So here we finally are. Another year has passed and let’s face it, it’s been a rough one. When I arrived, I could not assess if, according to my understanding, this year had been very long or extremely short. It indeed felt like not so long ago, we were here watching movies in this exact same spot. It as well felt like it was in another life. So many beloved ones have left. So many friends vanished. Sadly, a friend in need is not necessarily a friend indeed. It almost feels like a miracle that me and my festival buddies are still standing. A bit damaged, not as straight as a year ago, but standing.
But here we are with our little 79 festival bags ready to be used. Though these ones will only start their career next year – as you need to show that you are part of the regular crowd, you dig out your 78 bag (see pic ^) and promenade proudly around the Lido with it.
COVID has left the Mostra. No more wall in front of the red carpet, the crowds are back, allowed to gather and fight for a picture or an autograph. Weirdly masks are still compulsory in public transports but not in the massive Palabiennale movie hall (it hardly makes sense but it is a relief to all of us).
The opening ceremony is quite the standard one although this year’s Mostra actively claims its support to the Ukrainian people. We are thus addressed by Vladimir Zelensky, reminding us that what is happening in Ukraine will not end in 2 hours as the screening we are going to see (a bit of an easy one, according to me, but criticism does not have its place in this context). We are as well confronted on the screen with a black on white list of the names of all the children who have lost their lives since the beginning of the conflict. I’ve hardly seen the Palabiennale as silent as this. The list seems to be never-ending.
It takes a few minutes to accept the shift to the usual screening routine after this. This year’s opening movie holds all the promises in two names: Noah Baumbach and Adam Driver. As a reminder, a few years ago Noah Baumbach directed « Marriage Story » staring Adam Driver together with Scarlett Johansson as the main cast.
By now, after 20 years of Mostra, I should have learned my lesson and known that two names should never be considered as a guarantee. But my opening-day-excited-self was rather sure that this combination could only lead to success.
The published synopsis DID seem strange, if not worrying, to me (apparently the movie is based on a book that I did and – now I know – will not read).
Let me share it with you as this was basically the only thing I knew about what we were about to see: « At once hilarious and horrifying, lyrical and absurd, ordinary and apocalyptic, White Noise dramatises a contemporary American family’s attempts to deal with the mundane conflicts of everyday life while grappling with the universal mysteries of love, death and the possibility of happiness in an uncertain world ».
Right, right, right. Let me now rephrase it for you AFTER having seen the movie: « At once not so hilarious and very much horrifying (in many ways), absolutely not lyrical and slightly too absurd, I still don’t know where the ordinary fits in here but apocalyptic it is a bit though eventually not so much but then I am not sure because I did not fully understand, White Noise is about nothing much ». As always #verypersonnalopinionalert.
It definitely gave me a headache that not even the, as usual excellent, Adam Driver could prevent from happening. Too much noise, too many visuals, too many directions. Basically too much of everything and eventually not enough of anything.
The only thought that constantly came to my mind during the 2 hours of screening was: Good lord, how much could that whole production have cost? I got my answer digging into the daily venetian rumours: it seems that the initial foreseen budget was 80 million EUR. It apparently ended up closer to something between 100 and 150 million EUR.
And that’s when you somehow can’t help thinking that Netflix productions can lead to the best and the worst – some people obviously deal better than others with being granted all the means they could wish for to express their creativity. This was a waste of money according to me.
But as always with cinema, I am sure it will find its public who will have the exact opposite opinion to mine – people who saw something that I did not see. That’s the beauty of cinema and art in general, after all.
Klara's cinema 