house without a mask.  One could argue that the world itself has become agoraphobic.

Despite her housebound status, Anna does still have a few contacts with the outside world.  For instance, a psychiatrist (played by Tracy Letts, who also wrote the script) comes by every weekend.  She has a tenant named David (Wyatt Russell) who lives in her basement.  She regularly has conversations with her husband and her daughter, who she says are both living in another state.  And eventually, she meets Ethan (Fred Hechinger), the 15 year-old who has just moved in across the street.  When Anna thinks that she’s witnessed Ethan’s father (Gary Oldman) murdering his mother (Julianne Moore), Anna calls the cops.  However, when a totally different woman (Jennifer Jason Leigh) shows up and claims to be Ethan’s mother, Anna is forced to try to solve the mystery herself.

The Woman In The Window is a disjointed and rather messy film but I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t enjoy it.  The novel (which I also greatly enjoyed) was told entirely from Anna’s point of view, which means that we saw everything through the eyes of a sometimes unreliable narrator.  The novel did such a good job of putting us inside of Anna’s head that it didn’t matter that the story itself was full of improbable coincidences.  Director Joe Wright tries to recreate the novel’s uneasiness through garish lighting, crooked camera angles, and abrupt jump cuts.  Sometimes, it’s effective (as when Anna tries to leave her apartment in the rain, just to pass out after having a panic attack) and other times, the technique feels a bit too obvious.  And then there’s other scenes — like when Anna suddenly sees an overturned car in the middle of her living room — where it becomes brilliantly bizarre.  It’s in those scenes, in which the film carefully balances on the line between the surreal and the silly, that Wright seems to be most comfortable as a director.  Much as he did with Anna Karenina, Wright fills The Woman In The Window with scenes that suggest that, on some level, the characters are aware that they’re just characters in a B-melodrama.

Indeed, despite being directed by a great filmmaker and featuring a cast of award-winning actors, The Woman In The Window is a B-movie and, when taken on those terms, it’s an entertaining melodrama.  Interestingly enough, it actually helps that almost everyone in the film has either been miscast or is too obvious a choice for their role.  Gary Oldman is such an on-the-nose choice to play a tyrannical authority figure that it actually makes sense that a film buff like Anna would automatically assume the worst about him.  Julianne Moore has even less screen time than Oldman but she makes the most of it, playing yet another one of her talkative characters who doesn’t appear to have the ability to filter her thoughts.  It’s the type of role that Moore specializes in and one that she could probably play in her sleep but she and Adams establish a good rapport and the scene that they share is one of the best in the film.  Speaking of which, Amy Adams is so incredibly miscast as Anna that you actually find yourself rooting for her to somehow bring the character to life.  Amy Adams is one of the few performers who can make being cheerful compelling so it seems like a bit of a waste to cast her as a self-destructive agoraphobe who can’t leave her apartment  And yet, much as in Hillbilly Elegy where she was similarly miscast, Adams seems to be trying so hard to make her casting work that you appreciate the effort, even if she doesn’t quite succeed.  She’s just so likable that you sympathize with her, even if she isn’t quite right for the role.

(Myself, I pictured Naomi Watts in the role when I read the book.)

As a film, The Woman In The Window shares the book’s flaws.  The plot is a bit too heavy on coincidences and we’re asked to believe that Anna, who can’t leave her house without having a panic attack and who is terrified of someone getting into her house without her knowledge, would also invite Ethan to visit her and allow David to live in her basement.  As well, it’s hard to watch the movie without wondering which scenes were reshot by Tony Gilroy.  (The final scene especially feels out-of-place with what came before it, leading me to suspect that it may have been added in response to those negative test screenings.)  But, while the film’s defects are obvious, I still enjoyed it.  It may be flawed but it’s hardly the disaster that some have made it out to be.

The Woman in the Window

Lifetime Film Review: A Date With Danger (dir by Cat Hostick)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

After a messy divorce, Nikki (Lara Jean Chorostecki) is ready for a new beginning! She does what every recently divorced woman in a Lifetime film does ….. she moves to a small town, gets a job in a trendy boutique, and starts dating a handsome man.

At first, it seems like everything’s perfect. The boutique’s owner, Liz (Ispita Paul), is not only Nikki’s boss but soon becomes her best friend and mentor as well. Nikki’s teenager daughter, Brooke (Jaida Grace), befriends Liz’s daughter, Anna (Kayla Hutton). While it is true that Liz’s relationship with her ex-husband, Dan (Matt Wells), is a volatile one, that just gives Liz and Nikki something to bond over. Finally, there’s Gavin (Jamie Spilchuk). Nikki thinks that Gavin is just the perfect man, even though Liz has her doubtts.

Then, one day, Liz vanishes. The police suspect that Dan could be involved but, when they discover that Liz has rewritten her will to leave the boutique to Nikki, they start to suspect that Nikki could somehow be involved as well. Dan seems like the obvious culprit but as Nikki starts to investigate the disappearance on her own, she discovers that everything is not how it seems….

A Date With Danger is a pretty typical Lifetime film. If you’ve ever seen a Lifetime film before, you know who kidnapped Liz and you can probably guess why. Ordinarily, the fact that Lifetime films are kind of predictable is actually one of their strengths. These are movies that you watch so you can yell back at the TV and wonder in amazement whether or not any of the characters have actually watched a movie before. That said, it was hard not to feel that A Date With Danger would have benefitted from a few more characters. When there’s only three suspects and one of them is eliminated by virtue of being the film’s main character, it’s fairly easy to guess who is going to turn out to be the guilty party. A Date With Danger even acknowledges this fact by revealing the identity of Liz’s kidnapper rather early on.

The title’s a bit misleading, as Nikki does go on a date but it’s hardly the center of the film and one never really gets the feeling that she’s in any danger during the date. That said, the title is a good example of Lifetime showmanship. Danger is a word that will always catch your attention. As well, it brings to mind the classic Mother, May I Sleep With Danger? Date With Danger, unfortunately, never reaches the heights of that classic exercise in over the top melodrama and that’s a shame. Indeed, Date With Danger is surprisingly subdued for a Lifetime film. It’s possible, of course, that I’ve been spoiled by all of the recent “Wrong” films as I spent most of Date With Danger wondering when Vivica A. Fox was going to show up and say, “Looks like you went on the wrong date with danger.”

A Date With Danger is a bit too low-key for its own good, never quite embracing the melodrama with the enthusiasm that people like me have come to expect from a Lifetime film. That said, the small town setting looked really nice and Jamie Spilchuk was well-cast as the enigmatic Gavin. Even if it wasn’t particularly memorable by Lifetime standards, A Date With Danger did its job efficiently.

Film Review: Romeo & Juliet (dir by Simon Godwin)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s a shame, really.

Romeo & Juliet, which as you can probably guess is a cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic play about the doomed lovers and the warring families, is one of the best films that I’ve seen this year.  Under normal circumstances, I would probably have it listed as the 2nd best film of the year so far, right underneath The Father.  Unfortunately, Romeo & Juliet did not receive a theatrical release.  Instead, in the United States, it was aired on PBS.  Though it was submitted for Emmy consideration, it was unforgivably snubbed when the nominations were announced earlier today.

And that’s a shame because this film adaptation of Romeo & Juliet is one of the best that I’ve seen, one that celebrates the story’s theatrical origins while also working as a wonderful display of cinematic artistry.

The production was filmed over 17 days at London’s Royal National Theater.  Because it was filmed at the height of the Coronavirus pandemic, there’s no audience.  Instead, the film opens with a small company of actors, all dressed in modern clothing, walking through the theater.  Director Simon Godwin emphasizes the emptiness of the theater and the almost eerie silence as the actors take their seats around a table and start to recite their lines.  We immediately recognize some members of the cast.  Jessie Buckley plays Juliet while Josh O’Connor plays the role of Romeo.  Adrian Lester is cast as the Prince while Tasmin Grieg plays Lady Capulet.  As the actors recite their lines, they stand up and start to move around the theater and, before our eyes, they transform from being actors to being the characters from Shakespeare’s play.  Suddenly, we’re no longer watching Jessie Buckley and Josh O’Connor.  Instead, we’re watching Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet.

As the action moves to the stage, Simon Godwin continues to emphasize the eerie emptiness of the theater and the desolate look of the play’s ornate but still rather simple sets.  Even with the presence of the actors, the streets of Verona still seem as deserted as the streets of London and every other major city were during the worst days of the pandemic.  Watching the story unfold, it’s hard not to feel that Romeo and Juliet aren’t just rebelling against their warring families but they’re also rebelling against the sense of hopelessness that afflicted so many people in 2020.  Romeo and Juliet’s refusal to surrender their love takes on an extra poignancy when filmed against the backdrop of the pandemic.  At a time when many people were saying that civilization was collapsing and the world was on the verge of ending, Romeo and Juliet refuse to surrender their love.  If their world is going to end, it’s going to end on their terms.

As opposed to other cinematic adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, this version of Romeo and Juliet does not attempt to hide its theatrical origins.  Instead, it embraces them, right down to the obviously fake moon that is lowered from the rafters whenever a scene takes place at night.  And yet, the actors give such good performances and Simon Godwin directs with such confidence and skill that the viewer still gets wrapped up in the story.  Like all good works of theater, Romeo & Juliet succeeded in convincing the viewer of two contradictory things, that they’re both watching a production in a London theater and that they’re watching the Capulets and the Montagues as they walk through the deserted streets of Verona.  This production of Romeo & Juliet is one that celebrate both the power of the stage and the power of cinema.  Perhaps most importantly, it celebrates the power of Shakespeare’s classic tale, with the mix of the actor’s modern costuming and Shakespeare’s Elizabethan language reminding us that great art is universal and timeless.

Jessie Buckley and Josh O’Connor both give compelling performances as the film’s doomed lovers, with Buckley bringing a good deal of inner strength to the role of Juliet while O’Connor wisely underplays the scenes that would tempt a lesser Romeo to go overboard.  As opposed to what we often see in lesser productions of this play, Buckley’s Juliet is never foolishly naïve and O’Connor’s Romeo never surrenders to shrill self-pity.  Instead, they’re two lovers who know what they’re getting into but who are still willing to take the risk, even at the most bleak of times.  When Buckley and O’Connor first show up in the film, walking through that empty theater, they look like themselves, two talented performers in their early 30s.  But, as they perform their roles, they transform before our eyes into Romeo and Juliet and it’s thrilling to watch.

One has to applaud the National Theatre for filming this production.  One also has to applaud PBS for airing it in the States.  But still, how I wish Romeo & Juliet had been given a theatrical release or, at the very least, a Netflix or Prime release!  This is a production that I wish more people had seen, a great work of theater, film, and art.

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Here’s The Trailer for Memoria!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tilda Swinton has several films coming out this year. Here’s the trailer for one of them!

In Memoria, Swinton plays a Scottish woman who has some strange sensory experiences while in the jungles of Colombia. The trailer does a very good job of keeping things vague. The title, itself, refers to memory so I’m going to guess that …. well, I’m not going to guess anything. It’s an intriguing trailer and I look forward to watching the film and discovering its secrets for myself.

Memoria will be premiering the Cannes Film Festival on the 15th.

Here’s The Trailer For Val!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

This is one documentary that I’m truly looking forward to seeing. Val Kilmer is an intriguing figure, about who much has been written. His talent is legendary. So is his reputation for being a bit …. well, I guess eccentric would be a good way to put it.

I’m looking forward to hearing Val’s side of the story.

Here’s the trailer!

Lisa Reviews A Palme d’Or Winner: The Son’s Room (dir by Nanni Moretti)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

With the 2021 Cannes Film Festival underway in France, I thought this would be a good opportunity to spend the next few days looking at some of the films that have won the Palme d’Or in the past.  As of this writing, 100 films have won either the Palme d’Or or an earlier version of the award like the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film.  Some of those films — like Parasite, The Tree of Life, The Piano, Pulp Fiction — went on to American box office success and Oscar renown.  Others, like 2001’s The Son’s Room, may have been snubbed by the Oscars but they went on to great success in their home country.  The Son’s Room, for instance, won Italy’s David Di Donatello award for the best film of 2001.

The Son’s Room is a film about a family trying to deal with an unimaginable tragedy.  Andrea (Giuseppe Sanfelice) is the 17 year-old son of therapist Giovanni (Nanni Moretti, who also directed) and Paola (Laura Morante).  Andrea, it is quickly  established, is an almost ideal teenager.  He doesn’t resent his parents.  He doesn’t get into any sort of major trouble, beyond stealing a valuable fossil as a part of a prank that goes wrong.  His parents know that he occasionally gets high but they also understand that it’s no big deal.  It’s just a part of being a teenager.

One day, when Giovanni and Andrea have made plans to go jogging, Giovanni gets a call from a patient who has received some troubling news and who needs to see him immediately.  Giovanni has to cancel their plans.  Andrea instead goes diving with a friend and, in a freak accident, drowns.  Giovanni, Paola, and and their daughter Irene (Jasmine Trinca) are left to mourn and to try to find some sort of meaning in Andrea’s death.

The Son’s Room is hardly the first film to be made about the untimely death of a family member.  In 1980, Ordinary People won the Oscar for Best Picture for telling a story about a similarly upper class family trying to come to emotional teams with the loss of a brother and a son.  What sets The Son’s Room apart from Ordinary People and other similar films is what doesn’t happen.  As opposed to what happens in so many other films about families dealing with loss, the death of Andrea does not reveal that his family was secretly dysfunctional.  His family doesn’t discover that Andrea was deeply depressed or that his death wasn’t a random accident.  Instead, the point of the film is that, even though the family was strong and even though Andrea was happy and had everything to look forward to it, he still died because sometimes, happy people die in freak accidents.  It’s not just dysfunctional families that suffer.  Even  a strong family struggles to deal with grief.

The film follows the family through the stages of grief.  At first, the family members fixate on imagining what life would be like if Andrea hadn’t gone swimming that day.  They resent Giovanni’s patient, even though the patient couldn’t have known what was going to happen.  They try to find someone to blame for Andrea drowning, just to discover that everyone did everything that they were supposed to do.  Andrea’s death was random, as death so often is.  Then, they’re contacted by a casual acquaintance of Giovanni, a girl named Arianna (Sofia Vigilar) and they’re finally given a chance to find some sort of meaning in what happened.

The Son’s Room is a deeply affecting movie, one that works because it largely eschews the type of melodrama that we’ve come to expect from films like this.  The film’s refusal to idealize, blame, or demonize any of its characters makes it a film to which anyone can relate.  It’s an honest look at grief but it’s also a film that earns the right to suggest that there’s no need to feel guilty about eventually moving on from sadness.  It’s a film that acknowledges that life can be random and scary but it can be pretty wonderful as well.

It’s an effective film, one that was reportedly a popular winner at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, where its competition included Shrek, The Man Who Wasn’t There, The Piano Teacher, and Mulholland Drive.  (Fear not, Mulholland Drive still won the directing award for David Lynch.)  20 years after it was initially released, The Son’s Room holds up well as a look at both grief and the love of a strong family.

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Lisa Reviews a Palme d’Or Winner: Scarecrow (dir by Jerry Schatzberg)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

With the 2021 Cannes Film Festival underway in France, I thought this would be a good opportunity to spend the next few days looking at some of the films that have won the Palme d’Or in the past.  As of this writing, 100 films have won either the Palme d’Or or an earlier version of the award like the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film.  Some of those films — like Parasite, The Tree of Life, The Piano, Pulp Fiction — went on to huge box office success and Oscar renown.  Others, like 1973’s Scarecrow, did not.

Scarecrow is an example of a type of film that was very popular in the 70s.  It’s a road film, one in which two or more people take a journey across the country and discover something about themselves and, depending upon how ambitious the film was, perhaps something about America as well.  Scarecrow centers on two drifters, who just happen to meet on a dusty road while they’re trying to hitch a ride.  Max (Gene Hackman, fresh off of winning an Oscar for The French Connection) is an ex-convict with a bad temper and a huge chip on his shoulder.  Lion (a young Al Pacino, fresh off of The Godfather) is an ex-sailor who views the world with optimism and who appears to be sweet-natured but simple-minded.  To be honest, it’s a little bit hard to believe that the perpetually resentful Max and the always hopeful Lion would ever become friends but they do.  They travel around the country, talking about their dreams of opening a car wash together.  They meet up with ex-girlfriends and ex-wives.  Eventually, they even end up in a prison farm together, where Lion, temporarily estranged from Max, is taken advantage of by a sadistic prisoner named Riley (Richard Lynch).

Scarecrow is an episodic film, one that moves at its own deliberate pace.  (If that sounds like a polite way of saying that the film is slow-moving …. well, it is.)  Director Jerry Schatzberg was a photographer-turned-director and, as a result, there’s several striking shots of Max and Lion standing against the countryside, waiting for someone to pick them up and give them a ride.  Whenever Max and Lion end up in a bar, the scene is always lit perfectly.  At the same time, Schatzberg also attempts to give the film a spontaneous, naturalistic feel by letting scenes run longer than one would normally expect.  There’s several scenes of Hackman and Pacino just talking while walking down a country road or a city street.  On the one hand, you have to appreciate Schatzberg’s attempt to convince us that Max and Lion are just two guys with big dreams, as opposed to two Oscar-nominated actors pretending to be societal drop-outs.  On the other hand, Schatzberg’s approach also leads to an interminably long scene of Gene Hackman eating a piece of chicken and if you think that Gene Hackman was the type of actor who wasn’t going to act the Hell out of gnawing on and gesturing with a chicken bone, you obviously haven’t seen many Gene Hackman films.

The main appeal of the film, for most people, will probably be to see Gene Hackman and Al Pacino, two of the top actors of the 70s, acting opposite of each other.  Reportedly, both Hackman and Pacino went full method for the film and spent their prep time on the streets of San Francisco, begging for spare change.  The end result is a mixed bag.  There are a few scenes — like when they first meet or when they’re in prison — in which Hackman and Pacino are believable in their roles and you buy them as two lost souls who were lucky enough to find each other.  There are other scenes where they both seem to be competing to see who can chew up the most scenery.   Sometimes, Pacino and Hackman are compelling acting opposite each other.  Other times, it feels like we’re just watching an Actors’ Studio improv class that someone happened to film.  Too often, Hackman and Pacino seem to be so occupied with showing off their technique that the film’s reality seems to get lost under all of the method showiness.  In the end, neither one of the film’s stars makes as much of an impression as Richard Lynch, who is genuinely frightening in his small but key role.

Scarecrow is an uneven film, one that is occasionally effective but also a bit too studied for its own good.  It wears it influences — Of Mice and Men, Midnight Cowboy, Five Easy Pieces — on its sleeve but it also fails to exceed or match any of those previous works.  That said, the film does have its fans.  (Schatzberg has been working on a sequel for a while.)  Certainly, the 1973 Cannes Jury (headed by none other than Ingrid Bergman) liked it enough to give it the Palme.

Scarecrow 2