Turkey's Nuri Bilge Ceylan takes top honors at Cannes

FJI correspondent J. Sperling Reich wraps up his Cannes coverage with a report on the festival's award winners.

As the 67th edition of the Cannes Film Festival drew to a close, the competition entry with the longest running time was awarded the event's top prize. The Palme d'Or went to Winter Sleep from Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan, who gave a brief and emotional speech in accepting the award.

Though Turkish is his native tongue, and the awards ceremony was conducted primarily in French, Ceylan spoke in English, saying, “This is a great surprise for me. This year is the 100th year of Turkish cinema, and it’s a good coincidence, I think." He went on to reference the ongoing political and social unrest occurring in in his homeland. "I dedicate this award to the young people of Turkey who lost their lives during the last year.”

Like many of Ceylan's films, Winter Sleep is not a straightforward narrative. The movie focuses on a retired actor running a tourist hotel in Cappadocia, a naturally picturesque area in the Anatolia region of Turkey. The film runs three hours and 16 minutes, consisting mostly of scenes wherein the main character engages in endless arguments with his sister, young wife and anyone he comes into contact with. It is a layered story in which class differences and the definition of freedom are constant yet subtle themes.

Ceylan can place this year's Palme d'Or next to three other trophies his films have won in Cannes. In 2011, his last film, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, was awarded the Grand Prix. “I have won a lot of awards at Cannes, but to take home the Palme d’or, that’s amazing," Ceylan told journalists after the ceremony. He also acknowledged the length of Winter Sleep. "When I wrote the film’s script, I did so as if I were writing a novel. I realized afterwards that it was too long. The first film was four-and-a-half hours long. I finally shortened it during the editing process."

Winter Sleep was one of the more eagerly anticipated films at this year's fest. There was nearly a riot at its premiere screening midway through the festival when hundreds of attendees and journalists were unable to get into the Grand Théâtre Lumière. Critics were mostly kind to Ceylan's film, and as the event wore on it clearly stood out as the frontrunner for the Palme d'Or.

That changed on Wednesday, just a few days before Cannes ended. In what had to be a conscious move, Cannes artistic director Thierry Fremeaux and his team programmed Adieu Au Langage (Goodbye to Language), an experimental 3D entry from Jean-Luc Godard, up against the press screening of Mommy, directed by Canadian Xavier Dolan. At 83, Nouvelle Vague veteran Godard was the oldest director in Cannes this year, whereas Dolan, who is 25, is the youngest filmmaker to ever have a title in competition.

Dolan's Mommy is a powerful drama about a single mother struggling to deal with her bipolar, delinquent teenage son. Between its unique use of a square aspect ratio and brilliant performances, Mommy instantly became the talk of Cannes, with many predicting it would walk off with the Palme.

In typical Cannes fashion, that sentiment lasted roughly 24 hours, until the press screening of Leviathan, Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyaginstev's parable on the sociopolitical ills facing modern Russia.

If festival programmers weren't cognizant of juxtaposing Godard's work against that of Dolan, then the jury deciding awards most definitely was. Headed by New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion, and comprised of artists such as actor Willem Dafoe and directors Sofia Coppola and Nicolas Winding Refn, the group awarded the Jury Prize to both Godard and Dolan. Campion reported that the jury was "aware" that awarding the prize to Godard and Dolan would look intentional and she admitted that it most certainly was.

Godard himself decided to skip this year's festival entirely and wasn't present in Cannes to accept the award. Alain Sarde, the producer of Adieu au Langage, stood in for his director, stating later, “Jean-Luc must certainly know that he’s won this prize. I haven’t called him since it’s late, but you obviously know that this prize is not going to revolutionize his world. It’s a regular prize intended for young directors like Xavier Dolan. He is 25, and Jean-Luc is 83. It’s wonderfully symbolic.”

Dolan, on the other hand, personally attended the awards ceremony in Cannes. He took time out of his acceptance speech to tell Campion that her film The Piano changed his life. "It made me want to write roles for women, beautiful roles with soul and will and strength. Not victims, not objects," he said. (Incidentally, The Piano won the Palme d'Or in 1993.)

Speaking with journalists after the ceremony Campion returned Dolan's kind words by complimenting Mommy. "It's such a great, brilliant and modern film," she said. "Dolan is kind of a genius, I think."

That he was paired with a cinematic legend was certainly not lost on Dolan. “With this decision, I recognize the deliberate gesture made by the jury to associate me and Jean-Luc Godard in cinema due to our search for freedom in two different eras," he stated. "He attempted to reinvent cinema in an era that he created. I would also like to be associated with such a change in direction. The jury perceived the sensitivity of both an old and young man, proof that cinema expresses itself through the generations.”

Like Mommy, the buzz for Zvyaginstev's Leviathan often contained whispers of a Palme d'Or. Though the Palme eluded Zvyaginstev, the filmmaker did not leave empty-handed, as he took home the screenwriting award with his co-writer Oleg Negin.

Campion and her fellow jurors spread the love around, as Cannes juries sometimes like to do, by presenting awards to eight of this year's 18 competition films. Bennett Miller won Best Director for Foxcatcher, which features Steve Carell in a dramatic role. Carell plays the heir to the du Pont family fortune in a true story that revolves around Olympic wrestlers.

For her performance as an increasingly desperate movie star in David Cronenberg's Maps to the Stars, Julianne Moore earned the Best Actress prize. The film is a searing take on Hollywood and its industry culture that often cuts a little too close to the bone. To be sure, Moore was one of the standouts during this year's festival, though the award just as easily could have gone to any number of actresses who turned in similarly strong performances, including Marion Cotillard for Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's Two Days, One Night or Anne Dorval who plays the mother in Mommy.

Timothy Spall gave one of the more moving, if not rambling, speeches of the evening upon winning Best Actor for Mr. Turner. Spall plays the main character in director Mike Leigh's biopic of the famous British landscape painter J.M.W. Turner. More widely known as a character actor in supporting roles than as a leading man, Spall joked, “I’ve spent a lot of time being a bridesmaid. This is the first time I’ve ever been a bride, so I’m quite pleased about that."

The actor had to be called back to the festival in order to accept the award. He thanked Leigh, with whom he has made numerous films over three decades, including Secrets & Lies. which took the Palme d'Or at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival. Spall was unable to attend the festival for that film since he was undergoing treatment for leukemia at the time. “I thank God that I’m still here and alive,” he said.