The last 30 winners of Cannes' Palme d'Or: Ranked
2017 Cannes Film Festival is about to finish and if nobody questions its importance as the biggest Film Festival in the world, and the title of the Palme d'Or as the biggest filmic achievement (don't be naïve, Oscars are about the show-business, never about the art), there are still certain differences among those films that have received this huge honor. So, let's rank the last 30 winners:
30. Lung Boonmee Raleuk Chat
(Uncle Boonmee who Can Recall his Past Lives, Dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand, 2010)
If Film Festivals are mocked and considered pretentious artsy snob gatherings it's because from time to time they award something as ridiculous as this film that is pure absurdism overlapped: from the total lack of coherence in its screenplay to the terrible visual effects to the dreadful monkey costume to the scene where a trout makes oral sex to a princess. In the best case is laughable, in the worst one, pitiful.
29. Ba Wang Bie Ji
(Farewell my Concubine, Dir. Kaige Chein, China, 1993)
Beautiful cinematography and art direction, but if this tale of two male opera singers who fall in love could have been a great study of sexual and gender identities, it is, instead, an unbearable show of maximalism that tries too hard to be a history lesson with a melodrama that presents hysterical characters that are always over the top in their emotions, preventing any real identification with them.
28. Wild at Heart
(Dir. David Lynch, United States, 1990)
Let's get this straight, David Lynch deserves a lot of Palms, but the fact that he got it from this film is very questionable. This is the time when he got "orinic" wrong and was "pretentious" instead, it never really achieves to be either dark or thrilling, the premise of the story is very Hollywood-esque, so when he tries to be himself it just looks like a total mess of styles. And of course it has Nicolas Cage, trying to be a erotic bad-boy, not even Lynch can make us buy that.
27. Kis Uykusu
(Winter Sleep, Dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey, 2014)
Rather than a film, this one is a three hours intellectual dissertation. The characters never stop talking, so whatever we learn from the characters it's because of what they tell instead of about what they do, so it's more like attending a lecture (a long and boring one) than really seeing a connection between story and images, that could be very beautiful but in the end are just the background for all the talking that is done.
26, The wind that shakes the barley
(Dir. Ken Loach, Ireland, 2006)
Loach got his first Palme for this film about Irish independence. Cillian Murphy is great as a doctor who is inspired to join the movement, and the cinematography that shows rural Ireland is beautiful. But it has two things against it: at times gets too historic, almost like a history class, and it's very formal and heroic in a traditional way, so it never truly breaks new ground. Certainly not a masterpiece, but interesting enough.
25. Unagi
(The Eel, Dir. Shohei Imamura, Japan, 1997)
The story of a man who tries to reform his life after spending years in prison for murdering his wife and her lover goes from the impact of the first scenes to an intense soap opera to an very weak ending. The first part of the film is very fine, engaging and the premise of this man who keeps an eel as his only friend was promising, but as it advances, it gets hysterical and melodramatic, so the charm is broken and we are left with an average film.
24. Fahrenheit 9/11
(Dir. Michael Moore, United States, 2004)
The second documentary film to win the Palme ever felt much more like a political statement than a truly deserved prize. Even if it's not a bad documentary, it is really far from the greatness of his previous effort, Bowling for Columbine. It has great moments and really sharp critiques and no one can deny the relevance of it when it was released, but in a year when Oldboy was relegated to the Grand Prix du Jury, it was a total letdown.
23. Dheepan
(Dir. Jacques Audiard, France, 2015)
Audiard was merciless in his two previous films, and the premise of a tamil immigrant fake family migrating to France sounded really promising, and for more than half the movie it constructs fascinating characters and situations that build up a great amount of tension, but it comes a moment where it all goes out of the hands of the director and we end up with an implausible ending that is a very bad action movie and all the previous effort shatters.
22. La stanza del figlio
(The Son's Room, Dir. Nanni Moretti, Italy, 2001)
The best achievement of Moretti in this film is presenting grievance in the truest way possible, getting rid of melodrama and sentimentalism and just facing human desolation as a moment in life. It is a small film, but the director know how to guide the characters through hurtful ground with full humanity. But said that, it is also a film that hasn't really aged well, with not that many people remembering it and few chances or really marking a turning point in cinema.
21. Den Goda Viljan
(The Best Intentions, Dir. Bille August, Sweden, 1992)
August won his second Palm with a screenplay by Ingmar Bergman about his parents. It is a beautiful film, that captivates many of the complications of romance and marriage. But it runs for over three hours and tries to cover so many aspects and so many years in the life of the main couple that it ends up being a film completely different than the one who started, and at one point, it will get you exhausted of all the drama.
20. L'enfant
(The Child, Dir. Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Belgium, 2005)
With a second Palm under their belt, the Dardenne brothers showed that they were at the forefront of social realism. Showing this film in high schools could be the best method to prevent unplanned teen parenthood, but even with that message, we develop certain love-hate with the main couple thanks to the genius scriptwriting of the Belgian filmmakers. If something prevents it from being truly outstanding, is that it lacks any subtleness that other works of them have.
19. I, Daniel Blake
(Dir. Ken Loach, United Kingdom, 2016)
A sharp critique on how institutions and bureaucracy are designed to break the individual being and to perpetuate social structures won Ken Loach his second Palme, (but the first one that feels fully deserved). The screenplay is brilliant, subtle but harsh, and the characters are truly lovable, but even with less than a year after its victory it already feels a bit grey and starts to look pretty forgettable.
18. Entre les murs
(The Class, Dir. Laurent Cantet, France, 2008)
After 22 years, it was the film that gained the greatest honor of the Festival back to a French filmmaker. This film is great in being a microcosmos of the new multicultural European society and the challenges that it faces to educate such a diverse range of young people. It goes away from the long (and boring) tradition of the heroic teacher that enlightens his students, and instead, present a very human range of characters that challenge us constantly.
17. Mia Aioniotita Kai Mia Mera
(Eternity and a Day, Dir. Theo Angelopoulos, Greece, 1998)
With just hearing the premise of a dying poet who befriends an immigrant kid and convinces him to find words that he can buy him, we get an idea of the poetry that this film contains. Narrative and visually stunning, Angelopoulos excels at giving us beautiful images and moments to treasure, even at the expense of being too ornate at times. Poetry in all the possible senses, but just like poetry in its writing form, this film could struggle to be loved and enjoyed by everyone.
16. Ta'm e Guilass
(A taste of Cherry, Dir. Abbas Kiarostami, Iran, 1997)
It could have won ex-aqueo with Unagi, but it's easy to say that Kiarostami had the most deserving film on that year. Dark and dense, Ta'm e Guilass is a deep film that follows a man that has decided to commit suicide, but first needs to find somebody who will bury him. It's a grave existential dissertation that throws important philosophical questions about the meaning of life. Of course, a film like this can suffocate more than one, but at the end, it assures us that it's only a film. Right?
15. Rosetta
(Dir. Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Belgium, 1999)
It's a little gem of minimalism that through the life of a single girl, exposes how the working class is condemned to stay in its misery. The Dardenne brothers were powerful in their ultra realist tale and they guide an outstanding Émilie Dequenne to the abyss of reality that keep hitting the character in her face for more than she tries to get a job that will secure her a decent life. Whenever you remember this film, you'll be reminded of how good it is; the problem is that you don't always remember it.
14. Barton Fink
(Dir. Joel Coen, United States, 1991)
The Coen Brothers have showed us that they can be very commercial, but with Barton Fink they also showed us that they could be very artsy. This film is a dark spiral into the mind of a screenwriter that has lost inspiration after signing a contract with a big studio, but the sardonic view of the Coens was very present there, and we end up with a very obscure comedy that enchants as much as it terrifies. But it is still no Fargo or No Country for all Man.
13. Underground
(Dir. Emir Kusturica, Yugoslavia, 1995)
The unique Kusturica style in full display that got him a second Palme. It's political, it's delirious, it's maximalist, it's fun, it's touching. A slavic Fellinian film (with that beautiful ending that borrows so much from 8 1/2), Underground makes you feel alive and thrilled while you embark on an insane journey surrounded by characters that very well could be the troupe of a circus, and all the elements, the aesthetics, the music work in favor of the film. Of course, some people think it's too much of everything.
12. The Pianist
(Dir. Roman Polanski, United Kingdom, 2002)
So many films have been made around the Holocaust, but still, The Pianist feels like one of the definitive ones. Polanski has the sensibility to tell a personal story and at the same time show the full horrors of one of the worst recent historic events. We can feel the pain and the struggle, but it's safe to say that is a film that is beautiful because it is charged with humanism and respect. Adrien Brody offers a powerful performance that grab us for the entire two hours and a half.
11. The Piano
(Dir. Jane Campion, New Zealand, 1993)
Up to this day, no other film directed by a woman has won the Palme, and even then, the jury felt the necessity to make her share the prize with the unbearable Farewell My Concubine. Disregarding gender politics, The Piano is outstanding in its own right, beautifully filmed, subtle in its intonation, strikingly erotic, and powerfully touching. Campion was brilliant directing her cast, Holly Hunter as a mute pianist is exquisite.
10. Das Weisse Band
(The White Ribbon, Dir. Michael Haneke, Germany, 2009)
The film that finally showed the full maturity in the style of Haneke and the one that made him the master of psychological violence. With one of the most beautiful works of cinematography contrasting a story that creeps you out with its restrained and subtle horrors. A harsh film that dives in the childhood of the people who went to became the nazis, and tell is how a rotten society is the root of the worst possible evil acts. A beautiful scary masterpiece.
9. 4 Luni, 3 Saptamini si 2 Zile
(4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Dir. Cristian Mungiu, Romania, 2007)
Two friends that are trying to get an illegal abortion for one of them. The plot is suggestive enough, but the way that Mungiu takes to tell the story is just brilliant, he goes for the bleakest authenticity (that almost makes us feel it is occurring in live time) to confront our morals and to show how a patriarchal repressive society chokes young women. It's suffocating and enraging, but also one of the truest portrays of sorority ever filmed.
8. Elephant
(Dir. Gus Van Sant, United States, 2003)
Inspired by the mass shooting in a school in Columbine, Gus Van Sant offers a very different vision to what was ever done in movies about killers. He follows the students, show their life, their moments, what they experience in their every day life. It's a subtle exploration of a broken generation that can get access to guns very easily. Van Sant deals with the killers in the same way he deals with the victims and the witnesses, and it's this voyeuristic gaze that makes us question a lot about our society.
7. Sex, Lies and Videotapes
(Dir. Steven Soderbergh, United States, 1989)
Most of the directors who won the Palme forged a solid career before getting the masterpiece that would get them the top honor of the Festival, but at 26 years old, Steven Soderbergh became the youngest receiver of the award with his opera prima about the intimate life of four people in their thirties, and slowly discovering their passions, their lies and their repressed desires. It's funny, it's sexy, it's smart, and it's very personal; a genius screenplay that is a sharp contrast with... ehm... Magic Mike.
6. La Vie d'Adèle
(Blue is the Warmest Color, Dir. Abdellatif Kechiche, France, 2013)
It shocked a lot of people, and the three hours and long explicit sex scenes were the lesser reason; in this coming of age drama following several years in the life of a teenager and her relationship with another woman, from her initial confusion to the intense conflicts that they have to endure, we can witness one of the truest depictions of love, on how it will shake your world and how it will be, at the same time, the best and the worst thing that will happen to you. If the story is great, the visuals and the acting elevate it to masterpiece.
5. Secrets and Lies
(Dir. Mike Leigh, United Kingdom, 1996)
A full lecture on how to write a screenplay. Leigh constructs his characters and situations in a meticulous way that we end up being participants rather than spectators in this bittersweet tale of a woman looking for her birth mother after her adoptive parents die. It works at a personal level and at a social level, making a picture of British society and giving a hard look on themes like race and class, but above all, what means to be a family.
4. The Tree of Life
(Dir. Terrence Malick, United States, 2011)
Possibly one of the most aesthetically beautiful films to ever been made, the cinematography in The Tree of Life is a constant succession of pure visual perfection; but beyond that, it's the film that captures how small and how immense is every single individual that has ever existed in this universe by following just a single one of them. It breaks conventional narrative in favor of something bigger and riskier: picture the miracle that is life.
3. Dancer in the Dark
(Dir. Lars Von Trier, Denmark, 2000)
Dancer in the Dark is striking in every possible way. From the deconstruction that Von Trier makes of the musical genre, to the outstanding performance of Björk, to the brilliant music that she composed to score brilliant musical scenes, to one of the most brutal endings that a movie has ever had. It is a film that messes with the limits of cinema conventions and that explore human nature in a merciless way. Try to watching it without shedding a tear... or getting depression.
2. Amour
(Love, Dir. Michael Haneke, Austria, 2012)
Haneke was the seventh director to win a second Palme thanks to this film about an elderly couple trying to deal with the mental downfall of the woman. And even if before of this Haneke dealt with sadism, masochism, and social hate, none of his previous films are as brutal as this one, where he reveals that the two most violent acts are the ones that scape our control: to love and to age. The screenplay, the acting, the tone, the rythm... everything works together to devastate us without getting even close to sentimentalism.
1. Pulp Fiction
(Dir. Quentin Tarantino, United States, 1994)
Tarantino was thinking out of the box for every single aspect in the film. He not only breaks all the rules of traditional narrative, he is bold in his visuals and witty in his dialogues. It's smart as much as it is explosive; it's artsy as much as it is entertaining. Pulp Fiction pushed the boundaries of cinematic possibilities and gifted us with fully memorable characters, scenes and lines. It is exactly what it should be expected of every winner of the Palme: a revolutionary film that will last forever in the collective memory of cinema.
