The selection of Michael Cimino's Sunchaser for competition came as a genuine surprise to many, especially since it is the Majors' only title on the competition slate. In tonight's screening, the film receives its world premiere - a market virgin, literally speaking - and it is expected to be rolled out in the United States by Warner Bros at the end of the year. Unless, that is, it reaches the dizzying heights of a Palme d'Or, which may then tempt the studio to bring its release date forward.
Whatever the result of the competition, a positive reaction to Sunchaser in Cannes will be a major step in recuperating director Cimino's rollercoaster career, which peaked nearly 20 years ago with The Deerhunter - earning Academy Awards for Best Film and Best Director - then plummeted almost immediately to previously-unimagined depths with the disastrous Heaven's Gate in 1980. The following years, he had mixed receptions for Year of the Dragon (1985), The Sicilian (1987) and, most recently, Desperate Hours (1990).
Cimino came out of retirement to shoot Desperate Hours, billed as "a searing drama about two extraordinarily-different individuals who traverse the majestic spaces of the American West, confronting the mysteries that separate death from life and hope from despair on a journey that transports them both to unexplored places on the road and in the soul". It is a journey similar to that taken by William Blake in Jim Jarmusch's flawed but very watchable Dead Man, which unspooled In Competition last year as a work in progress and has only now received its US release. Warner Bros will surely be looking for Cimino to deliver a work that is both more accessible and more rewarding at the box-office than Jarmusch's feature.
Sunchaser's Dr Michael Reynolds, played by Woody Harrelson, is a zealous over-achiever who, as the film opens, stands on the brink of being named director of oncology - a bloody business - at UCLA's Medical Centre. Remorseless in his pursuit of power, Reynolds manipulates colleagues, friends and family for his own ends.
Reynolds' nemesis is Brandon "Blue" Monroe (Jon Seda), a deadly 16-year-old gangbanger who is only given a month to live by doctors. Blue has a rare tumour that has grown so malignant he is beyond the help of traditional medical treatment. Hardened by years of fighting simply to stay alive on the streets, Blue has spent most of his life either terrorised by his abusive stepfather or banging it on the streets of Los Angeles, the reason for his incarceration.
But Blue has a dream that has sustained him through prison: a clear-eyed vision of a mythical place of healing, where he believes his ailing body can be restored to health. The location of this legendary spot, a lake on top of a sacred mountain, was divulged to him by a Navajo medicine man. He has a painting of the place that he keeps with him like a talisman - a road map, he hopes, to his physical and spiritual salvation.
Blue takes his one chance to escape from prison when he is being transferred from one secure unit to another - and en route to his healing ground, he kidnaps Reynolds at gunpoint. It is the start of a journey from the grim ghettos of Los Angeles, through the breathtaking deserts of Utah and Arizona, to the rarefied peaks of Colorado's La Plata Mountains; a journey which forces Reynolds to question his own convictions as he begins to consider the possibility that the boy's mythical mountain top might indeed exist.
"Reynolds is a man whose feelings are walled up inside him," says Harrelson, currently one of Hollywood's hottest properties, who can shortly be seen in the comedy Kingpin, playing alongside Randy Quaid and Bill Murray, as well as Milos Forman's The People vs Larry Flynt. "Reynolds' outer aspect is suave and charming, but inside he's churning," Harrelson continues. "His guilt-ridden past is eating away at him. The unexpected encounter with Blue turns him around and their journey together takes him into brand-new territory - both literally and figuratively."
Cimino is not the only name attached to Sunchaser to walk away with Hollywood's ultimate prize. Anne Bancroft, who plays a New Age mystic, won the 1963 Best Actress Oscar for The Miracle Worker; she was subsequently nominated for The Pumpkin Eater, The Graduate, The Turning Point and Agnes of God.
Composer Maurice Jarre is a three-time winner for his scores on Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and A Passage to India, and most recently was nominated for the score of Ghost. Director of photography, Doug Milsome, has been nominated for his work on Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, while editor Joe D'Augustine, who restored the classic Hondo for the John Wayne estate, was editor on the Academy Award winning short, The Appointments of Dennis Jennings.
Slim Pikins
Prod Co: New Regency
Prod: Arnon Milchan, Michael Cimino, Larry Spiegel, Judy Goldstein and Joseph Vecchio
Dir: Michael Cimino
Scr: Charles Leavitt
Ph: Doug Milsome
Prod des: Victoria Paul
Mus: Maurice Jarre
Ed: Joe D'Augustine
Cast: Woody Harrelson, Jon Seda, Anne Bancroft
Running time: 118mins
International Sales: Warner Bros
