As Hollywood’s finest gather at Cannes Film Festival this week, the event’s strangest phenomenon – and greatest overindulgence – has been making headlines again: the standing ovation.
The French Riviera event breeds longer standing ovations than any typical night at London’s West End. In part, this is because, after the screening finishes at each world premiere, a camera swoops in on the cast and crew in attendance, and projects their faces onto the enormous Palais screen. Ovations perhaps only continue for so long because of the camera feed – each time its lens homes in on another star of the film, there are renewed claps and cheers.
The standing ovation has become such a part of the festival’s glittering fabric that people whip out stop-watches (or their phones) to record how long they last.
The longest in the event’s history is thought to have been for Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 fantasy-horror Pan’s Labyrinth.
At the film’s premiere, the audience stood, thwacking their hands together and swooning, for a total of 22 minutes. That’s the length of most sitcom episodes.
The movie was arguably worth getting sore palms for. The sinister film, which incorporated elements of myth, fairy tales and folklore, along with influences from Del Toro’s own childhood, was set five years after the Spanish Civil War, and went on to win three Oscars at the Academy Awards.
Other films to receive cringingly long standing ovations at the festival include Michael Moore’s 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 (20 minutes) and Jeff Nichols’ 2012 drama Mud (18 minutes).
In 2021, Annette star Adam Driver appeared to get so bored during the film’s Cannes standing ovation that he started smoking a cigarette.
At the 2024 festival, Kevin Costner’s Western epic Horizon: An American Saga made headlines for the length of its standing ovation – which, at 11 minutes and 40 seconds, is measly compared to its forebears.
Earlier this month, Joaquin Phoenix reportedly grew emotional when his new film Eddington received a sustained standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival.
The new film from Midsommar director Ari Aster has been described as a state-of-the-nation comedy that includes references to the covid pandemic, cults and the white saviour complex. It stars Pedro Pascal and Emma Stone alongside Phoenix.
The festival’s reaction drew contrasting reports:Variety wrote that Phoenix had “teared up” during a “five-minute standing ovation,” while Deadline claimed it was a “nearly seven-minute ovation”.
The Hollywood Reporter also noted Phoenix “tearing up” but described a “somewhat muted standing ovation.”
In a four-star review of Eddington for The Independent, critic Sophie Monks Kaufman wrote: “Set in 2020, amid the pandemic and the wave of Black Lives Matter protests that erupted after the police murder of George Floyd, Eddington initially cleaves to Aster’s usual character template.”
She added: “Aster’s enduring preoccupation with the paranoid universes we build in our minds takes on a less sympathetic, more malign aspect when this self-absorption wears a law enforcement badge and carries a rifle.”
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