I'm getting back into Godard. "Breathless" totally opened up my world when I downloaded it from an old file-sharing network as a teen. I remember thinking this is the coolest and hippest B&W film I'd ever seen. Its unbelievable that that film was made in 1960. It just happened to be French & low budget too, so I felt like I was now a true cinema hipster. I haven't looked back since, but my other experiences with Godard's work have been shaky. I thought Alphaville was intriguing, Masculin Feminin was cute but underwhelming & Weekend was as astounding as it was frustrating.
Number Two is the most extreme thing I've seen from him & I really enjoyed the experience. I know much more about where Godard was coming from politically and I have a better appetite for challenging, non-commercial art.
The whole thing is one big gimmicky experiment where we join Godard in the editing room as he watches footage on TV moniters of a poor French family speak their minds in a candid but decidedly lyrical style. The family are unhappy with their roles but also desperate to fit in the "machine" that is their family. The parents wrestle with philosophical questions from the mundane to the familial to the political to the existential. There's no plot or action or character growth. Its a stream of Godard's consciousness spoken through 1-dimensional people, making the audience aware of the transference we place from auteur to actors. Another fun game Godard plays is filling the screen with 2 or more images in a frame, letting us edit the footage ourselves. Godard shows that the film is already a film before its "properly" edited and sometimes a rawer experience in this way. Indeed it does create an intimacy with the films within the film. Godard is between his film and us. We are removed from the "story" that we can properly deconstruct it as pure communication.
This is a cool, conceptual piece that will bore newcomers to Godard but will satisfy anyone who likes interacting with or decrypting their cinema. Its self aware pretentiousness and its preaching to a very radical choir, but its definitely art and good art too.
No comments:
Post a Comment