JLG/JLG – Autoportrait De Décembre
(JLG By JLG)
1995
Godard’s influence of Van Gogh shows in his next film JLG by JLG: An Auto-portrait in December. Made largely inside his room, JLG/JLG looks like a home movie like some of his films of the late 80’s. The film seems to take place during the editing of Godard’s interesting reworking of the Greek legend – Oh Woe is Me (1993). Godard makes it clear that the film is only a self-portrait, not an autobiography – not an objective account of his psychological motivations, but an introspection that is subjective and only skin-deep.
JLG By JLG (1995)
The most interesting aspect of the film is that we get a glimpse into Godard’s daily life, which by itself is quite extraordinary. We see what he reads – a huge private library which stores some of Godard’s most famous quotes that have enthralled audience through the decades. We see what he speaks – as we have seen before through his various quirky characters. We see what he watches – the films that find their way into almost all of his movies in the form of references and posters. And we see what he thinks – like the relationship he conjures up between stereo speaker system and the Star of David. His financial difficulties clearly show up as we even see an official raid into his shabby household. These claustrophobic images are intercut with paradisaical images of the winter that seem to bear a strong relationship with Godard’s own mental landscape during that period.
Although all this gives the feel of an honest documentary observing a day in the life of a filmmaker, it is, like most of Godard’s filmography, an essay that presents as many ideas as its predecessors and provides a commentary on larger issues hidden beneath the veneer of the quotidian events that we see. Godard begins with his favorite theme of individualism versus the community (crystal and smoke, according to him), moves on to the regular issues of truth, image and fate and finally takes up an elegiac tone that shows a clear yearning for the past carrying over from his previous films. And who wouldn’t be disarmed by a film whose closing quote reads “A man, nothing but a man, no better than any other, But no other better than him.”
The Seventh Art 
December 29, 2008 at 1:42 am
Good to see you going strong Srikanth. Good work mate. Been little out of touch (and you know where I was stuck) it’s great getting back to reading on Godard.
I first saw this film in French, and I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. What I saw or rather just spend hours watching was the composition of different spaces. It’s interesting how the later works of Godard has so much emphasis on the images. One can see Godard was conscious of colors even in his earlier works, but the images later become very subtle and beautiful like a tableau.
Personally, every Godard film I have seen till date, the ‘text’ always played an important part, although in every bit and way that could be deemed cinematic. So while watching through the French version, when Godard quotes a dialogue from Johnny Guitar, and then goes on to speak a line in English ‘The Kingdom of France’ looking and pointing at the camera it was sheer magic. Maybe, as a cinephile, for that one brief second, I could feel the connection that seriously ties a path of cinema: honesty and ‘amour’ for the medium.
So that even when viewing or lost in a distant space that connection could always be felt to continue that path for cinema. Now I know this a very subjective observation but it has been a guiding force from the day I saw this film at the age of 19.
Johnny: How many men have you forgotten?
Vienna: As many women as you’ve remembered.
Johnny: Don’t go away.
Vienna: I haven’t moved.
Johnny: Tell me something nice.
Vienna: Sure. What do you want to hear?
Johnny: Lie to me. Tell me all these years you’ve waited …
Vienna: All these years I’ve waited.
Johnny: Tell me you’d have died if I hadn’t come back.
Vienna: I would have died if you hadn’t come back.
Johnny: Tell me you still love me like I love you.
Vienna: I still love you like you love me.
Johnny: Thanks. Thanks a lot.
And when I recently saw the film with a subtitle, it was magical as ever. I do agree with Godard that the film could be different had it been shot in some other month. A normal viewer might not find the whole process of Godard working towards reaching a goal- towards his search for the mysteries of cinema- through his different thought process. Yet for people who are interested in the medium or Godard it often gives you a lot to think about. Just like any other Godard film.
Not that dense, but in a more moody and with melancholy, perhaps through the relation of the images and music. In the end, the film is beautiful because above all Godard still feels human, and when I look at his recent interviews that he had given to the Cahiers in French…it just reminds you that not to far way, perhaps, this man, nothing but a man, no better than any other… But no better than him won’t be there to teach us about the ‘amour’ and the ‘honesty’ for the medium. Something that is slowly but steadily disappearing.
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December 29, 2008 at 11:10 am
Thanks for reading Nitesh,
Again the same conversdation recurs in a fascinating way in “Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown” too. Almadovar uses it to convey secondary meaningstoo. Just goes to show how influential this conversation is.
ANd as you said, there is always a tinge of sadness in ALL his films after 1990. Sadly, none of his later theories seem to be taken up by many directors…
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January 3, 2010 at 11:53 am
[…] apparent that what we are going to get is not an autobiography but a self-portrait, much like JLG/JLG (1995). The biographical facts about Varda, which anyway come to us filtered through her […]
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