Cannes Films Mirror a Troubled World

CANNES, France (Reuters) -- If cinema is the mirror of the world, then the films at this year's Cannes festival suggest the world is in a sorry state.

War, rape, kidnap, torture, prejudice, environmental meltdown and dictatorship filled the screens during 12 days of competition, which ended on Sunday with British director Ken Loach taking the "Palme d'Or" prize for his Irish war drama.

While "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" is not a political polemic in the mold of Michael Moore's 2004 Cannes winner "Fahrenheit 9/11," Loach draws parallels between the Irish fight against British rule in 1920 and the events in Iraq today.

The runner-up prize went to "Flanders," another film about war, and, although French director Bruno Dumont denied any overt message, the portrayal of soldiers fighting Arab-speaking forces in desert terrain meant comparisons with Iraq were inevitable.

U.S. actor George Clooney has likened movies' preoccupation with controversial issues to political cinema in the '60s and '70s, and Loach, a left-wing director critical of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, welcomed the movement.

"The wars that we have seen, the occupations that we see throughout the world -- people finally cannot turn away from that," he told reporters on Sunday.

"The fact that this is reflected in cinema is very important for the health of cinema. It's very exciting to be able to deal with this in films and not just be a complement to the popcorn."

The Wind That Shakes the Barley and Flanders were two of 20 main competition films in Cannes.

Also touching on sensitive issues were Chinese director Lou Ye's "Summer Palace," set against the backdrop of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, and "Days of Glory," exploring how North Africans fought for France during World War Two.

"Buenos Aires 1977" told the story of four men kidnapped and tortured by the military government in Argentina, while "Pan's Labyrinth" was a dark fantasy story about a girl's mental escape from the cruelty of Franco's Spain in 1944.

And "Babel," which won Mexican Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu the best director award, explores how the West and Arab world often jump to wrong conclusions about each other due to the atmosphere of suspicion since September 11, 2001.

"One of the hallmarks of this year's festival entries ... is a generally less blatant and ham-fisted treatment of politics in favor of working issues implicitly into storylines," said Todd McCarthy of trade magazine Variety.

JURY "EXHAUSTED"

British juror Helena Bonham Carter described watching the Cannes selection as surprisingly exhausting.

"In many films, there has been a lot of violence ... and bleak landscapes. And that's taken a toll on us -- certainly on me and my nervous system," she said.

Two of three U.S. movies in competition joined the trend.

Richard Linklater's "Fast Food Nation" is a critique of big restaurant chains in the United States, while Richard Kelly's "Southland Tales" portrays the country in the near future on the verge of social and environmental catastrophe.

Linklater was also in Cannes with out-of-competition "A Scanner Darkly," based on a 1977 novel by Philip K. Dick which the cast said proved prescient.

One important theme explored in the film is the government's use of the threat of "drug terrorism" to clamp down on personal freedom.

"Certain personal rights that were protected in the (U.S.) constitution for privacy are being chipped away at under the guise of homeland security without redress, and that's not good," Keanu Reeves, who stars in the film, told Reuters.

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore presented a global warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," and two U.S. directors showed early clips from upcoming movies that tackle 9/11 and the Iraq war head on.

Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" stars Nicolas Cage as a New York Port Authority policeman who is trapped in the rubble of the collapsing towers.

And in "Home of the Brave," Irwin Winkler explores not only the war but its lasting impact on soldiers returning home.

(Additional reporting by Kerstin Gehmlich)