“The Tree of Life“ (2011)
So Terrence Malick‘s meditative take on 1950s family life in suburban Texas (led by Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain), the adult life of one of those sons (Sean Penn), and the cosmic beginnings of life (dinosaurs), has never been a film for everyone. But its subsequent status as a masterpiece means that rumors of its disgruntled reception have perhaps been exaggerated. There was a smattering of vocal boos (Indiewire’s Eric Kohn said “the booing at the end of today’s ‘Tree of Life’ screening was an ugly, animalistic thing”), but there was also fairly significant applause, especially what Entertainment Weekly described as “counter-applause.” But no other movie at the festival had this kind of expectation surrounding it —Malick had been tinkering with it off and on since “Days of Heaven,” and Pitt defended Malick’s stylistic choices thusly: “You know how you have a favorite song, and then you hear the band describing [it], and you’re disappointed?” The journalists may have responded blankly, but the jury (headed by Robert De Niro) did not, and awarded “The Tree of Life”, the Palme d’Or. It went on to appear on countless top ten lists that year, and was nominated for three Oscars —Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Cinematography. Who’s booing now, bitches?
“Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me” (1992)
David Lynch‘s adaptation/prequel/spin-off of his wildly popular ABC television series focuses on the week before Laura Palmer’s untimely death, and was received murderously. It’s an unusually extreme case, because as The Quietus pointed out, the heckling didn’t only occur at the film’s end, but throughout the entire movie, which also occasioned many walkouts. Attendee Quentin Tarantino said later that year, as the Village Voice noted, “David Lynch has disappeared so far up his own ass that I have no desire to see another David Lynch movie until I hear something different.” Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman called it “a true folly,” while The New York Times‘ notoriously cranky Vincent Canby wrote: “It’s not the worst movie ever made; it just seems to be.” The backlash against the backlash has been slow in taking hold, but nowadays many critics lob the M-word (masterpiece) towards the film (Mark Kermode and The Village Voice‘s Calum Marsh for example). And its storied gestation, of which the Cannes reception is only one small part, means it’s certainly now one of the touchstones of Lynch miscellanea, not least because of the variety of elliptical interpretations (summed up by this Grantland piece) that a less weird film never could have inspired the way this film has.
“Southland Tales” (2006)
Richard Kelly‘s post-apocalyptic satire had high expectations attached after his terrific “Donnie Darko,” but talking to THR recently about the notorious debut on the Croisette, he said he had grave reservations. “I wanted to go into Cannes and tell everyone that it was a work in progress, but I just remember a lot of people surrounding me saying, ‘Don’t say that. You don’t tell anyone that,’ ” he explained. And thus the film, which encompasses time travel, multiple dimensions, a perpetual energy generator, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson doing a Bugs Bunny impression for the better part of two hours, got a reception described by the New York Times as ranging “from negative to vicious” and “marred by walkouts and boos.” “It was painful,” Kelly said later, “I just thought, ‘Please let it be over.’ ” The version that played Cannes was unfinished, running more than three hours long and featuring incomplete visual effects and music, and that’s the cut that critic Mark Kermode described as “the worst film ever to be nominated for the Palme d’Or.” That cut has never been officially released, but features even more zigzagging subplots and WTF-worthy performances than in the already batshit theatrical version most saw. It still has its defenders, among them The New York Times‘ Manohla Dargis and the Village Voice‘s J. Hoberman. And it is brilliant —if you’re super, super high (not that we’re suggesting Ms. Dargis was).
“The Brown Bunny” (2003)
Writer/director/producer/editor Vincent Gallo’s inarguably indulgent, meandering arthouse road movie famously came under fire from Roger Ebert, who apparently was so bored during his screening of the movie that he sang “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” aloud. He later called it the worst film in the history of the Cannes Film Festival (no small feat) and surmised that the film received its boos not because of offensiveness (like the explicit blowjob performed by actress Chloe Sevigny to the startled approval of Manohla Dargis, for one) but “simply because of its awfulness.” Gallo was so angered by the Cannes reception to the film that he vowed to never make another movie again. He then added: “It is a disaster of a film and it was a waste of time.” Yet the dialogue between Ebert and Gallo continued, and after he tightened the movie by almost a half hour, Ebert re-watched it and gave it his approval, saying “It is said that editing is the soul of the cinema; in the case of ‘The Brown Bunny,’ it is its salvation.” Perhaps heartened, Gallo also reversed his vow of cinematic abstinence, with a 2010 black-and-white drama called “Promises Written on Water” that played the Venice Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival and almost nowhere else.
“Taxi Driver” (1976)
Martin Scorsese‘s dark look at the spiral of violence perpetrated by a loner Vietnam vet, starring Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster and Cybil Shepherd, is an emblem of the kind of raw filmmaking the ’70s are now celebrated for, but the now-rarefied atmosphere of Cannes was different at the time. As Entertainment Weekly noted, the year before “Taxi Driver” screened at Cannes, a bomb went off on opening day. But in ’76, no bomb was necessary, because “Taxi Driver” went detonated instead, and with its nihilistic outlook and aura of menace building to inevitable bloodletting, any boos would be almost understandable in that context. Even that year’s jury president Tennessee Williams (!) questioned the level of violence in the film, but ultimately showed himself far more visionary than the jeerers when he and his team awarded it the Palme d’Or. Still, controversy surrounded the film long after Cannes. In 1981, John Hinckley Jr. tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan and cited the 4-time Oscar nominated film as inspiration —an incident that shook Scorsese to the point that he quietly vowed to not make movies again. Praise the movie gods that that particular vow was broken.