Le Vent D’est
(Wind From The East)
1970

Wind from the East is arguably the most difficult-to-watch Godard film ever. About 5 times talkier than the average 90 minute movie, Godard fills the runtime with syllables, syllables and more syllables. Perhaps he was making it clear once and for all that his films are not for passive enjoyment. And boy, does he make himself clear! A thorough test of endurance, even for Godard fans, as he continues to put forth his political theories and experiments with the relation between sound and images. Godard also examines the role of a filmmaker in revolution using revolutionary ways of filmmaking.

Wind From The East (1970)

Wind From The East (1970)

I feel that Godard, being an uncompromising filmmaker, does not want the audience to compromise either. He does not want them to have mixed feelings about the film but rather to share a love-hate relationship with it. He wants us to either chuck the film and move away from the screen or to rethink, reform and develop our political ideologies. In essence, he offers a discussion, an essay – in the form of a film – one which people should get involved in only willingly. It isn’t just the patience of the audience that is taken to the extremes, but almost everything that Godard stood for in this period. He goes totally out against the Hollywood’s way of life and the “filtered” cinema it makes. He condemns the star system and the bourgeoisie nature of blockbusters, by directly having subplots of filmmaking within the film. He takes up the issue of intra-party betrayal and clashes as he did in La Chinoise (1967) and condemns the revisionist nature of so-called communists outright.

In some ways, Wind from the East is the counterpart of Godard’s 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her of the period. He wraps it up with enviably small budget and makes it as visually appealing as his other films. It is essentially this typically Godardian imagery that keeps one sitting through the film and the very Godardian nature of narrative that distances us and makes us think. One particular sequence, where we are shown the method to make explosives is particularly interesting for its ingredients – all branded capitalistic FMCG – the ultimate statement on self-destruction of the west as Godard hints at destroying entities using the entities themselves.