At Cannes, the Most Important Movies Are the Hardest Ones to Watch — Analysis

The mass-market movie industry must continually justify its existence by finding new ways to entertain.

The Cannes Film Festival also makes a case for the medium, however contrarian: The most important movies are the hardest ones to watch.This year, body horror landed as a double bill in the festival’s second week.

In competition was David Cronenberg’s dystopian “Crimes of the Future,” which envisioned an eerie future in which performance artists grow their own organs and futz with them onstage.

Down the street at the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar, an even greater provocation could be found with the innovative documentary“De Humani Corporis Fabrica.”Directors Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel probe the intricacies of the human body with such precision that at first the film initially seems like dare.

As the images of magnified blood vessels and brain tissue continue to dominate the screen, they take on a haunting abstract dimension.

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