Award-winning commercials challenge viewers

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This article was published 13/12/2017 (2319 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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Beware.

The annual roundup of award-winning commercials from the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity features some 55 short films, each one designed to make maximum impact in a short period of time.

For that reason, novices to the show should be aware the accumulation of films can be downright exhausting.

It gets intense.

Of course, part of that has to do with the fact that we now live in a world where advocates are obliged to make public service announcements about how to recognize a potential school shooter. Several spots have to do with the horrifying and heartbreaking plight of child refugees. One of these, titled Batman, is lots of fun… until it’s not.

But most of the intensity is, as it has always been, the result of smart filmmakers doing their best to get under your skin in the brief allotment of time they have.

They do this utilizing formidable filmmaking skills. A spot titled Sounds of Trauma, from the David Lynch Foundation, ingeniously uses sound-editing technique to demonstrate how the noises one hears in combat situations can occur in everyday life — a potential trigger for combat veterans. Another production, from Gillette, advertising a razor designed for shaving the face of another, has the look and feel of old-school cinema verite in telling the story of a man who cares for his aged father, disabled by a stroke.

Like classic movie musicals? You’ll love the Grand Prix-winning closing spot, We’re the Superhumans, depicting Paralympic athletes doing their thing to a jaunty musical number.

It is always fascinating how certain recurring themes occur in these programs. This year, one of the more prominent threads is female power, employed in three superb Nike spots — a rousing one for women’s sportswear line Da Ding Clothing, and another depicting a little girl singing a sweetly sentimental song — What Are Girls Made Of? — at a recital that gets less sweet as it goes on (the closing shot is priceless). The third is a documentary spot about an 87-year-old nun whom an unseen narrator condescendingly compliments for her fitness regime — running, cycling and swimming — until it emerges she is a regular contestant of the Ironman triathlon: the sister is hardcore.

Most of the commercials should be new to Canadian viewers, although Canadian advertisers are well-represented. Note the fast, funny spot for a Quebec beer depicting a bride left at the altar.

A bonus for film lovers is a delightful spot for a French film-streaming service wherein a French filmmaker pitches various real American producers on movie concepts, with said producers unaware that the films being pitched — among them Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue Is the Warmest Colour and Michael Haneke’s Amour — are already bona fide hits in France, even if they could never get made in Hollywood.

Therein, perhaps, lies the appeal of the globe-spanning program. There are so many ways to transcend the “commercial” if you’re sufficiently bold.

randall.king@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @FreepKing