CANNES, France — It's hard to render Michael Moore speechless, but the jury at the Cannes Film Festival did just that Saturday when it awarded the director the coveted Palme d'Or for his incendiary new political documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11."
"What have you done?" were the first words out of a flabbergasted Moore's mouth. "I am completely overwhelmed by this." Then, looking at panel President Quentin Tarantino and the rest of the Cannes jury, which has more Americans than any other nationality, he added suspiciously, "You just did this to mess with me." In the audience, Miramax Films Chairman Harvey Weinstein, whose company backs both Tarantino and Moore, stood with his hand on his head, equally stunned.
The nine-member jury's decision to give Moore the top prize further raises the profile of an unabashedly partisan indictment of the Bush administration and its policies before and after Sept. 11.
Moore had returned to the United States, where his daughter was receiving a master's degree but was called back to France by festival officials. He won a prize at Cannes in 2002 for "Bowling for Columbine," but no documentary had won the festival's top honor since Jacques Cousteau's "The Silent World" nearly half a century ago.
Still without American distribution after the Walt Disney Co. forbade subsidiary Miramax from releasing it, "Fahrenheit 9/11" also took the prestigious international critics award. It has been greeted by the festival's European contingent with near messianic fervor, and there was sustained applause when this award was announced at the Palais des Festivals. Some earlier winners praised Moore and denounced Bush.
Almost from its inception, the film has generated a crescendo of publicity in the weeks leading up to the festival as Moore and Weinstein made the most of Disney's rejection of the movie. Moore wants to have it in U.S. theaters by Independence Day and out on DVD before the presidential election, and Weinstein is in negotiations to buy the film himself and arrange for its distribution. Canadian-based Lions Gate Films, U.S. independent Newmarket Films (which released another movie that generated a lot of controversy, Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ"), NBC Universal's Focus Features and Viacom's Paramount Classics division are believed to be interested in the U.S. distribution rights.
A Palme d'Or does not always affect a film's box-office performance, but in this case it probably will bolster the movie's profile.
Earlier in the evening, Jonas Geirnaert, the Belgian winner of a short film award, used his acceptance speech to praise Moore and pleaded, "If anyone is watching from the United States, please don't vote Bush." Actor Tim Roth, president of the Camera d'Or jury (which gave its best first-film prize to the Israeli film "Or"), added: "I compliment that young man and I agree wholeheartedly. People should not be voting for George Bush."
Once he calmed down, Moore said he was "happy to announce that we have a distributor in Albania. Now every country in the world can see this film except one. I have sneaking suspicion that you've ensured that the American people will see this film. You've put a huge light on this, you've taken truth out of the closet. A Republican president once said, 'If you just give people the truth the Republic will be saved.' That was Abraham Lincoln, a different kind of Republican than George Bush."
Aside from Moore's film, the internationally diverse jury's awards were all over the map. If there was a trend, it was to acknowledge the films from Asia in competition, as four out of six entrants from that continent were given awards. The runner-up Grand Prix went to the South Korean film "Old Boy," directed by Park Chan Wook.
A violent and sensationalistic film by a director who's been called the Korean Tarantino, "Old Boy" is a story of a man who seeks revenge after being incarcerated in a makeshift prison for 15 years. The actor who played the prisoner, Choi Min Sik, mentioned "the four living octopuses who gave their lives for the film" when he ate them.
Both acting awards went to Asians. Maggie Cheung won for "Clean," French director Olivier Assayas' tale of a junkie rocker trying to straighten out and reconnect with her son, and 12-year-old Yagira Yuya was voted best actor for Japan's "Nobody Knows," a delicate, casually heartbreaking film about four children trying to survive after being abandoned by their mother. The film's director, Kore-eda Hirokazu, accepted for the boy, who he said had returned to Japan to take exams.
Though Wong Kar-wai's much anticipated "2046" came away empty-handed, a jury prize was given to the Thai film "Tropical Maladies," directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
