VENICE — She had collected the Oscar, the Tony, and the Emmy, the three trophies that, in the American entertainment industry, constitute a career. On Sunday evening at the Palazzo del Cinema on the Venice Lido, Ellen Burstyn received a fourth, and she cried.
When the Biennale Cinema presented the 93-year-old actor with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, the standing ovation started before she reached the microphone and did not stop for what felt like several minutes. Burstyn wiped her face with a tissue, gathered herself, and said what she could. “It’s one thing to win an Oscar, a Tony or an Emmy, all of which I’ve won. But this is a lot.”
The moment was rooted in an unusual circumstance. The ceremony accompanied a screening of jury president Maggie Gyllenhaal’s 17-minute short film “Flesh Impact,” in which Burstyn plays Marilyn Monroe imagined at 100 years old, auditioning alone on a bare stage. The film was Gyllenhaal’s directorial contribution to the festival she is also presiding over as competition jury president, a double role that is either very ambitious or very Venice, depending on who you ask. The effect was to give Burstyn’s honor the texture of a complete artistic statement rather than a plaque handed across a lectern.
With three days left before the competition jury announces its verdicts on September 12, the 83rd Venice International Film Festival enters its decisive stretch in an unusual position. While the Emmy Awards closed out their television season this week in Los Angeles, the Lido has produced something the television calendar rarely allows: a genuine two-film race with no obvious third option waiting to complicate it.
The film that generated the most unambiguous critical enthusiasm is “Primetime,” directed by Lance Oppenheim for A24 and starring Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen, the television journalist whose career tracked the transformation of American broadcast culture. When the film premiered last Saturday, the audience at the Palazzo del Cinema stayed on its feet for seven minutes. Pattinson’s partner Suki Waterhouse was in attendance, and the film holds a 92 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes with a Metacritic score of 76. Oppenheim designed “Primetime” as a period thriller shot in claustrophobic 4:3 aspect ratio, and the combination has positioned Pattinson for the kind of Best Actor conversation that can survive the distance from September to March.
Danny Boyle opened the festival on September 2 with “Ink,” a drama tracking Rupert Murdoch and editor Larry Lamb as they launch The Sun newspaper in 1969 London, starring Guy Pearce with Jack O’Connell and Claire Foy in support. The film arrived to largely positive reviews and a 92 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, with critics describing Boyle’s approach as “Citizen Kane by way of Trainspotting.” Whether “Ink” remains a contender after “Primetime” and “Wild Horse Nine” consumed the conversation in the festival’s first weekend is the question the jury will answer when deliberations begin Friday evening.
George Clooney received his own Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the opening ceremony on September 2. His presence anchored the kind of major American celebrity draw that Venice deploys strategically at the start of each edition, generating global press attention before the competition films begin to define the conversation. Both Clooney and Burstyn were honored by an institution that knows, from decades of experience, that a lifetime achievement presentation lands hardest when it accompanies serious artistic work rather than standing apart from one.
According to the official Venice program, the competition lineup also includes films from Werner Herzog, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Lee Chang-dong, and Nanni Moretti, whose “Succederà questa notte” is among five Italian productions in the main competition. None of those films generated the sustained critical momentum that “Primetime” and “Wild Horse Nine” accumulated in the festival’s first week. Whether Gyllenhaal’s jury honors the films that moved the Lido or reaches for something less anticipated is the one variable the awards season calendar cannot account for in advance.
A Venice win does not guarantee the Oscar. What it guarantees is a platform, a review cycle, and the momentum that carries a film into Toronto and then New York. A “Wild Horse Nine” that wins the Golden Lion becomes the story McDonagh is telling about Malkovich and Rockwell’s campaigns. A “Primetime” win becomes the story A24 is telling about Pattinson. The outcome will be known before the Lido empties on Friday night. But nobody at the Palazzo del Cinema, not even the jury, is saying which way it falls.
Burstyn walked off the stage still wiping her face, the Golden Lion in her arms. She has been in this business for seven decades. It still surprised her.
