Jean-Luc Godard: S and D

When I first saw it and was unaware of the history I thought it was a big joke on leftie student movements.

One of my first dates with my now wife was In Praise of Love at the student film co-op. We both disliked it a lot and bonded around that.

In Praise of Love is pretty shitty.

I haven't revisited La chiniose in a while, but I did like it better the second time. The characters come off as these trustafarian dunces. The Believer did a film issue back in '09 that came with a dvd of Godard rarities, the centerpiece of which was a very interesting hour-long filmed talk w/Godard after an NYC screening of the film, held on April 4th '68. DA Pennebaker (who filmed it) pointed out in the liner notes that because they were secluded in the theatre watching and then discussing a film about revolution, they had not heard about the MLK assassination and were surprised to discover they were walking into a genuine riot upon leaving the venue.

BTW: Oh hai Juliet Berto...

http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Godard-11.jpg

Saw Alphaville for the first time in 30 years. Funnier than I'd remembered.

Always like seeing Juliet Berto, yes.

i find la chinoise totally hilarious. for a guy who apparently identified with the young maoist revolutionaries, he has a lot of jokes, most of them at their expense.

Maybe this would have worked for me in the moment, but their pronouncements (not sure how much of what they say comes directly from Mao's book) are so vacuous, it just seems like fish in a barrel at this remove. Léaud's character in Masculin Féminin is like a milder blueprint, but I find his self-importance and Godard's treatment of him much more engaging.

Saw Alphaville for the first time in 30 years. Funnier than I'd remembered.

― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), 12. februar 2014 13:34 (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Have you watched his Germany Year 90 Nine Zero? It's a pretty interesting quasi-sequel/commentary. I liked it a lot. But well, I also liked In Praise of Love, so...

Trailer for Goodbye to Language. Warning: NSFW because of nudity/Descartes.

http://vimeo.com/92157115

Can't wait! Blogged about 3X3D, Godard's was by far the best segment.

Frederik, interesting review. I really like your writing.

Thank you! I've just finished writing the last post, a week late, so now there is 38 reviews of PIX-films. Wrote a list in the Last (X) Movies-thread.

2-hour interview circa 2010, subtitled

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XcuHub-S8o

The end of this is kind of heartbreaking.

His 1978 lectures on the history of film are to be released in book form: https://www.caboosebooks.net/true-history-of-the-cinema

i need to get that. so psyched for adieu au langage

I know he's never been the most consistent of political thinkers but that oh-so-provocative Le Pen statement was probably the biggest eyeroll moment in his later years (that have been full of them).

i don't know if the problem is inconsistency as much as puerility

he's never been much of a political thinker. pretty good filmmaker, though :)

(FWIW there were people on ILX who expressed hope for a McCain and/or Romney victory for similar reasons

they are also puerile)

I've read Michael Witt's book Jean-Luc Godard: Cinema Historian, mainly on Histoire(s) du Cinema, but drawing in the whole story of Godard's carreer, his views on history, metaphors being used in the work, etc. It was really good. Now I'm rewatching bits and pieces of all those collages where I can find them.

Goodbye to Language is so good!

the best film

seein it in a few weeks --one screening only here. hopefully it will come around again.

AO Scott in a mildly scolding vein:

Mr. Godard has a habit of blending gravity with whimsy. His latest film, a 70-minute 3-D visual essay called “Goodbye to Language” (“Adieu au Langage”), exhibits the formal and philosophical mischief that has been his late-career calling card. It is baffling and beautiful, a flurry of musical and literary snippets arrayed in counterpoint to a series of brilliantly colored and hauntingly evocative pictures — of flowers, boats, streets, naked bodies and Mr. Godard’s own dog, a mixed-breed scene-stealer identified in the credits as Roxy Miéville....

Much of the film is spent with a couple in a state of casual undress and post-coital ennui... it is worth noting that the man and the woman have, within the film, distinct functions and positions. Not only does she remain standing while he conducts his business, but her own business is also, in no small part, to be displayed as an object for contemplation and erotic reverie. He, too, is naked, but the camera is far more interested in looking at her.

An old cinematic god can hardly be expected to learn new tricks, and women’s bodies have often served Mr. Godard — and not only him, goodness knows — as convenient metaphors for the mysteries of nature and the forces that lie on the far side of language. That is, no doubt, a topic for further discussion. In any case this movie, its title notwithstanding, is unlikely to be the filmmaker’s last word.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/movies/goodbye-to-language-the-latest-from-jean-luc-godard.html

At least I'm glad Godard is revealing the atrocious ethics of the french left when it comes to women rights and whatnot.

Bordwell analyzes (prob best after seeing):

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/category/directors-godard/

Godard just ain't riding my wavelength. Five hundred stars.

godard isn't french and it's questionable if he can really be considered of the left at this juncture

but yeah i'm not gonna defend the man. there are some troubling things going on in his head, for sure. i think one viewing of sauve qui peut would make that pretty evident.

Wait, who's attacking?

this graf in AO Scott;s review is pretty good

“In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art,” she concluded, and “Goodbye to Language” rewards just such an approach. If you try, especially on a first viewing, to crack its code or plumb its depths, you are likely to pass a frustrated hour and 10 minutes. But if you surrender, you might have a good time. The earth might even move.

'Godard isn't French' but he is part of the French culture really.

Need to see this film. They only gave it a couple of screenings over here so fuck knows when that'll happen.

there are some troubling things going on in many artists' heads, who gives a fuck?

take it to Branwell with an N

when a guy doesn't translate sauve qui peut, you can tell he's an academia nut.

(btw the first Godard film i saw in a theater)

it's sort of untranslatable though

the two english titles -- "slow motion" and "every man for himself" -- aren't actually translations of the french title (though the latter comes closer)

the closest might be "save yourself (life)"

the exact meaning is 'every man for himself'

Godard is french as it gets, part of the Monod family and relations to Chirac for crying out loud.

(not sure about the Chirac relation but whatever, the Monod family one should sell it)

Notre Musique was my first in the theater, and the thing I remember most clearly was telling some woman who kept rustling what sounded like the world's loudest cellophane that she was "ruining the movie for everyone here." She revealed that she was holding an ice pack on her freshly sprained ankle and I turned on my heels and high-tailed it to the last row in back. I still think she ruined it.

"End of cinema" indeed!

I'm not sure Godard's sexism ("and whatnot") 'reveals' anything other than that 84 year-old men are sometimes not the most enlightened. But as always with Godard, it's complicated: embedded in Film Socialisme was quite a clear-eyed observation of economic and, yes, gendered inequality, and the hellishness of poorly paid service industry jobs.

The first new Godard I saw at the cinema would've been Prenom Carmen. I definitely caught King Lear on its one week London run.

in college they showed us Masc/Fem and i imagine Breathless

Liked this one, not as rich as Socialisme on first viewing. Good dog.

I liked how brief it was.

Also glad it wasn't in Smell-o-vision.

it's the litttle things

“I think I might be one more viewing away from finally being able to say what the hell it’s about,” writes Bilge Ebiri.

http://www.vulture.com/2014/10/movie-review-goodbye-to-language.html

That's another thing I liked about it.

A second set of notes from Bordwell:

As far as I can tell, Godard hasn’t used the converging-lens method to create 3D during shooting. Instead of “toeing-in” his cameras, he set them so that the lenses are strictly parallel. He and his DP Fabrice Aragno apparently relied on software to generate the startling 3D we see onscreen....

To get a positive sense of what he’s doing, we need to understand what the conventional rules are intended to achieve. Consider just two purposes.

1. 3D, the rules assume, ought to serve the same function as framing, lighting, sound, and other techniques do: to guide us to salient story points. A shot should be easy to read. When 3D isn’t just serving to awe us with special effects, it has the workaday purpose of advancing our understanding of the story. So, for instance, 3D should use selective focus to make sure that only one figure stands out, while everything else blurs gracefully.

But 3D allows Godard to present the space of a shot as discomfitingly as he presents his scenes (elliptical, they are) and his narrative (zigzag and laconic, it is). As in traditional deep-focus cinematography, we’re invited to notice more than the main subject of a shot, but here those piled-up planes have an extra presence, and our eye is invited to explore them.

2. According to the rules, 3D ought to be relatively realistic. Traditional cinema presents itself as a window onto the story world, and 3D practitioners have spoken of the frame as the “stereo window.” People and objects should recede gently away from that surface, into the depth behind the screen. But Adieu au langage gives us a beautiful slatted chair, neither fully in our lap nor fully integrated into the fictional space. It juts out and dominates the composition, partly blocking the main action–a husband bent on violence hustling out of his car.

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2014/11/02/say-hello-to-goodby-to-language/