Today, May 16, 2013, the 66th Cannes Film Festival, one of the biggest arts events in France, officially opens. France has prepared for this film festival more meticulously, carefully, and professionally than anywhere else in the world. I haven't had the opportunity to attend many film festivals, but I've been fortunate enough to visit two of the biggest film capitals: Los Angeles, home to the annual Oscar awards in the US, and Cannes, home to the annual Palme d'Or in France.
Established in 1946, Cannes has hosted the film festival 65 times to date, a commercial and artistic event arguably the most boisterous of all cultural events in the year for the seventh art from around the world. The French were wise to choose Cannes, and not any other place on the hexagonal landmass (I suddenly wondered why Vietnam didn't choose Ha Long or Do Son?), to host the biggest festival for this captivating and attractive art form. Cannes, with its 9 km long coastline and fine golden sands, is even more beautiful than Nice, another extremely famous seaside city in Provence, about 20 km away.
It's difficult to compare two famous film locations in the two cinematic powerhouses of France and the United States. While Los Angeles is a vast, sprawling city, Cannes, on the other hand, is a small, picturesque town on the Mediterranean coast of the Côte d'Azur. Los Angeles, with its Hollywood capital, boasts dozens of film studios, serving both as film production sites and award venues, while Cannes is perhaps primarily just a film festival location.
How is the Cannes Film Festival different from the Oscars? It's difficult to say, as any comparison is flawed. We can only know that while Cannes and the Oscars may differ in their organizational structure, their common goal is to celebrate the beauty and talent of the works, directors, actors, and a host of other categories of a massive collective that makes a film. While the Oscars are simply an awards ceremony in the truest sense, Cannes, in addition to that, is also a vibrant and bustling fair. At the Cannes Film Festival, people can participate in many activities: watching films, meeting and interacting with film crews, trading and selling films, meeting between young filmmakers and sponsors, and attending the awards ceremony; at the Oscars, there is only one event: the awards ceremony, where attendees can only admire the actors and actresses from afar, without the opportunity to interact or converse directly with them.
I don't know exactly how many cinemas there are in Hollywood, the film capital, but in Cannes, a very small city, almost like a town, there are cinemas everywhere. And that's not even counting the dozens of satellite cinemas of all sizes, capable of holding anywhere from fifteen to three or four hundred viewers, set up around the Lumière Theatre in Cannes during the festival days. Those who have had the opportunity to attend Cannes as invited guests, meaning they were given a special membership card (depending on the type), are passionate about the seventh art, and want to take advantage of the short fifteen days of the film festival to see as many films as possible, are like marathon runners; after a day of exhausting legs, they are like athletes at the end of the race (unlike the Oscars, where films are screened throughout the year, and viewers can even buy DVDs to watch before going to the theater and only wait for the awards ceremony to anxiously compare the jury's decision with their predictions).
To have the chance to attend the Oscars ceremony at the Kodax Theatre (since 2013, due to the bankruptcy of Kodax Films, the Oscars ceremony has been moved to the Dolby Theatre), only prominent figures in the film industry and the press can get a ticket. However, getting an invitation to watch a film at the Lumière Theatre is much easier. During the 12 to 15 days of the film festival, at this prestigious theatre, apart from the final awards ceremony which is certainly the hardest to get a ticket for, tickets for the competition screenings are available to anyone who is an official invitee or knows a member of the jury or organizing committee. Of course, to be accepted into this theater and avoid breaking the bank, you must pay close attention to your attire. The French are known for their sophistication, so if your dress code isn't polite enough, security will certainly not let you in. My friends and I, who had the opportunity to attend the Lumière Theatre in 2008, paid the price for this. To walk the red carpet, you needed a black suit, tie, white shirt, and black leather shoes (it wasn't necessary to be a "big shot" guest). Because we weren't well-prepared, we each had to rent a suit for just a few hours, costing over a hundred euros. In Vietnamese currency, that was about half our monthly salary at the time. And with that amount of money, in Vietnam, one could buy a high-quality suit just like the one we rented from the flashy, ostentatious store for "superstars" (which we later grudgingly called the "new Thénardier").
Dedicating an entire city (albeit small, and usually only once a year) to an art form considered "the most important of all arts," the French certainly don't just focus on film. A picturesque seaside city on the Mediterranean coast, Cannes is also a captivating and alluring destination attracting millions of tourists worldwide every year. With its long stretches of white sand, crystal-clear waters, and ideal year-round temperatures around 20°C, along with hundreds of elegant and colorful yachts and thousands of young men and women, Cannes is truly an ideal destination for those with plenty of money to spare.
Regarding the artistic quality of films participating in the Cannes Film Festival and competing for the Oscars in Hollywood, I've heard many people, even film professionals, express concerns: Which is more artistic, the Palme d'Or or the Oscar? And what criteria are used to award the prizes? It's truly difficult to clearly distinguish and assess the artistic quality of a film that wins an Oscar in Hollywood or the Palme d'Or at Cannes. I believe both film capitals place great emphasis on the artistic quality of a film. Cannes has a jury comprised of representatives from the best filmmakers who watch and judge the films during the festival. The Oscars, on the other hand, have a jury of hundreds of people invited from various film centers, along with experts from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who watch and score the films before the awards ceremony. However, according to some industry experts, the Palme d'Or still values a film's discovery, novelty, and uniqueness more highly; while the Oscar seems to prioritize appeal and box office revenue. Of course, I think that's only relative, because in recent years, many Oscar-winning films have been forgotten immediately after the awards ceremony (and haven't set any box office records), and some Palme d'Or winners haven't left much of an artistic impression on viewers and critics. Recently, there have even been comments that the Oscars have become "politicized" (for example, Argo in 2013), while Cannes has become "formalistic" (paying too much attention to artistic expression and too little attention to entertainment, for example, Uncle Boonmee in 2010 by Thai director Apichatpong). The Oscars offer more award categories for films and filmmakers, while Cannes is more selective. The Oscars are primarily for American films (with only one award for a foreign film), whereas Cannes makes no distinction: any outstanding film from any country has a chance to win. And another strange thing: since the Palme d'Or was officially awarded (65 years ago), the United States has consistently won more awards than the host country, France (from around 1946 to 1996, the US won 14, while France only won 7). It seems the French are completely objective and not biased in any way. Perhaps this is why, although not officially stated, people have long "implicitly" asserted that the Palme d'Or is more "artistic" than the Oscar?