Didn't the theater of the absurd project dissolve years ago? Jean-Luc Godard's Notre Musique is a reminder why Old Europe is in decline. The existential gobbledegook will most assuredly put any normal person to sleep. Was this film suppose to be about war? Wow, that is sure surprising. Ayn Rand would have had a field day criticizing this indulgence in anti-rationality. Why was Dante dragged into this mess? What did he ever do to Godard and his fellow radical leftists? This cinema journey does indeed start in hell and travels through Purgatory---but it never arrives in Heaven. We are obviously meant to suffer eternal damnation. The photography and the accompanying music are the only mildly redeeming aspects of this so-called cinema experience. Sarajevo is a gorgeous city. Alas, why did the actors have to open their mouths and spoil everything?
The Two Godard's
If you loved the 1960's Godard for his ultra-hip irreverence, you might find Godard's current work a bit dull. The 1960's Godard used cinema to show how we moderns use culture (novels, films, pop music) to define ourselves--in Godard's world you might say we are what cultural objects we identify with, or, more aptly, "we are what we consume". The 1960's Godard used the idioms of the Italian realist cinema (as well as American noir)in an ironic way to explore the nature of the modern. Godard's narratives tended to mimic (albeit in an ironic, detached way: the essence of hip and cool) those narrative forms that have become so ingrained in our culture as to become cliches (the gangster picture, the heist picture). Godard's characters, however, consume this stuff without the ironic detachment that wpould allow them some kind of self-awareness, and as uncritical consumers they often begin to resemble the B-literatures and B-movies that they spend so much time consuming. The result is that their lives became reproductions of the very B-literature and B-movies that they spend so much time amusing themselves with. If there is a sense of tragedy in the 1960's Godard films (Breathless, Band of Outsiders, My Life to Live...to name a few) it is due to the fact that characters in Godard films are unable to see that even the form their rebellion takes is borrowed from B-movie heroes... Though there are moments of beautiful spontaneity in some of Godard's 1960's films, these moments stand out precisely because they are so rare. Nonetheless these are the moments that make these films memorable.
There are no moments of spontaneity in the late phase of Godard's career. Films like In Praise of Love and Notre Musique are less films than essays on topics that obsess a Godard who no longer believes in irreverence as a form of rebellion. The early Godard had his characters rush through the Louvre in a moment of liberatory irreverence ; the late Godard has his characters meditate on world culture as though their lives depended on it (and perhaps they do). The obsession of Godard's late phase is how humanity has failed to liberate itself from its chronic failings. This new obsession is perhaps just the continuation nof an old one. In one of his most interesting 1960's films, Pierrot Le Fou, Godard showed how obsessively man tries to liberate himself from himself by reading everything. But only in death does man achieve the ability to stand outside of himself. In Notre Musique, however, not even death offers any sort of liberation for even Heaven is a kind of a militarized zone. What Godard seems to be saying is that we cannot imagine an outside (like Heaven) from which to examine our cultural formations(those things that form us), and that even our imagination has been thoroughly colonized by culture. What the young Godard offered was a glimpse of the trap we are in and he directed us toward the few options we have left--spontaneous disruption, the beautiful gesture toward, if not the ultimate realization of, liberation. Godard's aesthetic (like the Italian neo-realists and American noirs he so loved) was always bleak but in the 1960's films there was an integer, an occasional flash, of hope. The older Godard simply shows us the trap.
Godard has nothing left to say.
Notre Musique is the newest work by the legendary French director Jean-Luc Godard. The film is shot in a documentary style, but it is not entirely non-fictional; it is neither a documentary nor a feature film, but rather, a sort of cinematic treatise. Godard's chosen subject is war, and he breaks it down according to a rigid, three-part structure. The parts are entitled "Hell," "Purgatory" and "Paradise," in reference to Dante; presumably, Godard's objective here is to show how humanity might escape "Hell," or the horrors of war, by cleansing itself in "Purgatory," and thereby finally attain "Paradise."
The first section consists of a montage of war imagery, from all countries and time periods: Holocaust victims, cowboys and Indians, French grenadiers, the American North and South, and so on. The camera flies between these disparate scenes for a few minutes without staying on any one image for long. Finally, as the screen fades to black, a voice informs us, "Death can be viewed in two ways: the possible of the impossible, and the impossible of the possible."
Is Godard trying to say that death is impossible, or that we wrongly perceive death as impossible, or that death marks the moment when the impossible becomes possible, or what? And, supposing any of those were true, so what? What conclusions should we draw? What is the significance of this cryptic observation? Godard leaves it unexplained, providing us with the first of many examples of the way in which this film uses horrific human catastrophes as a backdrop for empty, vague, often arrogant moralizing.
The second section takes place in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, which was besieged by the Bosnian Serb Army during the nineties. Godard now introduces a plot: a literary conference is taking place in this city, and famous artists are going there to discuss how war might be averted through art. Among them is a young Israeli woman named Olga (a fictional character), who travels to Sarajevo to gain insight into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Godard wishes to present this conference as a blueprint for the moral and intellectual "Purgatory" that mankind has to go through in order to end all war.
But why does this conference have such far-reaching importance? For instance, why is it relevant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Well, someone in the film asks that very question. The answer given by the organizer of the conference is, "I wanted to see a place where reconciliation was possible."
The presumptuousness of this statement is offensive. Godard is a European from a country that was itself partial in the conflict. Here he represents a side that exerted heavy influence, of a violent and destructive nature, on the outcome of that conflict. Without discussing or even acknowledging this fact, he is announcing, in part to the same people that his side helped bomb, that reconciliation is now possible for them. But why should they accept what he says? Is he, perhaps, merely saying that the violence has died down, and that now it is possible to begin rebuilding? But that isn't true: recall the clashes in Kosovo during March of 2004, when thousands of Serbs were driven from their homes, while Western forces were helpless to do anything.
Later, when the camera pans over a dilapidated marketplace, Godard opines (again through Olga), "The defeated are the truly lucky ones." So was Carthage "lucky" to be defeated by Rome? Please tell me this is a joke.
Then there's a scene in which Godard himself gives a talk for some film students in Sarajevo. He shows photographs of Israelis and Palestinians; then, for no reason whatsoever, he shows two stills from some black-and-white American film or other, and says that their similarity proves that the director of the film "did not comprehend the difference between men and women." In between these different trains of thought, he utters bizarre aphorisms, such as, "We say to let the facts speak for themselves. But Celine once said, 'They will not for much longer.' That was in 1936," or, "It's the accountants who do all the books. Balzac spoke of a Great Ledger." What has this to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? And what has that to do with film class?
But that's just the norm for this film, which is full of risible non sequiturs. Consider one scene, where some guy speaks to Olga in Russian, but she cuts him off, for this reason: "I distrust the Russian language. In fact, I only regret that the powerful notion the Russians have of evil alienates them from conscience." Actually, Russian art, far from being "alienated" from conscience, often features it as a central theme; just recall the novels Crime And Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, or the play Boris Godunov. So how does Godard have Olga justify her inane assertion? She goes on to say, "It is due to the syntax [of the Russian language]." That is, Godard claims that the mechanics of a language serve to "alienate" the speakers of that language from moral reasoning. I hope you aren't going to ask for examples, because Godard doesn't give any.
It goes on. Olga states that "suicide is the most important philosophical problem." Then why all the talk about war? Elsewhere, an American Indian walks into the ruins of a library and demands to know when the mistreatment of his people will end. A legitimate grievance, possibly, but what is the dude doing in Sarajevo? Some other guy says, "I only believe stories whose witnesses would have their throats cut." Is he saying that he only believes first-hand accounts of war, or that he believes that people who tell stories should be willing to die for them? Either way, what's his point?
The third section shows Olga sitting with a soldier in a quiet glade, in a symbol of humanity achieving peace. But, by this point, after sitting through so many lifeless, artificial pronouncements, it's hard to believe that Godard is all that concerned with humanity.
Godard's career is a difficult one to summarize or even to get a grasp on. After creating the seminal New Wave films of the Sixties we all know and love him for, Godard took a drastic turn in the late Sixties-early Seventies when he began making film within his "Dziga-Vertov" group, which were a group of didactic films that marked Godard's complete break from narrative film. After that dead-end, Godard made many beautiful and interesting documentary-theoretical films throughout the Seventies (the best being Numero Deux, Ici Et Ailleurs & Tout Va Bien). He returned to more narrative cinema in the 80's beginning with the little-seen "SAUVE QUI PEUT (LA VIE)". I find most of his 80's films to be pretty weak, besides some good ones up until 1985 or so. My whole point with this rant is that... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Jean-Luc Godard DVD Release Date: Released the 23 August 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Jean-Luc Godard and Luis Buñuel enjoyed an ardent misanthropic duel in the '60s and '70s, but who won is anyone's call. Godard's Weekend lays down the trump in a harrowing and darkly funny allegory in which social mores fray along political lines. Played out in a metafilm in which characters question their own reality, a morally bankrupt Parisian couple tries to leave the city on a much-loathed country holiday with the wife's parents. Along the way, endless traffic jams, sudden violence, and vistas of gory car crashes underscore their corrupted values. Their lethal encounter with the in-laws and kidnap by an anarchic band of radical cannibals finds the couple--and presumably "decent" society with them--reverting to a nasty primitivism. The idea is of course that the bored,... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Jean-Luc Godard DVD Release Date: Released the 23 August 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Robert Bresson always claimed his films are about hope and redemption, but so many end in death or suicide that it's a struggle to reconcile the statement with his films. His final film, based on Leo Tolstoy's story The Counterfeit Note, is no different. It's the harrowing tale of an innocent man, Yvon (Christian Patey), whose victimization at the hands of an arrogant upper-class delinquent and a greedy shop owner sends him on a downward spiral into a life of crime. The once-happy husband and father turns bitter, angry, self-pitying, and ultimately coldly brutal in the chilling conclusion. It's Bresson's most expansive film and biggest canvas, weaving the paths of numerous characters across Yvon's journey, but he edits with jackrabbit jumps, running headlong through the story with... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Christian Patey - Sylvie Van den Elsen Director(s): Robert Bresson DVD Release Date: Released the 24 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Un Chien Andalou remains a startling artifact suggesting ways in which film can express the subconscious. The result of Luis Bunuel's collaboration with Salvador Dali, the 17-minute, 1929 film was designed expressly to shock and provoke. Opening with the canonical eyeball-slashing sequence and divided into baffling "chapters", this is a work of art obsessed with religion, lust, decay, violence, and death. Un Chien Andalou isn't simply one of the great works of the surrealist movement, but a segment of cinematic DNA that irrevocably altered the aesthetics of film. In its tangled corridors you find the seeds to the disappearing-mouth bit in The Matrix, the carcasses strewn through Peter Greenaway's A Zed and Two Noughts and pretty much the entire oeuvre of David... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Simone Mareuil - Pierre Batcheff Director(s): Luis Buñuel DVD Release Date: Released the 28 December 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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The musical accompaniment for most of these seminal avant-garde films is very bad. A previous reviewer mentioned that it was done by "the best in the business." Well, I am of the opinion that, unfortunately, there are not enough interesting minds in that business (silent film scoring), or at least not enough employed by Kino Video, to make for a competent collection.
There is electric guitar (Creed-style riffing!!!). There is arbitrary "Frenchy" sounding music. And yes, there is even some dreaded Casio keyboard "vox" effect.
Who could possibly think that keyboard "vox" was a good idea? Not me.
These films, like all those Kino releases, are rare and under-appreciated, and worth owning on DVD because this is the only way you'll get them. I only wish... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 02 August 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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