To Each His Own Cinema

omnibus – 2007 – France 
 

Anthology film commissioned by the Cannes Film Festival to commemorate its 60th anniversary.  34 filmmakers from around the world all contribute brief pieces of three minutes or less; the prompt seeming to be for them to offer their thoughts on their chosen craft, in particular the experience of watching films in theaters.  It’s a great premise, giving some of the world’s finest directors a simple opportunity to express their love for film.  Some of the films are emotional, some angry and some glib, and obviously, (in a situation like this), some are better than others.  My favorite is probably Alejandro González Iñárritu’s, which has a blind woman having a film, Godard’s Contempt, described to her by her companion in a movie theater.  Maybe it's a little contrived, but it’s a film that makes you consider the elemental qualities of cinema; sound, image and movement, how they work together and how some either fail or compensate when one is removed.  The worst, I felt, was Gus Van Sant’s offering about a cherubic projectionist who sees a beautiful woman on the screen and magically jumps into the movie to join her; it looks exactly like a TV commercial but without any sense of satire.  The film by the always-pretentious Lars Von Trier is predictably pretentious and self-aggrandizing.  I liked Roman Polanski’s characteristically sardonic black comedy about a couple at a movie-house watching the risqué classic Emmanuelle and mistaking the moans of an injured man in the theater for those of self-pleasure.  David Cronenberg’s film, called The Suicide of the Last Jew in the World in the Last Cinema in the World, is a bitter lament at the endemic lack of respect towards true art in the film world; (Cronenberg has had films booed at Cannes and once or twice lauded).  Perhaps the most biting, to me at least, is Ken Loach's contribution,  a comedy that has a man and his young son trying to pick a movie at the local theater, realizing there is nothing remotely interesting playing, and opt to play some football instead.  Loach concisely underscores not only the art film's total lack of relevance to common people, but the downright annoying experience that filmgoing has become for many.  Some of the other important directors represented are Wim Wenders, the Coen brothers, Wong Kar-wai and David Lynch.  Despite weaknesses, as a complete work, To Each His Own Cinema is considerably more cohesive and consistent in quality than almost any other anthology film I’ve seen.