December 27, 2008

For Ever Godard #27

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Les Enfants Jouent À La Russie
(The Kids Play Russian)
1993

The Kids Play Russian employs the same (lack of) structure as Germany Year 90 Nine Zero and forms the last part of what I would call Godard’s Elegy Trilogy (wow! that rhymes!). This time it’s Russia, the head of the family, the massive Redwood tree that has fallen. Godard suffers a one-two slap with the fall of the USSR and his angst shows. The impressionist images are replaced by the mesmerizing surrealism of Dovzhenko and literature replaces the music of Germany 90. However, he does go a step further and probes what should be the future course of the country, still crying out “We will not change”.

The Kids Play Russian (1993)

The Kids Play Russian (1993)

Godard calls Russia the birthplace of fiction and emphasizes that a history of Russia would most definitely reflect the history of fiction itself. And hence, fall of the USSR (rather communism) means the fall of fiction. He traces back the history of image projection as the first Franco-Russian alliance and calls his relation to Russia as the last one surviving. In that sense, Godard himself is the Lemmy Caution of activist cinema – once a visionary, now undone. He employs the fictional figures of Anna Karenina and Prince Andrei to represent Russia and its plight hereafter. He imagines what they would be doing if they were alive during the collapse of their motherland. But again like all three films of the series, the film is one that is built on hope and promises.

The final image of the film captures a borderline-wild Godard continuing to work in his recording room, lit partially by the harsh light. More than “The show must go on” attitude, what shows here is “And miles to go before I sleep” mentality that has kept Godard afloat amidst his larger-than-life troubles in both his personal and professional life. A sexagenarian with fractured relationships, doomed ideologies and whose only redemption is in Cinema, pushing forward with more vigour than ever – only a few images can be more moving than this. The Idiot will go on. So will Cinema.

 

December 26, 2008

For Ever Godard #26

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Allemagne 90 Neuf Zéro
(Germany Year 90 Nine Zero)
1991

And I thought Godard didn’t have a masterpiece. Once more after many years, Godard follows Lemmy Caution (remember Alphaville?), now the “world’s last spy”, after the collapse of communism in Germany and the breaking of the wall. If Alphaville was The Return of the Jedi, Germany 90 is the Revenge of the Sith.  In the first film, Lemmy was a virus eluding the clutches of the supposedly omnipotent Alpha 60 whereas here, he is a lone warrior meandering unharmed in the bigger Alphaville and the sole survivor of a species that would soon be extinct. Evidently a requiem for what Godard considers the death of Germany, Germany 90 is perhaps the best contender for the adjective “sublime”.

Germany Year 90 Nine Zero (1991)

Germany Year 90 Nine Zero (1991)

Tinged with a slight green throughout, the film juxtaposes images of sincere yearning by a man whose raison d’être has been questioned with fleeting sequences from the classics from the early expressionist German cinema. Godard classifies music, love and poetry as belonging to socialism alone and as languages not understood by the new world. Though elegiac in tone, the film is uncharacteristically (for Godard) hopeful in actuality. There is a definite promise of restoration in the form of Dora, the symbol of Germany in the film, and the assurance of “music after life”. On a lighter note Lemmy comments “You have to admit, Marx did triumph. When an idea is born among masses, it becomes a material force. That’s one way of looking at it.”

Lemmy Caution who represented all that is living and all that is human in Alphaville represents all that is lost and destroyed in Germany 90. The recurrent images of exile crucifixion and torture may be for the whole of socialism itself, whose pro-mass approach was nailed down by the elite bourgeoisie. Now as Lemmy walks alone through the remains of the now- nonextant world, we see what Godard is referring to by “solitude of history” – Lenin icon amidst Greek ruins, people moving towards the west in blue cars, machines resembling dragons almost swallowing Lemmy, history books being sold as souvenirs. The fugitive events that shook the world seem to have single-handedly made Godard’s political period a thing of arthouse circuits. It is more than solitude of history, it is solitude of Cinema.

 

December 25, 2008

For Ever Godard #25

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Nouvelle Vague
(New Wave)
1990

Watching New Wave, it felt like a Tarkovsky film, especially Nostalghia (1983) at many places – may be because of the organic pace and camera work of the film, may be because of the very presence of Domiziana Giordano (and the horses!) or may be the hypnotizing locales of Italy, I don’t know. But the film surely echoes some of the elements of the Tarkovsky classic for Nouvelle Vague is essentially a yearning for the past and nostalgia of la dolce vita of yesteryear.

New Wave (1990)

New Wave (1990)

The basic premise of the film follows a rich couple Richard and Elena, visibly dissatisfied with their lives, attempting to search for that elusive object called happiness and hence trying to discover their place on earth. They assume roles of the dominating and the dominated in turns Yet again, Godard crafts a film that works on so many levels that it becomes intensely personal in more than one way. Richard and Elena may be representing the French New Wave and traditional cinema respectively as they try to find their own place and struggle to accept their mutual existence. So the film on one level becomes a superficial study of how the New Wave affected established cinema and vice-versa. With characters named de Sica, Mankiewicz and Aldrich, this argument seems plausible, but one shouldn’t restrict the film to a mere interpretational exercise, again a Tarkovskian trait of the film.

The regular intertitles read “Things, not words” and this is exactly what the film seems to be following. Godard bids adieu to his immensely talkative pair of periods, for the events around the world have made words completely futile. He places the images in the driver’s seat such that the basic feel of the film prompts one to classify it as elegiac. Coming soon after the twin collapse of East Germany and the USSR, Nouvelle Vague will be remembered as a befitting farewell to the most revolutionary ideology in the annals of mankind and the most subversive period of filmmaking in cinema history.

 

December 24, 2008

For Ever Godard #24

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Détective
(Detective)
1985

Godard continues to play with the genre after a long time and this time it is the detective/thriller/crime genre. Loaded with quintessential elements like the omnipotent mafia head, the leaf of the tree who tries to make it big, a washed up pugilist, the disguises, the 666/999 room number gag and much more, Detective is a scribble-pad for Godard who floods it with a deluge of in-jokes, Shakespearean references and crossover lines. And as with all Godard films that have traces of a story line, it is the very narrative that makes one struggle to either cruise over the fragmented crust of the film or to penetrate into what is both demanding and enlightening.

Detective (1985)

Detective (1985)

Many feel that Detective is one of the weakest links in Godard’s filmography, but I found the film to be the most iconoclastic film by Godard since Breathless (1959). Till Detective, Godard had been objecting the conventions used for representation in the medium and attempted to concoct a genuinely independent form of expression and interaction whereas here, he objects the nature of the medium itself. He did meditate about the idea that the camera is a tool that always captures the past in his earlier films but in Detective, he breaks even that intuitive notion and “records the future”. The detectives are investigating a supposedly unsolved murder but the very murder happens as they are digging. What’s more baffling is that the audience is placed in the shoes of the detectives, they are made to see all that they see and hence are made to witness future – all this in the typically self-reflexive Godardian way.

And the effect isn’t just a perplexing one. Completely different from the Brechtian estrangement theory but achieving the same result true only to the seventh art, Godard appeals for a genuine detachment from the medium and a complete abandonment of belief on cinema and its images that we’ve grown to accept as truth (Le Petit Soldat?). At the end of the film one feels both dissatisfied for wasting such a great murder plot and disillusioned after having his/her perceptions shattered. And obviously, Godard’s intention is the latter.

 

December 23, 2008

For Ever Godard #23

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‘Je Vous Salue, Marie’
(Hail Mary)
1985

Godard’s most controversial film to date, Hail Mary, takes him to areas he has never tread before. He covers a wide range of interconnected topics that include the questions of chance versus calculation in human evolution, man’s civilization and the subsequent invention of art and science, his understanding of nature and his lost love for fellow beings. Godard elevates the audience to the status of God as we alone watch Mary’s most private moments as the camera looks down upon her.

Hail Mary (1985)

Hail Mary (1985)

Though loaded with lots of Christian symbols and allegories (the virgin birth, the forbidden apple et al), Godard doesn’t restrict the film to a mere reworking of the religious text. He goes beyond the ideas of individualism and class struggles and ponders over the very existence of mankind, the preternatural and the relationship (or the absence of it) between them. In one of the early sequences in the film, we see a woman named Eve blindfolding a person named Pascal as the latter tries to solve the Rubik’s cube. Is Godard saying that there is surely a force beyond the reaches of science that stands silently behind man, who is blinded by the restrictions of reasoning, aiding him as he tries to rationalize the mysteries presented by the natural and the supernatural? May be. We see Joseph, always spotted with dark, blind man’s glasses, trying to decode the enigma of the virgin birth and even trying to confirm the presence or absence of God as he tells Mary “At least say you don’t love me. I can’t stand this silence.”

A recurrent question in the film asks if the soul is trapped in the body or is it the other way round. Is Mary carrying the divine child or is it the very presence of the child that shuns her from the quotidian joy of femininity? Is Jesus’ suffering for the people more vital than Mary’s sacrifice to complete the prophecy? What is the cost of divinity? Does Mary become a woman because of the birth or only after it? Is the final image of Mary using a lipstick a sign of freedom and return to mortality? I can only speculate.

 

December 22, 2008

For Ever Godard #22

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Prénom Carmen
(First Name: Carmen)
1983

Godard’s version of the never-ending saga of femme-fatales and heists is decidedly the looniest film of the period. Godard is at the peak of self criticism in First Name: Carmen. Also serving as the comic relief in the film, we see him and many other artists who consider themselves revolutionaries admitted in an insane asylum. Godard however, is perfectly fine and may just be commenting on his emigration to Switzerland. He calls himself “sick and washed-up”. He refers to Van Gogh, who also became crazy and intolerable towards the end of his life, and may be he saw the self-portrait coming a decade later. He discusses how art is taken as a cover for crime and how Godard himself has become a catalyst for that. And the height of it all being that he uses an abacus for calculation, overtly classifying him as anachronistic, outdated and starry-eyed.

Carmen (1983)

First Name: Carmen (1983)

He intersperses the narrative with extended sequences of a band of violinists practicing Beethoven whose themes mirror those of the ongoing sequences of the other thread. He uses the sound in the film to guide the imagery in some stretches and in others, lets the images define the route for the sounds. It is at the end that the two threads meet and both the sound and the images take the lead. And using this tug-of-war between them, he knits his narrative that as usual deals with subjects seemingly out of scope – law and religion, male and female perspectives, treatment of working class and more.

There may not an intentional connection at all, but having known Godard a bit, I couldn’t help spotting a political subtext to the film. Godard may well have written Joseph and Carmen with an inclination to socialism and capitalism respectively. Carmen tells Joseph “If I love you, it is the end of you”. Joseph, though aware of the destructive nature of the relationship, is lured by the (capitalist) lust and agrees to take part in the crime. Godard feels that he has become an accelerator for this decadence. And the closing duel between the leads and its result may just be Godard’s glimmer of hope.

 

December 21, 2008

For Ever Godard #21

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Passion
1982

Passion marks the beginning of Godard’s most respected period, for those who were patient enough to dig deep. After years of self-glorification and reckless insubordination Godard seems to have shifted to this transitory period of intense self-criticism and awareness as he lays himself open, film by film, and at the same time commenting on how the industry itself is ruthless towards both minority experimentalists and the mass work-force in the form of extras, never once making the films unGodardian or compromising.

Passion (1982)

Passion (1982)

Passion follows three “individuals” – Jerzy, a workaholic film director without any real human attachment, most definitely representing Godard, Isabelle, a naïve worker at a factory and Hanna, a rich lady who, like Isabelle, is interested in Jerzy. Jerzy’s film in the movie consists of a series of Paradjanov-ish tableaus assembled with punctilious detail but apparently sans a structure and esoteric, like Passion itself. Hence, Passion becomes a self-indulgent movie about self-indulgence. These motionless images are interspersed with intriguing stretches of movement and restlessness.  And over all this mystery, Godard continues to weave his philosophy on film grammar (At an interesting point in the film, Jerzy asks his film’s cinematographer, Raoul Coutard, also the cinematographer of Passion and off-screen both ways, if there are any rules in cinema upon which he gets a “No”), individualism and society, passion versus boredom, art against practicality and even the Polish revolution.

Godard compares art with love and the passion for art and labour with love-making. The effective character arc that Jerzy and Isabelle undergo isn’t one of redemption but of hopelessness. Jerzy seems to have abandoned his passion for art in exchange for commerce, Isabelle seems to have shed her genuine interest for work and both of them seem to have lost the genuine love that bound them. They assume fake passions and seem to have the notions of physical love and true love mixed up. Indeed, Isabelle’s final line reads “I don’t like cars” even when she continues working in Peugeot much like Jerzy who leaves for Hollywood deserting his “love”.

 

December 20, 2008

For Ever Godard #20

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Sauve Qui Peut (La Vie)
(Every Man For Himself)
1980

Godard’s second commercial success comes 25 years after the triumph of Breathless. Every Man for himself is considered the starting film of the next phase in Godard’s prolific career and the distinct detour in style is apparent. With all the qualities of a classic French film intact – marital trouble, empty lives, slow pace and streets of Paris – Godard’s sober venture is a ready hit among the critics.

Every Man For Himself (1980)

Every Man For Himself (1980)

Exactly as the title suggests, the film follows three individuals who try to redeem their empty lives through their own methods. One takes up prostitution, the other tries to make good films and the third attempts to go to the countryside on her bike. Godard’s preoccupation with prostitution continues as he reflects on prostitution of society, art and oneself. This yearning to break back into the youth may be one of Godard’s own wishes as the film’s composition is enough to raise debates about Godard’s maturity and senescence. The texture of the film reminds us of Godard’s own A Married Woman (1964) and the only fancy Godard style remains the ultra slow motion that pops up fro time to time as if observing truth with religious keenness (Godard uses it in a rather lovable form in his interview with Woody Allen).

The stark contrast with his Dziga Vertov years shows as the organic nature of the film suggests Godard’s serious reconsideration of his objectives. At one point, Paul, clearly the Godard figure in the film, tells us his reason for making films. “’I make films to keep myself busy. If I had the strength, I’d do nothing. It’s because I can’t bear doing nothing that I make films” – evidently a statement from a man who has had a serious setback in his ideological stand. He doesn’t also criticizes himself as he happily reminds us of the infamous Bergman quote about him. He even takes a jab at Truffaut, perhaps as a ramification of their overt friction, and is disgusted at someone making a film out of a David Goodis Novel. And coming to think of it, it is this same man that had paid an hommage to Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player in A Woman is a Woman (1961)!

 

December 19, 2008

For Ever Godard #19

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Lettre À Jane
(Letter To Jane: An Investigation About A Still)
1972

Letter to Jane may be seen as a companion piece to the intriguing Tout Va Bien (1972), for the idea of the film sprouted during the making of Tout Va Bien. Godard and fellow Dziga Vertov Group filmmaker Gorin share the sound-space as they step out of the cinematic medium and go on to discuss the role of filmmakers in political activism. Through pictures of Vietnam war, they talk about the importance of questions and questions of importance. They urge the audience to take a journey rather than watch the film and hence decide the role of filmmakers as a whole. Through one particular picture, that of Jane Fonda “empathizing” with the guerrillas, Godard  brings forth issues of media initiated lionization, attitude of the west towards the Vietnam crisis and the Kuleshov effect on photos from the war.

Letter To Jane (1972)

Letter To Jane (1972)

Letter to Jane is the most and perhaps the only disappointing Godard film I’ve seen. Disappointing because Godard not only explores the role of intellectuals in revolution and politics but also tries desperately to classify himself as one. Disappointing because what he did absolutely effortlessly in his early films, he tries to do it as a requirement. Godard dismissed his early films as being bourgeoisie, but even Letter to Jane seems like a discourse for high-brow cocktail sipping crowd, contradicting Godard’s Dziga Vertov principles. Is it only me who feels that Godard is playing God and trying hard to over-analyze what may be a genuine gesture for concern or am I succumbing to the Kuleshov effect too? May be not. Godard himself seems to have become disillusioned after the film, once again, and reworked his strategies and policies.

Having said that, Letter to Jane is one of the most engaging Godard films of this period. With a single gesture from a photograph, Godard extracts so much meaning out of Fonda’s glance (the comparison spectrum runs from Descartes to Welles) that any actor watching the film will feel a shiver running down the spine. They’ll know they are being watched and they’ll know acting isn’t a walk in the park. And true to the film’s claims, it does not give us answers and neither does it tell what the questions are. What is sure is that it asks the audience to extract the questions themselves, for right answers follow only right questions.

 

December 18, 2008

For Ever Godard #18

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British Sounds
(See You At Mao)
1970

Though Godard has made longer and more significant films in the same period, I chose British Sounds because it is here that we see Godard’s masterful use of dynamics and stillness of images that stands quite in contrast to the verbose nature of the previous film. In British Sounds, Godard goes out and out political without any compromise, sugar-coating or skeletal narratives that support his views. What remains intact is Godard’s instinct to experiment and shock, his urge to make his audience think and his sensitivity as a filmmaker towards the events around him. As a result, (not only this film but all his films of the period) what we get isn’t a film with a message, but a message in the form of cinema.

British Sounds (1970)

British Sounds (1970)

It is refreshing to see Godard’s experimentation employed in this transformed style of working that is based on his strong ideologies. He still sticks to the Brechtian theory as he continuously reminds us that this isn’t a propaganda film from the 20s’ USSR, but his own revolutionary filmmaking that is as rooted in cinema as it is in politics. This occurs in the form of verbal mistakes in the narration, complete mismatch of sound and image each of which has multiple instances carrying forward a different thread and the occasional dormancy of camera movement while capturing images dispassionately.

But I will remember the film for just two things. The first is the extended tracking shot of the conveyor in an automobile factory where the workers are seen assembling cars at a rapid pace. Running to almost the same length and as irritatingly noisy, the shot reminds us instantly of the traffic jam scene from Weekend, in a sense providing stark contrast between the bourgeoisie and the working class situations using similar imagery. The second would be the final few images of a fist tearing through the flag of Britain, occurring multiple times. They look as if Godard is asserting “Behold, the Revolution!“

 

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