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Ken Loach Wins At Cannes, Now His Life Is Over
30-May-2006
Written by: Alexander Rogers
Famed British director finally wins top prize at international festival, leading many Americans to shrug and go back to their mutants and albinos.
After 40 years behind the helm of films that often portrayed the dour, filthy underbelly holding a capitalist empire like Britain's together, Ken Loach has finally been recognized for his decades of work when he won the top prize at Cannes. Loach, who had been nominated for the prize, the Palme d'Or, seven times previously (although he has not once been nominated for a Oscar or Bafta) has always been a stalwart for the political left and, some say, a consumate critic of the American-dominated mainstream in film. Some took his latest film, "The Wind That Shakes The Barley," which tells the story of two brothers who fight in the IRA against both the British colonial authorities and the brutal militia of the Black and Tans, was not just a look back at the moral wages of Britain's empire but also an allegory of the current situation in Iraq.
Loach, a man who depended on a lottery grant to help finance his film, used his opportunity at the podium to rail against the popular appetite for fluff and fantasy. Instead, Loach reported argued that it was the responsibility of all filmmakers to frame their stories in response to current events, even if the realities of the Iraq war and such don't make for always pleasant experiences. His speech was tinged by the specters of the age-old debate: whether filmmakers should produce films that audiences will have fun viewing or if the industry should operate under the assumption there are movies that people need to see. Whether Loach will succeed in his efforts to raise up the masses against the state of mass-communication is not likely considering his relatively low standing outside of mainland Europe, where Cannes stands as the premiere film awards event. However, for a few lovers of foreign films his win has dignified a career marked by compassion for the common man and a distaste for 300-million-dollar action blockbusters or international thrillers about Jesus having sex.
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