"If you're not with me, you are my enemy," threatens Hayden Christensen, as the newly christened Darth Vader in "Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith". "Only a Sith deals in absolutes," responds Ewan McGregor coolly as the betrayed mentor, Obi-Wan. Such a line, not to mention the film's story of a growing empire that is transformed from a democracy into a dictatorship, has stirred some of the film's first viewers to question filmmaker George Lucas about the political context of the film. "This really came out of the Vietnam era," Lucas said today of his six-part story about the transformation and rise of Darth Vader. But he admitted during this afternoon's press conference here in Cannes that there are parallels between Vietnam and Iraq and added that such themes have recurred throughout history. The film was a hot topic, drawing massive crowds to the Croisette for the gala premiere last night, as reported on the indieWIRE @ Cannes blog
One a busy first weekend in France, the indieWIRE @ Cannes blog also covered Michael Haneke's latest. In Cannes for the eighth time, his fourth festival in competition. French filmmaker Michael Haneke unveiled "Caché" (Hidden) on Saturday morning. The film is the story of a French family (Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, and Lester Makedonsky) terrorized by a stalker. Also screening this weekend was Gus Van Sant's "Last Days". Michael Pitt stars as Blake, a musician who looks and lives a lot like Kurt Cobain. "It was a situaton of this psychosis where Kurt was alienated from what he thought he wanted and was entrapped by it," Kim Gordon explained, "Basically it was just kind of...in a sense I sort of felt like the character knew what would happen. But yet you want to treat somebody as an adult -- obviously, you can ony protect them so much."
