Berlin’s 50th film festival, bigger than Cannes and boasting more American films and stars than the French Riviera event has seen for some time, handed its Golden Lion yesterday to a Hollywood movie – Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia.
The three-hour and 10-minute epic, made by the director of Boogie Nights, was not on the Oscar best film list but has garnered Tom Cruise an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor.
Berlin’s grand jury prize, the runner-up award, went to Zhang Yimou, the Chinese director, for The Road Home, a film rejected by Cannes last year. Since the head of this year’s jury was Gong Li, the actress Zhang Yimou used to live with and parted from amidst some acrimony because he would not divorce his wife, it can only be assumed that the two are friends again.
The film, about a young girl’s long-lasting romance with a village teacher, was rejected by Cannes as too supportive of the Chinese government, which infuriated Yimou.
A second American award was given to Denzel Washington who plays the boxer Reuben “Hurricane” Carter in Norman Jewison’s The Hurricane. Europe finally came into the reckoning when Bibiana Beglau and Nadja Uhl shared the best actress prize for Volker Schlondorff’s Rita’s Legends, the story of two women enmeshed in the political affairs of East and West Germany in the 1970s.
Europe also won the international critics’ prize with Claude Miller’s Of Women and Magic, from France.
Czech director Milos Forman was named best director for Man on the Moon, a Hollywood film, starring Jim Carrey, and the jury prize went to Wim Wenders for The Million Dollar Hotel, also made in Los Angeles.
Prizes apart, the chief controversy revolved around Mary Harron’s adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s American Pyscho, shown out of competition. The film, which stars British actor Christian Bale as the murderous New York yuppie, turned out to be far more ironic than the book and less predicated on violence. It proved, in fact, one of the most accomplished films at the festival, with a superb performance from Bale.
So the 50th festival ended, congratulating itself that it survived moving into its new headquarters on the Potsdamer Platz.
It also survived the appearance of Leonardo DiCaprio, star of The Beach. DiCaprio caused a huge crowd to assemble outside the main cinema, virtually grinding the festival to a halt. One had to reflect, however, that if Berlin wants to outface Cannes, this is the way to do it.