Movies

What do we do now?It’s a big question — as a matter of policy, national purpose and social cohesion it’s the big question — made up of a knot of local, individual, practical decisions. What actions can each of us take to stay healthy, connected and sane, to fight the dangerous secondary infections of boredom, selfishness and panic? How are we going to stay busy? How are we going to keep ourselves entertained?That last one may seem like a trivial problem with an easy solution. Lives and livelihoods are at stake, and there’s still plenty to watch on television. Maybe the lamentations about the closing of restaurants, bars, nightclubs, theaters and museums represent the displacement of deeper fears about the wholesale collapse of civilization. But it’s also true that the suspension of those amusements — of every form of cultural activity that involves the presence of other people — is a grievous loss, and a cause for real grief.We console ourselves with stopgaps and substitutes. There’s so much music and television to stream. There are stacks of books we never got around to reading, and games of meme-tag to play on social media. There are jokes to make about writing the next “King Lear.”All those energetic ways of making do may themselves be manifestations of grief — signs that we’re in the bargaining stage, much as those last nights out in early and mid-March were expressions of denial. (Those are the first and third phases in the Kübler-Ross sequence. Did we skip the second one, anger, or are we just so used to being angry all the time that we didn’t notice?)The loss we are confronting is real and profound, even if it turns out to be temporary. We are undergoing a trauma that we can’t fully comprehend. Denied our favorite sources of fun, we have also been robbed of the resources of meaning and community they represent.Much discussion of the coronavirus’s impact on the arts has focused on economics, on the dire effects on box-office revenues and business models, and on our roles as workers and consumers. A vibrant marketplace has shut down; industries face devastation.At the same time, our habits of cultural consumption connect us to an atavistic world of ritual, a way of being that money can never account for. The music fans who would have streamed into Coachella and the cinephiles alighting in Cannes retrace ancient routs and rites of pilgrimage. Bands on tour carry the memory of itinerant troubadours and acrobats caravanning from town to town, performing on makeshift stages in the village square. A movie house is like a house of worship: some congregations insist on silent contemplation, while others favor ecstatic call-and-response prayer.Theater, the most protean of art forms, and one of the oldest, has an especially complex genome. Susan Sontag once described theater as “this seasoned art, occupied since antiquity with all sorts of local offices — enacting sacred rites, reinforcing communal loyalty, guiding morals, provoking the therapeutic discharge of violent emotions, conferring social status, giving practical instruction, affording entertainment, dignifying celebrations, subverting established authority.” That’s only a partial list, and these “offices” persist, at least as latent possibilities and memory traces, at every performance of “Hamilton” or “Our Town.”What unites those disparate functions is the way theater, like other public art forms, makes us aware of a boundary that it simultaneously allows us, at least for a moment, to cross. Art is a way of knowing, of seeing and feeling, the borders that separate work from leisure, the sacred from the secular, the ordinary from the exalted, passivity from action, life from death. It makes us witnesses and participants in the crossing of those frontiers, and in doing so makes visible and permeable the boundaries between our individual and communal selves. We are alone in the dark of the theater or the light of the museum, and also together.For the last few years, motivated by affection rather than expertise, I’ve taught a college course on postwar Italian cinema. One of the things I love about the movies we study — and one of the things that makes them wonderfully resistant to classroom analysis — is how they defy the usual categories. My students and I puzzle over what seem like basic questions of style and genre: comedy or tragedy? Satire or sincerity? Happy ending or sad? Everything is mixed together — humor and pathos, horror and absurdity, Christian piety and pagan revelry, modern manners and primal urges.Even the most austere filmmakers — Vittorio De Sica in his late-1940s neorealist phase; Michelangelo Antonioni in his early-’60s explorations of alienation — can’t avoid the warmth and noise of communal life. Virtually every classic Italian film includes a chaotic meal, a religious procession or festival, a gaggle of squealing children tumbling through the frame. Solemnity will always be punctured. Solitude exists to be interrupted. Life is intrusive, unruly and beautiful.My hunch — supported only by the haphazard, dreamy research of looking at pictures, moving and otherwise — has always been that Italian filmmakers like De Sica, Roberto Rossellini and especially Federico Fellini were not only responding to the realities of Italian life in the hectic middle decades of the 20th century. They were also, consciously or not, refracting the influence of centuries of Italian art.Renaissance and baroque paintings of sacred subjects — last suppers, crucifixions, the torments of saints — bustle with profane life. The holy business at the center of the tableau is nearly upstaged by the flirting, drinking, gambling and fighting happening around the edges. Children and dogs cavort under the furniture. Elders grow distracted and sleepy. Adolescents roll their eyes in boredom. And for the viewer, wandering into the gallery hundreds of years too late for the party, the distinction between art and life dissolves. I know these people. We are these people.The film scholar Joseph Luzzi, writing about Italian neorealism, describes the role of the social group in these films as “chorality.” The word evokes ancient Greek tragedy, in which the chorus played a central role in the drama. More than simply commenting on the main action, the chorus, at least in the highly speculative theory proposed by Nietzsche, was the true protagonist, linking the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides to even older Dionysian rituals. If the destruction of the hero provides a reminder of the inevitability of death, the voice of the chorus offers the compensatory, comforting lesson that “life is at the bottom of things, despite all the changes of appearances, indestructibly powerful and pleasurable.”Recently, as communal life in Italy came to an agonized halt, the world caught a glimpse of this chorality in action. Videos of empty streets and locked-down high-rises brought to life by the singing of sequestered neighbors traveled around the internet. Like Italian movies, they mixed sentimentality with occasional silliness, but they also had a haunting, consoling aesthetic power.Those songs, so potent in their impotence, so inessential and yet so necessary, were reminders of what we stand to lose, and why we can’t stand to lose it. None of us is a hero: We are the chorus in this tragedy. We mourn for art because at the moment we are unable to mourn through art. What we do now is grieve, so that we can survive. More

When it was released in theaters less than a month ago, “The Invisible Man” looked like a breakout hit with a topical twist: This modern-day adaptation of the H.G. Wells science-fiction novel tells the story of a Bay Area woman, played by Elisabeth Moss, whose abusive ex-boyfriend (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) has apparently committed suicide and left her a large sum of money. But when she tries to move forward, she is unable to convince others that her unseen ex might still be stalking her.Moss, the Emmy Award-winning star of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” was widely praised for her performance in “The Invisible Man” (written and directed by Leigh Whannell of “Saw” and “Insidious” fame), and the film had sold more than $122 million in tickets worldwide before the coronavirus pandemic shuttered most movie theaters. Now, “The Invisible Man” is one of a few new movies that Universal Pictures will release Friday through on-demand video services, in a break from longstanding entertainment industry traditions. (Also due Friday, at a cost of $20 for a 48-hour rental, are “The Hunt” and “Emma.”)In a phone interview on Wednesday, Moss said she supported this experiment and was hopeful it would help “The Invisible Man” reach more viewers. “This is all new territory for everyone,” she said. “It’s an inevitable move. I also think that it’s a brave move.” She added, “If we can provide a couple hours of escape for people who are at home, and they can get a chance to forget about things for a second, that’s great.”Moss spoke about the contemporary themes of “The Invisible Man,” its insights into the nature of abuse and how horror movies can still offer relief in anxious times. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.Were horror movies part of your cultural diet when you were growing up?I’ve always been a fan of horror films. Ever since I was 11 or 12, I would get together with my girlfriends from ballet school and we’d have sleepovers and we’d watch scary movies. That was our subversive act.Since you were studying ballet, I have to ask, did you ever watch “Suspiria”?No, I don’t think we were quite that highbrow. It was more like “Nightmare on Elm Street.” But we freaked ourselves out, for sure.How were you approached about “The Invisible Man”?I was doing Season 3 of [“The Handmaid’s Tale”], and I had done “Us,” and as soon as I read this script, I completely understood why this was definitely up my alley. It was this convergence of a genre-film reboot and an emotional character piece. This is the Jordan Peele way of approaching the genre — you’re taking something that’s, on the surface, entertaining and a popcorn movie, but at the same time, there’s a deeper message to it. I was like, OK, I see exactly why they think this is for me.When people think of you for a character who’s going to suffer, emotionally and physically, do you take it as a compliment?Absolutely. When I read scripts like this, I’m really flattered that they think that I can jump through these emotional hoops.Do you think that the feminist perspective has been absent from horror films?There are films that have had women at the center, especially recently with “Bird Box” and “A Quiet Place.” It also harkens back to the ’70s and ’80s, when you had “The Shining” and “The Exorcist.” These movies were about more than what was on the surface.It was Leigh Whannell’s idea to approach “The Invisible Man” this way, to tell it from the perspective of the victim and make it an analogy for women not being believed, women not being heard — women being told that they’re crazy or emotional when they believed something was happening to them. The parallel is so incredibly obvious and incredibly relevant.How do you approach the scenes where you’re essentially acting opposite no one, but you have to believe that another person is there?So much of my job is about imagination — creating something that is not there or erasing things that are there. So it’s not as big of a leap as you would think.Behind the scenes of that big fight sequence that I did and quite a few of the moments where I had to make physical contact with the Invisible Man, I was doing it with either Ollie [Jackson-Cohen] or a stunt double. It would have been impossible to do that fight without an actual, physical person there. That said, the fight when Aldis [Hodge, her co-star] gets beat up by the Invisible Man in the hallway, he did that by himself. It’s one of the greatest physical acting accomplishments I’ve ever seen in my life. He’s also super-fit. I can’t do that.When you’ve spent the time immersing yourself in the themes of this film, do you emerge from the project a different person in any way?Because of the roles that I’ve played, I’ve always had an extreme awareness of the patriarchy and of women put in abusive situations or who experience sexual servitude. Mental and emotional abuse is a much harder thing to quantify. It’s much more difficult to be believed and much harder to receive empathy. We tend to go, she’s not happy, she’s being abused, why doesn’t she just get out? Leigh and I had many conversations about wanting to show that a woman who experiences abuse isn’t weak, isn’t stupid. There are strong and intelligent women out there who wind up in positions that they find very difficult to get out of, and it’s not their fault.How do you feel about the movie getting such a rapid on-demand release?I was quite honestly hoping that they would make it available to people at home sooner than was originally planned. It’s an unusual move. But at the same time, we live in an unusual moment. Are movies going to be this way forever? I have no idea. That’s up to much smarter heads than mine. But this week, I think it’s a good idea.There’s one particular scene in this movie — I don’t want to spoil it here — that absolutely shocked viewers who saw it in theaters. Will it work the same when you’re watching at home and can’t hear the reactions of other moviegoers?I think it’s just a different experience. I’ve watched so many horror films at home, and I was still terrified. Of course, seeing something in a theater with an audience is so singular. But at the same time, I think there is an experience that you can have at home that’s just as scary and just as meaningful, even if it’s different. In fact, you’ll be alone at home, which is probably the scariest way to watch this movie. I would just recommend turning out all the lights and turning up the volume as much as you can.Do you see any connections among the film and TV characters you have portrayed recently, including Becky Something, the unruly rock star you played in “Her Smell”?I really take great pleasure in pushing characters to the extreme. It gets more and more challenging to find new ways to do that. You have to keep asking yourself, what can I do now that is different? For me, it’s not about necessarily always playing the good guy. What I loved about Becky was that I got to play somebody who was not an admirable human being, and who was really quite honestly terrible, most of the time. [Laughs]Many viewers first took notice of you on “Mad Men,” where you played Peggy Olson, who was a much more constrained character. Was that at all inhibiting? Did you feel like the role let you show your full range as an actor?“Mad Men” was a much slower burn than “The Invisible Man” or “The Handmaid’s Tale,” but Peggy changed so much from Season 1 to Season 7. Every single season, I felt like she was a different person when we came back. Playing within the constraints of a character is very challenging, too — playing a person who can’t express themselves, or is under a patriarchy or in a work environment that’s extremely sexist and having to navigate that, that is a very human and relatable experience as well.Part of it, too, is that I developed a lot as an actor over the years. I don’t know if I could have done “Handmaid’s Tale” at 23, which is when I started “Mad Men.” Working with Jane Campion on [the mystery-drama series] “Top of the Lake,” which I did between seasons of “Mad Men,” was such an incredible learning experience, too. Because I wasn’t sure what other tools I had in the toolbox when I went to New Zealand to do that first season. I thought, well, I can at least do these three scenes that I auditioned with. Taking that into “Handmaid’s Tale,” when I didn’t think I was going to be doing another TV show quite that quickly, it showed me: Ooh, there’s this other thing I can do! More

This article contains spoilers for “The Hunt.”It’s a showdown of pop-culture gladiators: Million Dollar Baby vs. Liberty Belle.Hilary Swank, who won an Oscar for playing a boxer in “Million Dollar Baby,” and Betty Gilpin, an Emmy nominee for her turn as the wrestler Liberty Belle, or Debbie Eagan, in “GLOW,” square off in an over-the-top fight sequence at the climax of the new satirical action picture “The Hunt.”The actors’ backgrounds in on-screen combat were a boon to Hank Amos, who along with Heidi Moneymaker served as the film’s stunt coordinator. “Both of them were already so far ahead of the game,” Amos said in a recent phone interview. “Trust me, those ladies can throw down.”The clash takes place in the high-end kitchen of a mansion owned by Athena (Swank), a wealthy liberal who organizes a hunting party of elitists to track down and kill a dozen so-called “deplorables,” including Crystal (Gilpin).The finale opens with six minutes of verbal sparring, followed by a seven-minute battle that utilizes such improvised weapons as hanging light fixtures and the chopping blade of a food processor. “I’ve filmed so many scenes in kitchens, but never one quite like this,” Gilpin said in a recent phone interview. “To have some meat-and-potatoes scene work with two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank and then beat the crap out of each other was incredible.”VideoHilary Swank and Betty Gilpin in “The Hunt.”Gilpin trained for seven months in preparation for the fight. “I did all the tire lifting and sled pushing that my weird little Irish body could do,” Gilpin said. “I was eating bison meat, drinking protein shakes and taking insanely good care of myself.” More

DanceMadonna’s BackupI’m not in a “La La Land” kind of mood. These strange times call for real life, so I found myself landing on “Strike a Pose.” Watching this 2016 documentary about the dancers who performed in Madonna’s “Blond Ambition” tour — one called it a show “about freedom, freedom as an artist, freedom as a human being” — the word I’m left with is resiliency.The movie, which is available on Netflix, Tubi and iTunes, checks in with the dancers in the documentary “Truth or Dare” 25 years later. One, Gabriel Trupin, has died of AIDS; the others made it out alive, but have lost some glitter along the way. Armed with life experience — a couple have rebounded from rock bottom (drug and alcohol abuse), others are H.I.V. positive — they are defined by determination. “Strike a Pose” can go to dark places with rivers of tears, but, again, it’s real.The dancers in “Strike a Pose” are no longer the boys they were in “Truth or Dare.” They’ve grown up, and they’re looking outward, still dancing and also teaching the next generation — watching it is a painful reminder that dance’s oral tradition of passing on knowledge, body-to-body, is in jeopardy.The men perform solos in their apartments; poetic dances, considered and raw that somehow get to the essence of their art form: don’t stop, which is particularly apt now. For a companion piece there is this performance of “In the Upper Room” on YouTube. Twyla Tharp’s remarkable 1986 ballet set to music by Philip Glass, grainy or not, is another reminder of bravery. This, like, “Strike a Pose,” is a demonstration of courage: through bodies, tenacity and sweat.GIA KOURLASPop MUSICGo GlobalThe world has always been right there in your computer — you just have to press play. Online radio offers special opportunities to learn more about sounds that are percolating in scenes around the globe. It has been particularly robust in London — that’s the home of Rinse FM, the long-running pirate-turned-legit radio station. For more than two decades, it has been at the bleeding edge: You can hear of-the-moment grime and British rap, throwback garage and drum ‘n’ bass and much more. Also from London is Balamii, which embraces an eclectic blend of electronic music, soul, jazz, UK funky, hip-hop and more.Closer to home is the Lot Radio, which ordinarily broadcasts from a shipping container near the Williamsburg-Greenpoint border in Brooklyn. Given the current circumstances, it has now made the switch to intimate video streams, inside the living rooms and kitchens of the D.J.s. It’s a strong reminder that the party is wherever the songs are, and the songs are wherever the D.J. is. That could be anywhere. And you could do it too — the world is listening.JON CARAMANICAmovies and TVBinge CreepsA weekend watching all 12 films in the “Friday the 13th” franchise sounds like heaven for some horror fans. But for a marathon of more snack-size scares, classic horror anthology series are plenty satisfying. (They may also be family-friendly, depending on how well eerie entertainment is tolerated by the kids.) The five seasons of the original “Twilight Zone” (Hulu, CBS All Access) offer smart scripts and A+ acting; start with the popular episodes “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” and “To Serve Man.” “The Outer Limits” (Hulu) takes a ’60s sci-fi route to terror, especially in out-there episodes like “The Galaxy Being” and “It Crawled Out of the Woodwork.”If you want to indulge in some ’80s-’90s nostalgia, a good place to start is with the lewd (and sometimes nude) “Tales From the Crypt” (Amazon, iTunes), an HBO series that featured Brad Pitt (“King of the Road”) and Demi Moore (“Dead Right”). Continue the Gen X flashback with six seasons of “The Ray Bradbury Theater” (Amazon Prime), a dark and crafty series adapted from the science fiction writer’s own macabre novels and short stories. “The Crowd,” a first-season creep-fest about accident gawkers, remains a ghoulish delight.For gotcha scares and “Punk’d”-style practical jokes, check out “Prank Encounters,” hosted by Gaten Matarazzo (“Stranger Things”); and “Scare Tactics,” with Tracy Morgan, now streaming on Netflix. These hidden-camera reality shows put unsuspecting “victims” in situations with freaked-out babysitters, campground killers and other weirdos from the horror movie playbook.ERIK PIEPENBURGTheaterA Little SondheimThe lyrics from Stephen Sondheim’s 1970 musical “Company” now sound less like an invitation and more like a taunt: “Phone rings, door chimes, in comes company!/ No strings, good times, room hums, company.” Had the Broadway season continued, we could have seen “Company,” a masterfully ambivalent 1970 musical, recently reimagined by the director Marianne Elliott, this week.One potential comfort: D.H. Pennebaker’s “Original Cast Album: Company,” one of the great theater documentaries, which films the “Company” cast during a nerve-rending, larynx-shredding, 18-and-a-half hour recording session. But it isn’t streaming anywhere (though YouTube hosts most bits), and honestly Elaine Stritch’s “The Ladies Who Lunch,” somehow both deeply ironic and as lacerating as a straight razor, may not be the tonic anyone needs now.So why not try the note-perfect parody courtesy of the comedy series “Documentary Now!”? In the season 3 winner, “Original Cast Album: Co-op,” available on Netflix, cast and pit musicians gather to record a musical that has already closed. Written by Seth Meyers and John Mulaney, who also appears as the Sondheim-esque composer, the episode froths with Broadway favorites — Renée Elise Goldsberry, Alex Brightman, Richard Kind. Paula Pell steps into Stritch’s hat, shoes and sandpapered throat, growling through 27 takes and an ophthalmology procedure. If we can’t have “Being Alive” live, at least we have this.ALEXIS SOLOSKIClassical MusicA Wunderkind of OperaIn the no-concerts era, some classical music presenters have started offering live-streams of performances. But one crucial online portal, OperaVision.eu, was already scooping up recent productions of note from European houses, and presenting them free (and on-demand). Each video broadcast comes with an option for English subtitles and typically remains available for a six-month period.One highlight of the current slate is a Teatro Regio Torino staging of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s “Violanta” — a rarity that mixes late-Romantic lushness of texture with an early-20th-century appreciation for narrative tautness. Inside 90 minutes, a Venetian noblewoman schemes to avenge her sister’s suicide by seducing the dead sibling’s Don Juan. (Complications ensue.)Korngold was still a teenager when the opera premiered, in 1917. His midcentury career in Hollywood — which paved the way for John Williams’s scores — was still decades away. Yet this one-act opera has the grown-up, malevolent poise of “Deception,” a 1946 noir that the composer would later score for Warner Brothers. The lyric sound of the soprano Annemarie Kremer is well suited to the title role — and the orchestra likewise revels in the opera’s eroticism. (If the opera leaves you wanting more Korngold, consider a recent Blu ray of “Das Wunder der Heliane.”) Available through Aug. 28 on OperaVision.eu and YouTube.SETH COLTER WALLSKidsSomething to Explain the MomentThe mystery begins with a dead crow. Soon three curious children — the friends Rani and Maria, and Maria’s little brother, Eduardo — discover other deceased birds. They learn that the siblings’ grandmother has been hospitalized with a high fever. More people fall ill. With the aid of adult scientists and their own meticulous investigation, the young heroes finally identify a microbial culprit. Spoiler alert: It’s not the new coronavirus.“Transmissions: Gone Viral,” a graphic novel developed by the New York Hall of Science and available free on its website, was inspired by the West Nile virus. First detected in New York City in 1999, West Nile cannot spread person to person. But like the coronavirus, it originated in animals, and during the current crisis, the museum recommends this fictionalized account as an educational resource.The novel is also terrific (and not alarmist) entertainment. Intended for middle-schoolers, “Transmissions” includes character portraits, a science glossary and the photo blog Maria keeps. When read online, the five chapters are interactive: You click on symbols to see microscope slides, specimens and further information. Written by Karen de Seve and illustrated by Charlie LaGreca, the book features an electronic exercise to map patterns in the viral outbreak. Another game, Gone Viral!, lets you play a pathogen out to infect the world — one competition I didn’t mind losing.LAUREL GRAEBERCOMEDYHave You Heard of Sam Morril?You heard but didn’t see this comedian and native New Yorker tell a bit in the 2019 “Joker” movie. (Playing himself, he performed just before Joaquin Phoenix’s character at a Gotham open mic.) And you won’t get to see Morril headline this weekend at the real-life Gotham Comedy Club since the coronavirus has put a halt to his live gigs. But after hosting his own talk show in 2017 on the MSG Network, “People Talking Sports* (*and other stuff),” and having Amy Schumer present his first Comedy Central hour, “Positive Influence,” in 2018, Morril is back with a new 47-minute performance filmed at the Comedy Cellar’s Village Underground.“I Got This” has attracted more than 1.4 million views since Comedy Central uploaded it on Feb. 10 to its Comedy Central Stand-Up YouTube channel. In it, Morril cracks wise about becoming an accidental hero in the #MeToo era, the many varied reasons he prefers the city to working on the road, and even a joke about his mother worrying about him touching a dead pigeon. Which remains frighteningly solid advice in these times.SEAN L. McCARTHY More

The Cannes Film Festival has been postponed to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. The event, one of the world’s most important film festivals, was meant to run May 12-23, but organizers said in a statement on Thursday that could not happen.Due to the health crisis and the development of the French and international situation, the Festival de Cannes will no longer be able to take place on the dates planned, from May 12 to 23. More info #Cannes2020 👉 https://t.co/peLmfw0gQW pic.twitter.com/SVWPasvU23— Festival de Cannes (@Festival_Cannes) March 19, 2020
“Several options are considered in order to preserve its running, the main one being a simple postponement,” the organizers’ statement said. That could be a shift to late June or the beginning of July, it added.Spike Lee had been chosen to lead the festival’s jury this year, and would have been the first black person to do so in the festival’s 73-year history.Rumors had been circulating that the festival would be canceled or postponed since March 8, when France brought in restrictions on mass gatherings, limiting them to 1,000 people, to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. That is a lower capacity than the festival’s largest venue. On Saturday, Le Point, a French newsmagazine, published an article in which an anonymous member of the festival’s board was quoted saying that this year’s film festival would not take place. But later that day, the organizers denied any decision had been made.“Despite some sensational headlines, there is nothing new to say,” Aïda Belloulid, the festival’s spokeswoman, said in a text message at the time.She said a decision would be made in mid-April when the festival’s program was to be announced, but the situation in France has escalated. The country is now on lockdown, and people can be fined for leaving their homes for reasons other than buying food, traveling to work or exercising. More than 4,000 people were fined on Wednesday, according to France24, the state-owned international news service.Cannes’ statement came after several other major cultural events in Europe made similar reckonings with the pandemic in recent days. On Wednesday, the Eurovision Song Contest was canceled, as was Glastonbury, the British music festival, which was meant to celebrate its 50th year.On Thursday, the Oberammergau Passion Play, a once-in-a-decade re-enactment of the life of Jesus, was also postponed to 2022.But Cannes lack of action so far had made it an outlier in the movie industry, with theaters shuttered across Europe and North America, movie release dates — including the next James Bond film — being pushed back, and sets closed, forcing many in the industry to fear for their future.Movie theater owners in the United States have already asked for government help and promised to try and support former staff out of work because of the crisis.Cannes’s organizers said in their statement that they will make a decision about what to do next.“In the meantime, the Festival de Cannes lends its vocal support to all of those who firmly call on everyone to respect the general lockdown, and ask to show solidarity in these difficult times for the entire world,” it said.The statement ends with, “See you very soon.” More