With Loach’s second Golden Palm, Cannes seeks social messages

Several films with strong social messages won award at the 69th Cannes Film Festival. After receiving his Golden Palm trophy UK director Ken Loach said “the world we live in is a danger point of despair.”

Ken Loach accepts the Palme d'Or at the 69th Cannes Film Festival Reuters/Eric Gaillard

Loach lashed out against neoliberalism and said today it is urgent to protect people’s lives, dignity and democracy. It’s Loach’s second Golden Palm win. His first came 10 years ago for a film about fratricide during the Irish war of independence called the Wind that shakes the Barley. 

I, Daniel Blake is set in Newcastle, north-east England. It’s about a man, a joiner, who has a heart attack at the age of 59 and becomes dependent for the first time in his life on state support. It’s about genuinely needy people trying to stay alive in a supposedly wealthy country, the UK. It’s another of the often heart-wrenching social commentary films Loach has been making since he started six decades ago with films like Cathy Come Home. Loach makes no bones about his films being close to reality.

It’s very rare that one film wins more than one of the seven awards at Cannes. This year was different. Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s Forushande, or The Salesman, won two Palms. Best scenario went to Farhadi and best actor to Shahab Hosseini.

Farhadi employs subtlety and unspoken lines to talk about several issues in contemporary Tehran society, through the relationship between a young middle-class couple after the woman is attacked in their home. The story unfolds as the couple are rehearsing and performing Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Hosseini who acted with Farhadi in About Elly.in 2009. He accepted the Palm which he dedicated to the people of Iran, saying it was “with all my heart, to whom I owe it”.

 
The Grand Prix this year, the Cannes equivalent of a second prize, was won by 26-year-old Canadian director Xavier Dolan’s film based on a Jean-Luc Lagarce play called Juste la fin du monde (It’s Only the End of the World). Dolan who won the Jury prize for his film Mommy two years ago, is becoming known as much for films about difficult family relationships as for long and personal speeches when he wins a prize. Amongst other things, he stressed that his family was much happier than the one in the film.

Mystery film Personal Shopper won French director Olivier Assayas, his first Palm award.

The jury, chaired by Australian director George Miller, decided to give two best director awards. One to Assayas and one to Christian Mungiu for his film called Bacalaureat which is a view of corruption in post-communist Romania and the responsibility of parents as well as the society at large changing the future for the next generation. Mungiu took the opportunity of winning the award to say that, “Auteur film-makers belong to a niche and they have a big responsibility to work to maintain this form of cinema expression.”

Best actress went to Jacklyn José from the Philippines who played Ma Rosa in Brillante Mendoza’s film of the same name. Ma Rosa is tough, because she has to be. She’s the one who looks after her four children and a drug-addict husband, making sure they have food and shelter. The film plunges spectators into a very seedy story in very poor areas of Manila, infested with corrupt police. In the portrayal of have-nots and their struggles to ensure the most basic of rights, Brillante Mendoza is similar to Loach. His chooses a very different, more raw format, however, which in a move away from neo-realism, Mendoza’s Ma’ Rosa has a documentary feel – and a memorable last shot.

Last but not least, UK director’s Andrea Arnold’s American Honey, made in the US, won the 2016 Jury Palm.
 

Arnold didn’t weep and made no earth-shattering speech. She simply dedicated the award to her entire team, and said when she was happy, she felt like dancing.