The controversy continues! Well, that might be putting it a bit dramatically. Recently, Lars Von Trier was banned from the Cannes film festival because he made some inappropriate Nazi jokes at a press junket. While the jokes were in poor taste and badly executed, what he said was not, in my opinion, worthy of him being banned from the festival. In an interesting turn of events, Kirsten Dunst, the star of the film Von Trier was promoting (his latest crazy flick called Melancholia about a planet of melancholy threatening to collide with the earth – I kid you not), won the Best Actress award at Cannes. In the video above, you’ll get to hear her response to the question of whether she felt that what happened to Von Trier was justified. Here’s a key quote that has me pretty incensed:
“I should not be affected by things that he said. So for me, things that he said were very inappropriate and idiotic, and I’m pleased that the festival and the jury could see beyond his words. This is a festival about freedom of speech and film, and what he did was separate, and he paid for it.”
Now hang on a second here. Dunst won an award for being in Von Trier’s film. Calling Von Trier idiotic is a bit much, don’t you think? Not only that, but she follows up her passive insult by saying that the festival is about freedom of speech and film, and that Von Trier paid for what he said. Does anybody else see the contradiction here? If the festival was really about freedom of speech, then there’s no way Von Trier would have been banned for saying something controversial. This whole fiasco stinks, and I’m really unimpressed with the Cannes festival organizers and Kirsten Dunst for their take on what was just a bad move on the part of a director. Von Trier has been attending Cannes for over a decade. Are a few minutes of poorly-chosen words really enough to warrant throwing him out?
What do you think, folks? Do you think Dunst is being a bit bitchy here? I recognize her desire to separate herself from the whole ordeal, but come on. She won an award for being in Von Trier’s film. The least she could do is acknowledge that if it weren’t for him, she wouldn’t have found this success.