By Fr. Bernanrd Heffernan
It is hard to balance the extraordinary surface glamour of the Cannes Film Festival with the deep thought-provoking drama of the Canadian produced opening night entry, “Blindness.” Outside the well-guarded halls where the movies are shown, the streets are filled with entertainment stars, the beaches packed with beautiful people and the Mediterranean seems jammed with the super rich pacing the decks of their yachts. But as the lights dim for the screening, the audience is left gasping at what the Associated Press has called “a terrifying fable about how low people might go to stay alive.”
I was last in Cannes two years ago to protest the launch of the Christian-mocking The Da Vinci Code. And little appears to have changed outside of my mission. For this time I want to draw attention to “Blindness” and the triumph of human dignity.
The movie demonstrates how societies can fall into chaos when terrible events – in this case a plague that robs the population of its sight – strike unexpectedly. Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles told the press this week: “There are two kinds of blindness. There’s two billion people that are starving in the world. This is happening. I doesn’t need a catastrophe. It’s happening, and because there isn’t an event like Katrina, we don’t see.”
Opening in theaters September 16, “Blindness” is adapted from the novel by Portuguese author Jose Saramago, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature.
The movie ends with hope as the main characters band together and work towards reclaiming their humanity.
And there is hope too in the streets of Cannes if you look just below the patina of celebrity and glitter.
It was a beautiful sunny afternoon that set the outdoor stage for the opening ceremonies of this year’s festival of stars. Given their number, the throngs seemed strangely hushed. It was almost as if they wanted to blend in with the scene, a scene that would have been somewhat surrealistic, were it not for the yelling of children, kicking footballs around and hoping against hope to catch the attention of the most legendary footballer of all time, Argentina’s Diego Maradonna. Miracles are the stuff of seven and eight year olds who hoped the great Maradonna, seeing them playing might come and join them. Even Indiana Jones would pale in comparison.
I came to the street outside the famed 26-step red carpet, thinking it would be impossible to get a good view, because of the estimated 35,000 journalists at the scene. Yet in all the pushing and shoving, I managed to get a spot within touching distance if one would dare reach out.
Those who come to Cannes want to see the most watched prime televised gathering of international stars on their arrival. Dotted among the inevitable blue jeans and baseball caps were women dressed in formal gowns with tuxedoed escorts. The famous carpet rouge stretched all the way from the street up the giant stairway to the very doors where the touted celebrities would enter before being lost from view.
Now that opening night is history, I am hoping to meet some of the VIPs, particularly Don McKellar, the Toronto-based writer who adapted “Blindness”.
As the children playing football while waiting for Maradona believe, Cannes is the kind of place where anything can happen.
(Father Heffernan is a Canadian Catholic priest. He can be reached by email in Cannes: frheff@accel.net).
