Clooney Wins Golden Lion as Venice Opens with Murdoch Film
The 83rd Venice Film Festival opened tonight on the Lido with "Ink," a film about the purchase of The Sun newspaper, as George Clooney received the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement.
When Laura Dern took the stage at the Sala Grande on the Lido on the evening of September 2, the audience already knew what was coming. She was there to present the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement to George Clooney (65), the actor she shared the screen with last year, in Venice itself, in the film “Jay Kelly.” The ceremony began at 7 p.m. and officially opened the 83rd Venice Film Festival, running on the Lido through September 12.
The Film About the Man Who Invented the Modern Tabloid
The festival itself, however, did not open with a Clooney film, but with one that has nothing to do with him. “Ink,” the new film from British director Danny Boyle, screened in the Sala Grande competition lineup as one of 21 films vying for the Golden Lion this year. It follows Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of the British newspaper The Sun in 1969 and his decision to hand the paper over to editor Larry Lamb, a move that turned the Sun into Britain’s most-read tabloid. The editor’s name appears differently across sources: Kurir spells it Larry Lamb, B92 spells it Larry Lem, but it is the same person. The film stars Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce and Claire Foy.
Boyle is the director behind “Trainspotting” and “Slumdog Millionaire,” and the screenplay for “Ink” was written by James Graham, a multiple Olivier Award winner. On the film’s selection as the festival’s opening title, he said:
I’ve been to the Biennale many times, but this is my baptism of fire at the festival. It’s a huge honor to be in a city of such extraordinary art, and to open this great festival with my new film, “Ink.”
The line sounds like the kind of polite remark any director offers at an opening, but it carries a noticeable irony: a man celebrating a city of art with a film about the birth of the tabloid press, a genre that rarely does art any favors.
Why Open the Festival with a Story About Murdoch?
Part of the answer lies in the program’s own scheduling. Venice this year paired two kinds of attention that rarely share the same evening: an honorary award for an actor whose career is synonymous with Hollywood glamour, and a film that dissects the machinery that produces and sells that very glamour. Clooney arrives on the red carpet as a product of the system “Ink” is about, and the festival, likely by design, opens its season on that contrast.
The rest of the lineup follows the same thread. The international jury awarding the Golden Lion is chaired by actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, and the announced titles include “Primetime,” in which Robert Pattinson plays journalist Chris Hansen, known for the show that used hidden cameras to confront alleged sexual predators with their own actions, a format that turned moral panic into a television genre. Also arriving is “Bunker,” starring Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem as a married couple whose home is a shelter built by an architect for a tech billionaire, ready for an apocalypse that may never come.
Two entries on the program go beyond entertainment. A documentary about the war in Gaza, titled “Naza,” is directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the team behind the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land.” It was filmed at night from rooftops in Tel Aviv and tracks the systems behind Israeli military operations, as well as the toll on Palestinian civilians. At the opposite end of the emotional spectrum is “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” a documentary about the reunion of Oasis, whose premiere is expected to draw Liam and Noel Gallagher. A tabloid inventing a narrative, a show catching offenders on camera, a war documented from a rooftop, and a band whose reconciliation the whole world watched: all of them are stories about who controls the picture the public receives, which is exactly the question “Ink” opens the entire festival with.
By September 12, when the Golden Lion winner is announced, it should be clearer whether choosing a film about Murdoch to open the festival was an editorial statement or simply how the schedule fell into place. For now, Venice is open, Clooney has his statuette, and Boyle has his baptism of fire on the Lido.
