1982
What Won: A split for the Palme, with Costa-Gavras’ thriller “Missing,” in which the father and wife of a journalist attempt to find him after he disappears during the U.S backed coup by General Pinochet in Chile, sharing honors with Yilmaz Guney’s Turkish prisoner drama “Yol.”
What Should Have Won: Not a year for the ages, necessarily, but with one stone-cold classic in the line-up in the shape of Werner Herzog’s astonishing “Fitzcarraldo.”
Why? As is often the case when the Palme goes to an eyebrow-raising film, 1982 appeared to be a year where politics trumped art when it came to picking the winner, not least with figures like Jean-Jacques Annaud and Gabriel Garcia Marquez serving on the jury of legendary Italian theater director Giorgio Strehler. “Missing” is an absolutely solid film with a terrific performance from Jack Lemmon at its center, but it’s also a poor cousin to Costa-Gavras’ earlier “Z,” with a rather crudely drawn arc for Lemmon’s character. Meanwhile, “Yol” is a case where the better story was off-screen rather than on: director Guney had spent most of his years in prison since 1972 (partly as a political prisoner, partly for shooting a judge in a drunken row), with his assistant Serif Goren directing scripts that Guney wrote from jail. “Yol” was such a film, but the helmer actually managed to escape from prison and finish the editing personally from Switzerland. There’s powerful stuff in “Yol,” and if nothing else it causes an interesting wrinkle in the auteur theory, but in general it’s rather crude and, frankly, dull filmmaking that indicates that the film got the top prize as a gesture rather than anything else. Especially against “Fitzcarraldo,” Herzog’s masterpiece of hubris and madness that might still be the director’s finest achievement.
1986
What Won: “The Mission,” the prestige-happy religious drama about a missionary in South America in the 18th century, starring Jeremy Irons and Robert De Niro, produced by David Puttnam, penned by “A Man For All Seasons” writer Robert Bolt, and directed by Roland Joffe, who was coming off the success of “The Killing Fields.”
What Should Have Won: Jim Jarmusch’s “Down By Law” would probably be our pick of the litter, but there was also Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours,” Neil Jordan’s “Mona Lisa,” Nagisa Oshima’s “Max Mon Amour,” Andrei Konchalovsky’s “Runaway Train” and Tarkovsky’s final film “The Sacrifice.”
Why? It’s interesting to remember that “The Mission” won the Palme d’Or, because it’s the kind of film that would now be dismissed as “awards bait”: handsomely mounted, defiantly middlebrow, star-studded, and few expenses spared. That it would go on to get a Best Picture nomination isn’t a shock, that it won over Sydney Pollack’s jury is a little more surprising (though Pollack was never Mr. Avant-Garde, as such). The film is stunningly photographed by Chris Menges, and has a hall-of-fame score from Ennio Morricone, but it’s completely dramatically inert, aimless and sometimes even clunkily written. It might have been the kind of film that felt important at the time, but against the Tarkovsky (admittedly difficult even by the Russian director’s standards), Scorsese’s lean, sharp comedy, or Jarmusch’s joyful black-and-white picture, it feels like the film was wildly, wildly overrated at the time.
1998
What Won: “Eternity And A Day,” from slow-cinema pioneer Theo Angelopolous, which focuses on a dying poet, played by Bruno Ganz.
What Should Have Won: Possibly controversial, but in a strong year, we’d have given the Palme to Thomas Vinterberg’s searing Dogme family drama “Festen.” There were other strong choices too, though: Tsai Ming-Liang’s “The Hole,” Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s “Flowers Of Shanghai,” Ken Loach’s “My Name Is Joe,” John Boorman’s “The General,” Todd Haynes’ “Velvet Goldmine,” Lodge Kerrigan’s “Claire Dolan” or even Terry Gilliam’s flawed-but-fascinating “Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.” Still, at least it didn’t go to Roberto Benigni’s “Life Is Beautiful,” we suppose…
Why? With Martin Scorsese heading up the jury, you were bound to get an interesting choice, and Scorsese’s gang definitely picked the cinephile’s option: Angelopolous is slow and steady stuff in general, but many wags at the time commented that “Eternity And A Day” was an appropriate title. It’s not the pacing that bothers us so much, however, as the film’s soppiness: there’s nothing particularly eye-opening about Angelopolous’ take on mortality, and one has to resist rolling your eyes when Ganz bonds with a cute kid, which takes up a fair old chunk of the running time. In a year that saw a certain amount of formal inventiveness from directors both young and old, and bold visions from the likes of Tsai, Hou and Haynes, there were certainly more daring picks to be made, even if we’re glad that Angelopolous picked up the prize at some point in his career (he died tragically in 2012 after being hit by a motorbike while shooting a film).
2001
What Won: Nanni Moretti‘s “The Son’s Room” a story centred around a premature death of a beloved family member, and how the grieving father, mother, and sister handle the shock.
What Should Have Won: The chock-full competition was sizzling with masterpieces, most notably; David Lynch‘s “Mulholland Drive”, Michael Haneke‘s “The Piano Teacher”, and Oscar-winner “No Man’s Land” from Danis Tanovic. They’re all bigger winners in our books.
Why: While we realize that criticizing Moretti’s film is like walking on eggshells with little fuzzy baby chicks trapped beneath, we’re going to do it anyway. Kind of. “The Son’s Room” is far from being a bad film, but its use of a true and tried emotional trope – only the blackest of souls isn’t compelled to tears by the death of someone’s child – feels more manipulative and less organic on repeat viewing. Moretti bets all of his chips on this one major event, and while the scenes of grief and inability to let go are assuredly effective on first viewing, they feel a bit like a broken record in hindsight. And what’s more, it’s a broken record of a Brian Eno song that’s, dare we say, cheesy? When you pit it against a Lynchian Hollywood nightmare that’s impossible to forget, Haneke’s psycho-sexual adventures of a deeply troubled piano teacher, or Tanovic’s entertaining tragedy of war, Moretti’s soapy drama wilts away. We’re guessing the jury wasn’t feeling particularly moody and went with the safe choice that plucked their heart strings the softest, but looking back on it now, it boggles our minds to know this won over the other much stronger contenders.
2004
What Won: “Fahrenheit 9/11,” Michael Moore’s button-pushing documentary, unashamedly released as polemic, examining President George W. Bush (who was campaigning for re-election at the time), the aftermath of 9/11, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. It was the first documentary to take the top prize since Jacques Cousteau and Louis Malle’s “The Silent World” in 1956.
What Should Have Won: One could argue that this wasn’t the strongest year, with a handful of missteps by famous auteurs (“The Ladykillers” by the Coen Brothers, “2046” by Wong Kar-Wai), and a few rather baffling choices (made-for-TV biopic “The Life And Death Of Peter Sellers,” uh, “Shrek 2”) in the competition line-up. But you also had Olivier Assayas’ “Clean,” Walter Salles’ “The Motorcycle Diaries,” Lucrecia Martel’s “The Holy Girl,” Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Consequences Of Love,” and Apichatpong Werasethakul’s “Tropical Maladies.” And best of all, Park Chan-Wook’s instant classic of a revenge caper “Oldboy,” which would have got our vote.
Why? Politics, pure and simple. Michael Moore is not, let’s face it, an especially great filmmaker, but he’s made some very effective and entertaining films, particularly in the case of “Roger & Me” and “Bowling For Columbine.” But “Farenheit 9/11” is an ugly, hastily-put-together and muddled mess that one suspects might have done more to harm its cause than to do anything to change it. But the jury (led by Quentin Tarantino, who you think would have favored cinema above making a statement) were clearly out to make a gesture, and so Moore’s film became one of the most controversial Palme winners ever. One can’t fault the intentions, but one wishes they’d picked a better film to do it with.
