Kevin Costner Gets 10-Minute Standing Ovation at Cannes

The first film Kevin Costner has directed in more than a decade debuted at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday, and the audience gave it a 10-minute standing ovation—even longer than the one granted to Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis last week. An emotional Costner then talked about Horizon: An American Saga, a four-part epic about the American West amid the Civil War that, he said, is a passion project for him, People reports. "I'll never forget this. Neither [will] my children," he said; five of his seven kids were in the audience, including 15-year-old son Hayes, who stars in Horizon. Chapter One hits theaters June 28, followed by Chapter Two on August 16. Tidbits from early reviews:

• So far, Richard Lawson appears unimpressed. "Trying to suss out the film's politics with regard to colonialism and indigenous people proves impossible when so much of the runtime must be spent simply trying to puzzle out what is happening. It often feels that Costner has cut out every other scene; crucial plot has developed off-screen and we are then thrown into the result," he writes at Vanity Fair. "Sure, what appears disorderly may turn out to be genius by the time we've seen the end of the project—but 10 hours is an awfully long time to wait to find out."
• At the Guardian, Peter Bradshaw gives it two stars out of five. The first chapter "somehow doesn't establish anything exciting for its various unresolved storylines, and doesn't leave us suspensefully hanging for anything else," he writes.
• At the Hollywood Reporter, David Rooney notes that Costner certainly knows his Westerns, so why, Rooney wonders, is this one "such a clumsy slog?"
• The Western genre has been "flagrantly racist" in the past, and this one isn't, writes Owen Gleiberman at Variety, "though when it comes to dealing with Native issues the film is not without its problems." As for the plot and characters, Horizon "feels like the seedbed for a miniseries. Much of what happens is wispy and not very forceful; the film doesn't build in impact, and it seldom seems to aim in a clear direction."

(More Kevin Costner stories.)