CANNES DISPATCH
Photographs & interview by GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER
‘The importance of the festival is not only to celebrate good films,’ says Stellan Skarsgård when Greg Williams meets him in his suite at the Majestic Hotel ahead of his Cannes Festival jury duties. ‘It’s mainly important because it puts the light on these films that don’t have any money for publicity. They don’t have money for billboards. And they get seen by a lot of people at festivals. They get noticed by awards; by festivals in general. I think that cinema needs to be preserved as cinema, in a cinema – so we don’t think that it’s the same experience to watch it on television. Because it’s not. It’s another art form. Cinema is supposing that you’re watching it all the time. That you’re concentrating on it. That you’re following the film in detail. And that means that you have a lot of things that are without words. That are unsaid, because it’s all on the screen. And those things are immensely valuable.’
Skarsgård would know. A veteran of the festival and an actor who has known the industry for years as well as watched his actor sons, Alexander and Bill, chart a course through it, the Swedish artist is thrilled to be spending ten days watching cinema under jury president Park Chan-wook. His own work has previously come under such scrutiny.
‘Breaking the Waves was my first Cannes Film Festival. I’d been to Berlin before. But it was overwhelming because it was also a great success for the film. It was insane. I was totally unprepared for it. Not as unprepared as [co-star] Emily Watson. She was very unprepared. It was her first film. I felt like I had to protect her,’ he laughs. ‘But, of course, it was beautiful. I came with several Lars von Trier films, and ended up with Melancholia. Every film was like reinvented cinema, and every film was something new; something people hadn’t seen before. It was always exciting to be here with a Lars von Trier film.’
Being a jury member is a special privilege, he says.And a very different experience from attending the festival as an actor.‘Nobody’s watching you for what you’ve done, and nobody’s demanding anything of you, except that you watch films. And that’s easy – compared to having the pressure of wanting to win, and having to win for the success of the film. But now, I’m just going to watch films. I’ve never seen a film at Cannes before, except for films that I’ve been in, because I’ve never had time….’
Stellan Skarsgård is a jury member of the 79th Cannes Film Festival
