Cannes Film Festival 2019: reviews, news, and analysis

The unofficial theme of the 2019 Cannes Film Festival was impossible to miss: This year’s event, with its slate of films from around the world, focused on stories about people who are struggling against inequality and oppression. Not every film fit that bill, of course. But many of the best films did — and they painted a picture of a world on the brink of revolt.

And that feeling of revolution extended to the festival’s awards slate, too: When this year’s prizes were handed out on May 25, it turned out several winners had made Cannes history. The top prize, the Palme d’Or, went to Parasite — making it the first Korean film to take home the honor. And the Grand Prix (which is essentially second place) went to Atlantics, making director Mati Diop not just the first black woman to have a film in competition at Cannes, but the first to win an award at the festival as well.

Name a movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and you’re tipping your hand from the start. Quentin Tarantino’s ninth feature (and penultimate, if the director’s threat to retire after his 10th is to be believed) is a fairy tale, a fantasy, and a wistful elegy for a world that most of us wish we lived in — most of all, Tarantino himself.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a historical drama, sort of. Tarantino has often worked in the historical mode; in films like Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained, he also fantasized about the past. In those movies, he chooses to rewrite history as a kind of act of revenge and righting of wrongs.

The Lighthouse is, I can safely say, one of the most over-the-top movies I’ve ever had the good fortune to see. Robert Eggers — whose last film, the wild 2015 horror movie The Witch, lit Sundance on fire when it premiered — has clearly established himself as a no-holds-barred auteur of dread, madness, and mannered period dialogue.

Also gallows comedy. Also horror. What I’m trying to say is, The Lighthouse is a blast.

Everyone wants to imagine themselves the hero in a movie about heroes. Not everyone wants to consider what it would take to do what’s right when nobody may ever know — when their actions will be hidden.

A Hidden Life is not a hero’s story.

In 2018, Cannes’ lineup of movies felt like a plea against complacency, a call to pay attention in a world in turmoil. It was a startling message at the world’s most glamorous film festival — onscreen, war and poverty and struggle; offscreen, red carpets and yachts anchored in the Mediterranean.

But this year, that message has been ratcheted up a notch. Even before the festival’s midway point, it was clear that this year’s Cannes, with films from all over the globe, was positioning itself as a festival for a world teetering on the brink. No matter where they hail from, filmmakers are telling stories about people on the verge of revolution — or an apocalypse.

Any movie about Elton John would have to be much, much larger than life. Its spectacular subject has been a legend for decades, his songs ubiquitous, his stage presence iconic.

So when I say there are at least four movies knocking around in Rocketman, I don’t mean it as a slight. It’s a biopic and a jukebox musical and a romance, and also a movie about addiction, all crammed into a frenetic, jewel-studded ecstasy of a movie.

We think of the end of the world in terms of TV and movies. We’ll die by robots, or aliens, or environmental catastrophe, or nuclear threats of our own hubristic creation, or capitalistic overconsumption.

Or, of course, zombies.