Dig ‘proves’ Bethlehem existed centuries pre-Jesus
THURSDAY, MAY 24, 2012
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(From left) actor Garret Hedlund, director Walter Salles, actors Kristen Stewart, Sam Riley, Kirsten Dunst and Viggo Mortensen pose during a photo call for ‘On the Road’ at the 65th international film festival, in Cannes, southern France, yesterday. — AP
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ack Kerouac’s cult novel “On the Road”, a sex and drugfuelled hymn to youthful freedom, hit the big screen in Cannes yesterday in what its stars called a tribute to today’s revolutions. With one of the most keenly awaited pictures of the 12-day festival, Brazilian director Walter Salles stays true to the exuberant spirit of the Beat Generation bible with his lushly shot tableaux of post-war America. The film, starring Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Stewart, Kirsten Dunst and Viggo Mortensen, got a polite reception at its press screening yesterday ahead of its red-carpet gala premiere later in the day.
US actresses Kirsten Stewart and Kirsten Dunst pose during the photocall of “On the Road”.—AP
Salles, best known for his 2004 Cannes contender “The Motorcycle Diaries” about Che Guevara’s youthful travels, shows his heroes ploughing through drink, drugs and women as they make their way back and forth across the United States, with a stopover in Mexico. “I’ve done several road movies and I realized in doing them that the more you get distant from your roots, from the starting point, the more you possibly gain perspective on who you are, where you come from and eventually who you want to be,” Salles told reporters. “But you also are (leaving) part of yourself behind.” The 56-year-old director said he had been electrified by Kerouac’s cultural call to arms in a deeply conservative country while growing up in Brazil. “What we are portraying in the film has a correlation with ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’ which is about the very beginning of a social and political awakening,” he said. Kerouac, who calls himself Sal Paradise in the autobiographical novel about his wandering years in the late 1940s and early 1950s,
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Australian actress Kylie Minogue poses during the photocall of ‘Holy Motors’. — AP
ars talk, a man is married to a monkey and Kylie Minogue contemplates suicide in “Holy Motors”, easily the oddest movie in competition at the Cannes film festival screened so far this year. Directed by French film maker Leos Carax, the story follows Mr. Oscar, a man who spends each day living 10 different lives, each mapped out for him in a dossier left in the back seat of the stretch white limousine he travels in. In the morning he is a rich businessman leaving his luxury home for work. Next he dresses up as an old woman beggar on the streets of Paris. Each hurried change involves elaborate costume changes and make up in the back of the limousine, and leave Oscar, played with superhuman energy by Denis Lavant, increasingly exhausted as the day wears on. As to its meaning, critics and journalists struggled to agree. “What the heck does it all mean?” wrote
is mesmerized by a charismatic womanizer called Dean Moriarty who has done time and lives in the moment. Sal hits the road with him and, in between their dionysian outings, reads Joyce, Celine and Proust and begins to see how literature can be born out of raw experience. Mortensen, who said he was also inspired by the novel growing up, plays Old Bull Lee-a stand-in for the junkie guru Williams S. Burroughs. The 53-year-old said the film attempted to capture the book’s revolutionary drive while throwing the themes forward to the 21st-century world. “Reading the book again, which is the first thing I did, made me realize how pertinent it is now-protest movements, mass movements with young people in Europe, in North America, in China, the Middle East... that carry the spirit of that time,” Mortensen said. He said the film’s decades-long gestation-Francis Ford Coppola bought its rights in the 1970s and oversaw several abortive attempts to bring it to the screen-may have in fact been a stroke of luck. “It’s probably a great time for this to come out now because I think people will look at it-not just older people, people of my generation, people who lived through it... but young people will discover this book and identify with it I think in a very strong way.” Stewart, 22, said she had embraced the chance to abandon the virginal Bella character from the “Twilight” series to play the sexually uninhibited Marylou, Moriarty’s wife who becomes his long-time mistress after they divorce. The young star said her nude scenes and explicit depictions of free love had given her an opportunity to try on a new image with a compelling character. “I love pushing, I love scaring myself. I think to watch genuine experience on screen is just so much more interesting,” she said. “The reason I wanted to do the job is because, you know, you read something, you’re provoked on some level and then it’s just taking that further and being able to live it and I always want to get as close to the experience as I possibly can. “As long as you’re always being really honest, there’s nothing ever to be ashamed of.” The then 29-year-old Kerouac famously wrote up the novel in a three-week sitting in April 1951, typing continuously on to a 36-metre (120foot) roll of tracing paper sheets that he cut to size and taped together. Inspired by a rambling letter from his friend and travelling companion Neal Cassady-who becomes Dean in the novel-Kerouac decided to tell the story of their years on the road in a form that reflected the fluidity of improvised jazz.—AFP
urvivors of acid attacks whose plight became the focus of an Oscar-winning documentary now fear ostracism and reprisals if the film is broadcast in Pakistan. Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy made history earlier this year when she won Pakistan’s first Oscar, feted across the country for exposing the horrors endured by women whose faces are obliterated in devastating acid attacks. Her 40-minute film focuses on Zakia and Rukhsana as they fight to rebuild their lives after being attacked by their husbands, and British Pakistani plastic surgeon Mohammad Jawad who tries to help repair their shattered looks. When “Saving Face” scooped a coveted gold statuette in the documentary category in Hollywood in February, campaigners were initially jubilant. The Acid Survivors Foundation Pakistan (ASF) had cooperated on the film but some survivors now fear a backlash in a deeply conservative societyand are taking legal action against the producers. “We had no idea it would be a hit and win an Oscar. It’s completely wrong. We never allowed them to show this film in Pakistan,” said Naila Farhat, 22, who features fleetingly in the documentary. She was 13 when the man she refused to marry threw acid in her face as she walked home from Independence Day celebrations. She lost an eye and her attacker was jailed for 12 years. After a long, painful recovery, she is training as a nurse. “This is disrespect to my family, to my relatives and they’ll make an issue of it. You know what it’s like in Pakistan. They gossip all the time if they see a woman in a film,” said Farhat, taut skin where her left eye dissolved. “We may be in more danger and we’re scared that, God forbid, we could face the same type of incident again. We do not want to show our faces to the world.” Lawyer Naveed Muzaffar Khan, whom ASF hired to represent the victims, said legal notices were sent to Obaid-Chinoy and fellow producer Daniel Junge on Friday. The survivors, he said, “have not consented for it to be publicly released in Pakistan”, adding that such agreement was required for all the women who featured in the film, no matter how fleetingly. Khan said the producers had seven days to agree not to release the film publicly in the country, or he would go to court to seek a formal injunction. “They (survivors) were absolutely clear in their mind in not allowing any public screening as that would jeopardise their life in Pakistan and make it difficult for them to continue to live in their villages,” he told AFP. But Obaid-Chinoy insisted the women signed legal documents allowing the film
to be shown anywhere in the world, including Pakistan. She told AFP that Rukhsana had been edited out of the version to be shown in the country out of respect for her concerns, adding she was “unclear about the allegations” and would respond to the legal complaints “when a court orders us”. Rukhsana was not reachable for comment. Many of the women are routinely threatened by their husbands or relatives and it is a television broadcast that they particularly fear. “The accessibility is so wide scale, the chances are their lives are going to be threatened,” said the lawyer, Khan. The producers promised that profits from screenings in Pakistan would go to Zakia and Rukhsana, but the row also hints at deeper differences between film-makers trying to tell a story and charity workers on the ground. Some medical personnel, for example, believe it was wrong to focus on an expatriate doctor at the expense of countless local surgeons who have treated dozens of victims. Others believe the film was too sensational and question whether it really will make a difference to the survivors struggling to live in Pakistan, where there are scores of such attacks each year.—AFP
This file photo taken on March 10, 2012 shows Oscar award winning Pakistani director Sharmeen ObaidChinoy showing her Oscar award during a press conference in Karachi.
This file photo taken on December 7, 2009 shows Pakistani acid attack survivor Naila Farhat waiting to have further eye surgery with friend and fellow survivor Naziran Bibi at the Al-Shifa trust eye hospital in Rawalpindi on the outskirts of capital Islamabad. — AFP photos
Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw in his five-star review, before proceeding to seek to unravel the enigma of Holy Motors. Carax, whose last full-length feature was “Pola X” in 1999, declined to answer when asked at a press conference what the movie meant, and merely shook his finger. In response to a question about the different movies referenced in his film, he said, speaking in French: “Obviously if you decide to live in that little island which is cinema, it is a beautiful island that has a big cemetery. So sometimes you go to the cemetery.” Nearly not made Holy Motors, loudly cheered at the press screening ahead of its official world premiere in Cannes yesterday, nearly did not make it to the big screen. Carax’s reputation with film financiers suffered in the early 1990s when his “The
Lovers on the Bridge”, also starring Lavant, ran dramatically over budget. “There were some bad memories that lingered in terms of banks and bankers,” said producer Martine Marignac. “The banks didn’t want to follow through and the film nearly did not get made. We thought that 20 years down the road this situation would not arise again, but the difficulty in financing this kind of film hinges on the fact that these films are not viewed as commercial.” Oscar’s most shocking character is “Monsieur Merde”, half-man half-beast who bursts in on a photo shoot at a Paris cemetery with US actress Eva Mendes and carries her to his underground lair where she comforts the naked, aroused monster. In another segment Australian pop star Minogue plays a melancholy air hostess who is contemplating suicide, and she performs a song for her lost love. The singer and actress, a major celebrity throughout the world, admitted
she was “slightly terrified” at the thought of appearing in the movie, but added: “Basically I banned my entourage from coming with me, I kind of stripped myself of being Kylie and wanted to go back to being as basic as possible and pretty much be a blank canvas for Leos.” Towards the end of Holy Motors, limousines parked in a warehouse talk to each other before lights out, and later Oscar returns home to his wife and children-all of them monkeys. — Reuters