FRANCE: FILMS "LA BALIA" AND "GHOST DOG" COMPETE FOR GOLDEN PALM FILM AWARD AT CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

Record ID: 388346

  • Title: FRANCE: FILMS "LA BALIA" AND "GHOST DOG" COMPETE FOR GOLDEN PALM FILM AWARD AT CANNES FILM FESTIVAL
  • Date: 22nd May 1999
  • Summary: CANNES, FRANCE [MAY 19, 1999] [REUTERS) JAMUSCH AND CAST ARRIVING AT NEWS CONFERENCE [SOUNDBITE] [English] FOREST WHITAKER SAYING: "I think I wanted to be a simple character that only did what was necessary and walk with a certain degree of grace and by doing that I guess I meditated a lot and the martial arts stuff I would do to keep my mind in the right set. And it jus
  • Embargoed: 6th June 1999 13:00
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  • Location: CANNES, FRANCE
  • Country: France
  • Reuters ID: LVA1EVSFCB63GEDAW2O4WGGVUVC8
  • Story Text: After some agonisingly slow and obscure films, the Cannes film festival gained pace and lyricism on Wednesday with a top U.S.independent and a veteran Italian offering.
    With Jim Jarmusch's "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai"
    and Marco Bellochio's "The Wet-Nurse" both competing for the Golden Palm, the jury will have tough choices.
    Jarmusch's violent but funny film tells the story of a hitman (Forest Whitaker) who lives by the samurai code in a shack on a rooftop, where he meditates and practices twirling his gun and slicing the air with his sword.
    Ghost Dog communicates with his Mafia employers by carrier pigeons, which the camera captures winging through city skies.
    The mafiosi, who decide to kill him, are cartoon-watching pea-brains whose boss dances and sings to hip-hop.
    Scenes of Whitaker prowling through the night with his hi-tech weapons alternate with texts from the samurai bible.
    Ghost Dog knocks off all the Mafia figures except one, Louie, whom he considers his master.As a samurai, he cannot kill Louie, who gets him instead at the end.
    A brilliant rap-goes-oriental score by hip-hoppers RZA parallels the themes of ancient tradition and contemporary ills.
    Jim Jarmusch said: "I was very proud of the music.Sound is half the picture.I hate film music that tells you how to feel about the story at a certain time," Jarmusch said.
    Enthusiastic applause and cries of "Bravo" at the end of the screening suggested Jarmusch's work was among the most popular of the 12-day festival so far.The awards will be announced on Sunday.
    Italy's Bellochio, best known for his political films of the 1960s, set his classical, emotional film in early 20th-century Italy beset by violent social change.
    Upper-class Professor Mori (Fabrizio Bentivoglio) and his young wife Vittoria (Valeria Bruno-Tedeschi) see their harmonious existence upset by the birth of their child.
    The baby does not accept his mother's milk, so Mori goes to the countryside for a wet-nurse, choosing a peasant, Annetta.
    Vittoria is struck by Annetta's instinctive ability to give unreserved love, becomes depressed and abruptly leaves.
    Annetta's own baby, fathered by a man imprisoned for sedition, is hidden in a sweat-shop nearby as opponents of the government demonstrate and put up posters in the streets below.
    The red flags and discourse on poverty, exploitation and misery are in the background.Bellochio said:
    "Compared to the films of the 1960s and 1970s, there's no longer the chance to do the same thing.The great political utopias didn't work." Bellochio added: "Politicians today don't want to change the world, they just want to do the best they can.
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