Cannes Film Festival, 2007 (Festivals‪)‬

Cannes had its share of moody films this year: movies which seemed to exist only to draw spectators into a universe of surreal emotion. The best among these mood pieces was Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park. Acclaimed cinematographer Chris Doyle's camera follows an introverted adolescent as he languorously skateboards in slow-motion swirls, avoiding the conflicts around him, which include a murder as well as his own troubled family. The poetry of Doyle's shots--the burning confessional letter, the orange autumn leaves drifting slowly in the wind, the boy as he lies flat on the driveway, hands flailing, chest divided, Christ-like, by his skateboard--are far more incisive, however, than the story. The most thrilling moment occurs when this boy awakens from his slumber, the water washing down his hair during a cathartic shower scene--"one which will go down in the history of shower scenes," joked Chris Doyle sipping his rose over lunch. The Coen Brothers offered a lively mood piece in their adaptation of Corman McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. "Another great Coen Brothers film, finally!" exclaimed many critics, comparing it to Fargo and Blood Simple, overlooking how this new film might have the craft and energy of Fargo but none of its sinister double-take critique on American culture. No Country for Old Men does not have such resonance: the story of a man who chases a serial killer--why, exactly, we do not know--it excites the blood with suspense, but then sizzles to an end. In the last sequence, the Coens tack on McCarthy's sober message about how "old men" are no longer viable in a world of violence, a message that comes too late and superficially to bear much weight.