…just once. Just once. Really. Just once I’d like to see one of the Twitterific Kidcrits,™ or even one or two of their venerated elders, file a review that reads something like this: “I didn’t really like [Film X], I didn’t find it engaging on the levels I’m accustomed to, but then again, I also really didn’t understand a lot of the allusions in the film and I’m not particularly well-versed in the philosophical precepts that the movie seems to be extrapolating from. So while I didn’t like it, I also have to admit that I didn’t get it, and that at some level, I’m really underqualified to deliver an entirely reliable assessment of it.”
But of course one doesn’t get that, does one? Instead, one gets semi-sneers at Godard “disciples” (that would be Roger Ebert, on his Twitter feed, which by now must be the length of Infinite Jest and War and Peace combined), shrugging-offs of that perennial mass of straw men, the “elitists,” or the “ivory tower group” (Todd McCarthy’s writeup is a more considered dismissal than his use of that term might indicate, I have to admit, and the man is admirably upfront about his prejudices), and quite a bit of virtually spittle-flecked “How dare you even presume to question my intellectual bona fides just because I don’t like this!” bluster from the TKs™, of course. As I wrote to someone a couple of days ago, when it comes to this sort of material, I can’t trust the verdict of a reviewer who most likely thinks that “Guattari” is the thing that Philippe Garrel can no longer entends. Don’t get me wrong; what I’m looking for w/r/t Film Socialisme isn’t necessarily some extended ode to Godard’s ineffable/infallible genius. But all this…it’s just so bloody predictable.
Personally, I was more offended by the McCarthy piece than the Ebert. Pulling biographical facts from McCabe’s book to make Godard look like an asshole was a low blow and really has no place in an ostensible review of this new movie. Also, I didn’t like the way he lumped Jia Zhangke, Pedro Costa, Bela Tarr and Abbas Kiarostami together. Once again, there’s a group of filmmakers without much in common other than the fact that their movies don’t play in multiplexes.
Isn’t that exactly what Matt Noller did over at Slant and also on his Twitter feed? (well maybe he doesn’t count as a TK by your standards)
I dunno—I’ve enjoyed Godard’s last few on a visual level, but the “You don’t get its density” defense seems less and less tenable as the movies seem less and less interested in making a coherent structure out of their allusions. There’s a valid argument to be made about whether a movie that’s all allusions and little else is a movie at all, or just a collection of marginalia held together by a director as brand name. Either way, it seems churlish to accuse Ebert, who remained a Godard booster long after many mainstream critics gave up on him, of not bothering to try. If the audience isn’t getting it, that might be the audience’s fault or it might be the artist’s, and the last few years (decades?) of Godard make me pretty inclined to blame the latter.
4:26 says it all: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/05/cannes_5_waiting_for_godard.html#comment-931980
I don’t think there is another filmmaker I’ve tried to admire and failed more than Godard. Most of my attempts to watch his films have been met either with sleep or simply stopping play and not finishing. Time and time again.
“I didn’t really like [Film X], I didn’t find it engaging on the levels I’m accustomed to, but then again, I also really didn’t understand a lot of the allusions in the film and I’m not particularly well-versed in the philosophical precepts that the movie seems to be extrapolating from. So while I didn’t like it, I also have to admit that I didn’t get it, and that at some level, I’m really underqualified to deliver an entirely reliable assessment of it.”
That’s pretty much my reaction to most of Godard’s post-60s work in a nutshell; I haven’t seen his latest yet, obviously, but In Praise of Love left me more than a little wanting. And I fully cop to the fact that that’s my malfunction, my… geez, I don’t want to say intellectual callowness, because that sounds really awful and I don’t think of myself as a particularly dumb person. (Which might be why some of the younguns are more likely to dismiss/rage against it– nobody wants to admit that there’s something they’re not particularly well-educated about, and that seems to go double for young film critics.)
Oh dearie me, walk me to the fainting couch, Fuzzy Bastard has told me I’ve written something that “seems churlish.”
But seriously—as I explicitly stated above, I’m not necessarily seeking a defense. But I do insist that a coherent perspective on a film…before one even decides if it’s “a movie at all”…depends in some respects on understanding at least a bit of what it’s on about. I admit that I don’t immediately understand all the allusions in any given Godard work, but if I’m gonna do any significant critical digging on a given work, you can be pretty sure I’m gonna investigate those allusions as thoroughly as I’m able, and yes, I can prove it:
http://glennkenny.première.com/blog/2008/02/pierrot-le-fou.html
http://glennkenny.première.com/blog/2008/02/pierrot-le-fo‑1.html
http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2008/06/jean-luc-godard.html
Obviously spadework of this sort isn’t necessarily possible in the context of Cannes (and McCarthy’s reflexive insult to those who insist that they need to see the film again is particularly condescending in this respect), but I don’t think that invalidates my initial point.
I think the response from a lot of reviews I’ve read is that, yes, while they didn’t understand the film, the problem is that it doesn’t work on its most basic level as a movie, and that therefore, they’re not interested in trying to better understand it.
It’s this idea that you need to understand Godard in order to appreciate Godard. And I think that’s why he’s a bad filmmaker. A movie’s quality should be obvious even if it requires multiple viewings to fully grasp – either it works as a movie or it doesn’t. And, to me, his movies always fail that basic level.
It’s not even like Marienbad, which wasn’t to my taste – yet I could appreciate it simply by virtue of the fact that it’s phenomenally well-made, with gorgeous production design and photography. Godard, in my opinion, doesn’t even get that far.
“It’s this idea that you need to understand Godard in order to appreciate Godard. And I think that’s why he’s a bad filmmaker. A movie’s quality should be obvious even if it requires multiple viewings to fully grasp – either it works as a movie or it doesn’t. And, to me, his movies always fail that basic level.”
Going to disagree with you here rather strongly; some films require that you have more experience– whether it’s intellectual or emotional– in order to grapple with them. The first time I saw FACES, I was seventeen or eighteen, and I thought it was the stupidest, boringest, most pointless thing I had ever seen. When I was twenty-three, though, it punched me square in the stomach and was ceaselessly compelling.
It wasn’t that it took me multiple viewings to fully grasp it; it was that I had to grow as a person, had to live some more life, had to understand what it was about before I could really appreciate it. That’s an emotional example, granted, but I think the same hold trues for intellectual ones.
The other thing I want to say is: the man who made CONTEMPT certainly doesn’t lack for gorgeousness, sir.
I freely admit that I don’t get Godard, but I also don’t like him. Those are two different things. Godard doesn’t – well, not never, but very rarely at least – make me interested in investigating what it is I’ve just seen. I feel like I’m on the outside before I ever even knew there was an inside.
Contrast this with Bresson, who also don’t get, from a stylistic perspective, but there’s something haunting and, well, nagging, about something like L’ARGENT, and even LANCELOT OF THE LAKE, that makes me want to go back, and try harder.
Contempt is fine. But I hardly believe that if it didn’t have Godard’s name on it, it would be considered by many any kind of masterpiece.
While we’re speaking of Ebert, he has a quote written in defense of 8 1/2 that I often refer to, as it’s one of the most concisely written bits I’ve ever encountered from a critic: “A filmmaker who prefers ideas to images will never advance above the second rank because he is fighting the nature of his art. The printed word is ideal for ideas; film is made for images, and images are best when they are free to evoke many associations and are not linked to narrowly defined purposes.”
One other point I’d like to make, which is telling, is that in Sight & Sound’s 2002 poll, while Godard didn’t have a single film in either the critics or directors top 10, he appeared in the critics list of 10 greatest directors – but not the directors list.
Congratulations, McCarthy. Yet another parent who is proud of his ability to procreate. I’m sure that Godard would have been your kind of artist if only his lady had carried his spawn to term. Otherwise, his review puts an errant apostrophe into Finnegans Wake, which is a dumb mistake. Worse, though, is the cliché of citing FW as shorthand for an inscrutable artist’s late work. But I will agree, in part, with John. You don’t revisit a work of art unless something grabs you the first time. I keep going back to FW, however much I don’t understand, because I really except to find the meaning of life hidden inside. Likewise, I’ll go back to even the densest Godard for a number of reasons. Is there really nothing in the new movie that McCarthy, et al. can return to for re-evaluation?
Not the first time Ebert’s been wrong, Mr. the Lodger. Neither the last.
He’s 100% right in that quote.
That Ebert quote makes little sense. Good “ideas” are never “narrowly defined purposes.” Words are no more inherently precise than images. Even more so than singular images, narrative itself often conveys plenty of ideas without ever announcing them. Perhaps Ebert was just saying that film is a bad medium for polemics. Or he doesn’t understand what an “idea” is.
The negative response that “Film Socialisme” has received thus far seems to indicate that it possesses most if not all of the qualities I hoped it would. To quote Jerzy Radziwilowicz’s character in “Passion”: “Maybe it’s not important to understand, and it’s enough just to take.” (But seriously, what were people expecting? A semi-coherent remake of “Reds” with Alain Badiou standing in for Warren Beatty and Patti Smith for Diane Keaton?) Can’t wait to drink it in.
The Ebert quote makes perfect sense. He wasn’t referring to polemics. The quote was taken from a paragraph that begins: “The critic Alan Stone, writing in the Boston Review, deplores Fellini’s “stylistic tendency to emphasize images over ideas.””
I often come across critics who are dismissive of the image. If I recall correctly, Sarris criticized Kubrick for having too great a belief in the power of the image. As well, David Thomson has said that cinematography is unimportant to movies – that millions of people take millions of photos each day, and that’s not very difficult to do.
I often think the disconnect for many critics is the fact that they are by nature WRITING about a form that is inherently not literary. Images work in a manner more attuned to music – they create an experience that affects multiple levels without necessarily being intellectual (and there’s a difference between intellectual and intelligent…).
Simply put, if you remove the “picture” from motion picture, you negate the existence of the form.
The cinema of ideas is a perfectly valid tradition, and to dismiss it as “second rank” is frankly as idiotic as those who dismiss the blockbuster or the animated film en toto. To dismiss an entire slew of films is narrow-minded, methinks.
And of course, your argument itself doesn’t hold any water re: Godard, because Godard is certainly a filmmaker of images– which is why I had cited CONTEMPT when you claimed that his films lacked for beauty in comparision to MARIENBAD: not because I was arguing it was a masterpiece (I’m agnostic on that count, though I’m glad it let you make your pointless and bitchy little non-sequitor about how it’s only considered one because of Godard’s name, oh, good one, two points for you!) but because it’s an objectively beautiful, eye-ravishing film.
This is the part where, if I was at home instead of work and writing a blogpost instead of a comment, I would throw a couple dozen screen captures your way to illustrate the different sorts of arresting and carefully-framed images Godard has to offer.
And if you think you got my dander up, just imagine what I’d be saying if I was someone who actually liked Godard!
I really got to learn to refresh the page before I post my long comments.
Okay, Joe the Lodger– I get what you mean, and I will say that even in my own films, I strive to be non-intellectual, to create elusive meanings instead of allusive ones, to create visual music, experiences, instead of treatises (how well I succeed, well, that depends on who you ask). But I still think there’s room for films of all types, and while I might not dig the intellectually-dense approach, I do see it as a perfectly valid, and not lesser, tradition.
Joe,
I see your point, as long as an “idea” remains something with only one meaning, while an “image” is always multivalent and open to the interpretation of the viewer. Also, you align yourself against what seems to be a very stupid Thomson quote, so one point in your favor. However, I still think that Ebert has a narrower idea of what an idea is than you seem to have. When Godard throws some musing about Maoism on the screen, it’s hardly ever to tell the viewer that very thing about Maoism–usually it means two or three different things, much of it dependent on the accompanying image. How clean-cut an idea do you get from, say, Belmondo strapping dynamite to his head? The idea/image thing is too simplistic.
Part of the problem with late Godard is precisely that he’s a filmmaker of images who desperately wants to be a filmmaker of ideas. His images are beautiful, in every medium (who knew crappy 70s video could be so lovely?). But his supposed ideas are mostly just aphorisms, which is to say they’re pretty/vacant.
I actually enjoy late Godard films. Some of his 80s work is terrific (“King Lear”, especially, is as good as anything he’s ever done), and all of it is great to look at. But like a pampered Hollywood actress, it’s embarrassing how great the gap is between Godard’s self-image and his actual wisdom. Like his disciple Tarantino, he substitutes reference for erudition, and quotation for thought, and whenever he actually ventures an opinion, as in the painful In Praise of Love, it tends to be dopey and predictable.
The dense annotation GK did on Pierrot is great, but too many of Godard’s movies have relied on their allusions to provide content, without adding much to the conversation themselves.
Tom, even a tertiary reference to your own ‘films’ in the context of a conversation about Godard earns you a month’s detention doing crafts and services for Kevin Smith.
EBERT:
Ebert uses language to rationalize his gut reaction to liking or not liking something. That doesn’t **sound** like a criminal offense, especially since most people practice reviewing exactly the same way. But reading him over the long term one gets the idea that he hates XYZ in a film, unless he doesn’t. It’s hard to protect his authority figure-ness when he seems so darn slippery.
GODARD:
What people find combative about Godard isn’t that his movies take work. Let’s first of all restrict the “tough stuff” to ’68 and beyond. There’s a lot to like across that period, from LE GAI SAVOIR to the present. Gorgeous imagery (some of the most stunning camerawork anywhere), imaginative use of genre, beautiful people and places, images of splendor and vivid ugliness – and, yes, compelling arguments relating to just about everything under the sun that concerns JLG.
What people find combative, however, is that the structure of his allusions and aphorisms come across as presumptive to all but the most erudite viewers. In one scenario, the viewer resents the presumption; in another, it feels like that nightmare where you show up for your final exam that you forgot to study for or didn’t know about, but that the other students are blasting through dilligently while the tip of your pencil keeps breaking.
The course I recommend – as always, with any filmmaker – is to examine what’s going on in the frame, the filmmaker’s relationship to the subject matter, to use aesthetic criteria to evaluate the image and sound, and so on. In this way, Godard is so clearly a master, a fascinating essayist, a nuanced portraitist, a tremendous conductor of image and sound, that the least I can do is repay him with good faith.
If it takes a trip to the library to deepen these experiences even further, I say: okay!
FILM SOCIALISME:
I agree with Dan S. The negative notes have done as much to stoke my anticipation as the positive ones.
Don’t get me started. Expecting a measured or reasonable response to new Godard is a lost cause. There are all too many people for whom he might as well have stopped making movies sometime before 1967 maybe right after Breathless, even. McCarthy’s “review” in which he mentions, oh yeah, absolutely nothing about the film itself is especially heinous, and might be summed up as “Most people don’t go to see Godard or Tarr movies…” He leaves out the obvious kicker “…so they must not be any good,” but it’s certainly implied. The people who appreciate late Godard are “elites” because they’re in the minority, and of course everybody knows that the majority is always right. I’d love to see some detractors engaging with the later Godard films in a more intelligent way, but I have yet to come across too much of that. (Of course, like anything in this world, it’s not for everybody, and honest acknowledgment of that is appreciated as well, just not McCarthy’s smug superiority and the underlying sense of glee that Godard’s films don’t have a big audience anymore. McCarthy seems positively delighted that audiences aren’t flocking to art films in big numbers.)
For me, needless to say, I’m looking forward to Film Socialism when it plays for a week at some NYC theater and, pretty much, nowhere else. It may not be a popular stance, but late Godard is, for me, stimulating, provoking, intelligent, and visually stunning, all the things that McCarthy flatly insists this new film is not.
Mr. Fox-Warner: Duly noted, and ouch.
I wish the people who were so busy erecting defenses against the “assault of the barbarian-intellectual Godard” could take a look at these supposedly fear-inspiring films and see how gorgeous, funny, sad, entertaining, they often are.
While lots of his post-’68 films are complex and layered, keep in mind that:
KING LEAR is also a marvelously playful science fiction film.
HAIL MARY is also a warm, reflective treatment of unplanned pregnancy.
KEEP UP YOUR RIGHT is also a funny celebration of slapstick comedy (with a perfectly executed “dive into the car” by JLG).
NOUVELLE VAGUE and PASSION overflow with stunning imagery.
HISTOIRE(S) DU CINEMA is a mammoth work of film criticism – and film appreciation.
DETECTIVE is a gripping noir with an eccentric Jean-Pierre Leaud performance.
And that’s just a few.
I also think it’s a mistake to lump together all post-’67 Godard in defense as well as attack. Some kind of joy seems to have drained out of him after he completed HISTOIRE(S) DU CINEMA—before that, he’s making strange, unpredictable, lively movies, but the films after that have seemed not unlike late Woody Allen—half-baked, unfinished, made without passion and only out of habit. Of course, Godard on his worst day can make a prettier picture than most directors at their best, but the drop in quality between GERMANY YEAR 90 NINE ZERO and IN PRAISE OF LOVE is pretty vast.
@ Jim Fox-Warner: Yeah, ouch. Tough crowd!
Wrong about the drop in passion. You don’t make something like NOTRE MUSIQUE in the same frame of mind as SMALL TIME CROOKS. I mean, wtf. And IN PRAISE OF LOVE is one of the top films of the decade.
At a certain point, “personal opinion” stops being cute and starts to decimate your credibility.
“There’s a valid argument to be made about whether a movie that’s all allusions and little else is a movie at all, or just a collection of marginalia held together by a director as brand name.”
Is there? Allusions are as valid as dictionary definitions when it comes to the meaning behind your words/images. Let’s say Film Socialisme is nothing other than a sequence of allusions to other works by other creators for other purposes. Doesn’t the combination in this context create a new argument? Isn’t it the same thing as picking previously defined words from a dictionary and putting them in the order that best conveys your purpose?
A couple of random thoughts that just now occured to me:
One, given his propensity to declare an entire artform invalid, I’d be a little cautious citing Ebert as an authority as to what it is and isn’t filmic.
Two, Mr. Fox-Warner– while the sting and wit of your barb still stands, I do want to point out in my defense that I brought up my films (notice the lack of quotation marks, thank you very much) only to further buttress my position that while I don’t get a lot out of the intellectually dense/allusive approach as a viewer, and indeed am more-or-less opposed to it creatively, I still think it’s a perfectly valid way to make films and not in any way unfilmic or second-rank.
You’d think the people decrying Godard for quoting had never heard (of) hip-hop. Godard’s a sampler.
Right on Brandon, Ed, etc.
Anybody find our defenses of Godard pseudo-intellectual stonewalls? Seem pretty accessible to me but then, I dunno, I don’t know what it’s like to be a punchy, resentful Cannes correspondent.
Et alors, I’m sort of startled to read so much Godard hatin’ from such cine-savvy types – reckon that includes Ebert, whose attempt at an ironic “review” of The Limits of Control was far more substance-free than the the film being critiqued. I mean, for people prepared to defend the nearly-substance-free, broken-record weak tea that is post-Mia Woody, I’m genuinely amazed how the undeniably knotty Godard, only one of the most influential directors of all time, gets the “don’t get it/bored, ergo it’s the director’s fault” – talk about la politique des autuers!
While it’s been a while since I saw it, I have to strongly disagree with El Fuzzy B where ÉLOGE DE L’AMOUR – aside from 45–90 seconds of ham-handed message-pounding in the second half (and, yes, the whole Speilberg-fixe thing), I found it enthralling, among his loveliest works, and no small measure of self-effacement in the melancholy writer character. I also find his painterly use of video chroma keying/blending with his celluloid elements therein to be this many-hits-of-acid side of synathesia, and one which, at least among “narrative” filmmakers, has no equal.
I also find this whole “gee, art with footnotes sucks” argument to be utterly played/tedious, given that it’s one that’s hounded modernism into its post-position, as it were, since at least The Waste Land. Unlike TR, I got FACES and may never sit through much else Cassavettes subsequently made because I find them graceless, undramatic, willfully “improvised”, monstrously pretentious and, for someone so putatively dedicated to “truth,” utterly phony. BUT…I know why he’s important, as I suspect many of you do when Godard is concerned, while admitting there’s no accounting for taste(s). After all, you only need first-year French to “understand” what JLG is referring to when he cuts from himself writing “Les arbes????” in his notebook to Jean-Paul and Anna cavorting in widescreen among the trees in PIERROT. You may have some resonant examples of your own.
God knows not every one of his films is perfect, but I adore Godard, in all his cranky, fragmented, movie-mad, elegiac oeuvre – he is truly like no one else. I’m also dying to see how LOL catz turn up in FILM SOCIALISME!
I agree with Nicolas Leblanc that we have to give Matt Noller credit for doing exactly what Glenn complained that no one does. I really had great respect for the way Mr. Noller chose to write his post – honest, classy, serious.
“Part of the problem with late Godard is precisely that he’s a filmmaker of images who desperately wants to be a filmmaker of ideas. His images are beautiful, in every medium (who knew crappy 70s video could be so lovely?). But his supposed ideas are mostly just aphorisms, which is to say they’re pretty/vacant…he substitutes reference for erudition, and quotation for thought…”
‑Fuzzy Bastard
This seems to enact Glenn’s exact complaint. Dismissal rather than engagement. I think that your fundamental beliefs here, quotation cannot be thought, that reference cannot be anything but reference itself, that Godard is not a filmmaker of ideas, could not be farther from my own beliefs. Further, and similar to Joe, where does this opposition of idea and image come from? Images cannot be part of the conveying of idea? Ideas cannot be part of images? And further, we are not dealing here simply with image. There is sound too. If there is a director whom has proven you cannot ignore the sound element of movies I would believe the later works of Godard have revealed him to be just that.
Joe: You establish through this Ebert quote an opposition between “idea” and “image.” In what way must these be considered as working against and excluding each other? Images cannot contain and convey ideas and vice versa? You quote Ebert: “film is made for images, and images are best when they are free to evoke many associations and are not linked to narrowly defined purposes.” Who says an idea must be dogmatic, must contain one essential meaning? Ideas cannot be anything but the conveying of “narrowly defined purposes”? The Ebert quote says much less about Godard, or Fellini, than it does about the limited views of one Mr. Ebert.
I at least thank you all for in thinking about this I just returned to a moment from THE OLD PLACE which addresses these very questions of ideas and images. It is impossible in this time to notate the montage that is tied to this exchange, my free time at the moment does not allow it, but it relies upon many images from MoMA, the planetarium sequence from REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, a demonstration of the past and present through tennis, an example of “the simple links” in images, and much more:
-“We haven‘t done much yet“
-“We’ve visited a few stars. This image that you are, that I am, which Walter Benjamin speaks of, that point where the past resonates with the present for a split second to form a constellation. “The work of art,” he says, “ is the sole apparition of something distant, however close it may be.”
-“But I’m not sure I understand: close and distant at the same time.”
-“People often say: “In the beginning was…” The origin is both what is discovered as absolutely new, and what recognizes itself as having existed forever. The sum of all ideas, according to Benjamin, makes up a primal, ever-present landscape.”
-“Even when people have forgotten it, and it’s a question of returning”
-“There are the stars which are to the constellations what things are to ideas. Instead of ‘exercises’ we could have said ‘an object lesson.’”
-“’Exercises in artistic thinking.’ was what we said.”
-“The concept is that of approach. Just as stars simultaneously approach and move away from each other, driven by laws of physics as they form a constellation, so too do certain things and thoughts approach each other to form one or more images.”
-“So to understand what goes on beyond stars and images you must start by looking at the simple links.”
-“An image isn’t only an atom. It has, has been, will be its own image. The image of the image, the image of all the possibilities.”
Maybe this is just all “pretty/vacant” quotation. Aphorisms that say nothing. I would strongly disagree and can add more later but at the time will let the direct confrontation of this dialogue/montage about ideas and images stand on its own.
P.S. I think the work of Kaja Silverman and Harun Farocki in the book “Speaking About Godard”, and her later essay on JLG/JLG in the journal OCTOBER, number 96, can be held out as a very good example of engaging with the ideas and images and sound of Godard’s work, of how they are all tied together, how quotation and allusion work with the image and sound to convey ideas.
The only post-68 Godard I’m really on board with (my viewing is still patchy in those parts) is LETTER TO JANE. I take it I’m the only one, but I was in a Foucault seminar at the time and it played like a hilarious parody thereof (even though he was slightly ahead of schedule).
The juxtaposition of image vs. literary idea is really very simple. And it goes to the fundamental nature of both forms.
An image does not inherently contain meaning. Yes, an image can be used to express an idea – and in movies, everything from lighting to composition to movement is based upon an idea; however, that idea is more often than not an example of form as opposed to making an intellectual statement. You can take a photograph of a tree and you recognize what it is, but it doesn’t mean anything in and of itself – though, you as the viewer can certainly apply your own meaning to it based on personal experiences.
With regards to literary ideas…by its very existence, written/verbal language must have a meaning because it is a made-up symbolic abstraction meant to signify something that it is not. For a word to exist it needs to have a meaning.
The problem that I believe certain critics have is that they think in literary terms – and for them, they’re not particularly interested in what’s on screen, so much as distilling the abstract ideas that can subsequently be expressed in literary terms.
@Jim Fox-Warner: great pseudonym, Mr. Hallyday.
I’m with Glenn on this one. The critic’s job, among other things, is to ask of whatever work is before him/her: 1) What is this thing trying to do? 2) How well does this thing do it? and 3) Is this thing ultimately worth doing? It seems to Glenn and to me that too many so-called critics of the Twitter era, upon being confronted with a difficult or unusual work, imagine they can skip right to question three.
As for Godard, he’s one of the all-time great masters and he’s still making good, beautiful and interesting work. His last truly great film that engaged me on every level was 1991’s NOUVELLE VAGUE. But all of his later works–all of the post Dziga Vertov group stuff–is worth seeing. In fact, here at home it’s my eye candy. No shit. I’ll cue up OH WOE IS ME, PASSION, NOTRE MUSIQUE, SLOW MOTION and play it them in the background. And they never fail to inspire me. Because there are more ideas–expressed as images, sounds and, yes, often as intellectual ideas in dialogue–in 10 minutes of most Godard films than in the entire careers of other directors. And his late period is quiet, reflective, meditative and bucolic in a way that confounds the critics who loved his brash citified pop-culture mash-ups in the sixties.
Joe: Now, I don’t disagree entirely with your concluding paragraph. Yes, many critics ignore the how of a film for a focus on the what of the plot, but I don’t know if this image/literary dichotomy you set up works as well as you put forth.
First off, you cannot reduce a movie to a static image. A film is not a photograph of a tree. A film is duration, sound, time, most often a succession of images, and as we are not talking about silent films in this case, a succession of images in conjunction with a soundtrack, in the case of late Godard a soundtrack comprised of voiceover, dialogue, music, diegetic sound, etc. Much of Godard’s work, both alone and in collaboration with Anne-Marie Mieville has addressed, questioned, investigated and destabilized this privileging of the image over sound and they have brilliantly made films and videos which utilize with great faculty the sound and image for these and other purposes. It is hardly an accident that Godard and Mieville named their studio Sonimage.
Second, that characterization of language is highly problematic in its fundamentalism. Any engagement with 20th century philosophy, continental and analytic, and linguistics would reveal how it is not quite as simple a proposition as you have offered. “For a word to exist it needs to have a meaning.” To a degree, yes, but it does not counter your idea of the image as not “mean(ing) anything in and of itself.” I’m somewhat hesitant to delve into discussions of language and meaning at the moment as it is quite a large apple to bite out of but I will assume that you have some familiarity with these ideas and can see how it isn’t quite as simple as you have formulated.
Third, you have chosen to contrast an isolated, single image with a literary text, a stream of words, this goes back to what I mentioned above. Further, I disagree with your earlier idea that an image itself cannot make “an intellectual statement”, but let us at least accept it as you put forth. The corollary to the still image is not the entire literary text, it is a single word. The single word is given a meaning (and not a meaning that means universally) by the words it follows and precedes. It is thus more analogous to an image in duration, a succession of images or the relationship of sound to image. As I write this I realize perhaps this is just restating what I first stated above, my apologies if so. But I think the point is made.
You cited this Ebert quote: “A filmmaker who prefers ideas to images will never advance above the second rank because he is fighting the nature of his art. The printed word is ideal for ideas; film is made for images, and images are best when they are free to evoke many associations and are not linked to narrowly defined purposes.”
It is this contrasting of ideas and images that I think is entirely flawed. The rigid belief that the word is made for ideas, the cinema for images just seems reductive, and, frankly, wrongheaded. The concept that the idea is singular, the image multiple? Ideas are not the singular literary thing you propose. The image is incapable of conveying ideas? I will be sure to alert van Eyck, Erwin Panofsky, Leo Steinberg, Alfred Stieglitz, et al. Perhaps that is taking cheap shots and not representing that position correctly. But, there is a bias working here that seems antithetical to the kind of work and ideas Godard seems to be doing. Granted you have cited this comment on Ebert’s review, “I’ve long felt that Godard’s entire aesthetic can be summed up as: The intellectual justification of bad filmmaking…”, as saying it all so I am not sure if we are engaging on anything resembling common ground.
I’ll be brief: Show, don’t tell.
“Show, don’t tell” is for middle school English students. And for pussies.
Yeah, “show don’t tell” doesn’t apply to people who know how to tell, and therefore doesn’t count as an artistic “rule”. Read Philip Roth – that guy spends whole books simply telling, and they’re quite often brilliant.
Is the central issue that mccarthy and ebert dismissed the film without applying what some consider the appropriate critical apparatus? Or that they dismissed godard at all?
I feel like what DFW said about part of what dense, challenging avant-garde work should do – namely, to seduce the [viewer] into doing the extra work necessary to engage deeply with the work – has some relevance here. Sometimes, for me, Godard successfully seduces me into paying enough attention and building up enough psychic steam to really get into his films – like with WEEKEND, which knocked my socks off and made me go the extra mile(s) to keep up with it. Sometimes, I want to slap him for all his mugging and cleverness and cute little smart-ass asides that I don’t get or do get and still think are lame – like much of PIERROT LE FOU and MASCULINE FEMININE.
I also enjoy Godard as one of the few genuinely politically leftist filmmakers who makes a point of expressing his radical politics through his work, even if they are occasionally obscure. It has to be a good thing that in this time of massive flux, where words “liberal” “conservative” “progressive” and “socialist” are all up for grabs, Godard is entering the fray with a film named Socialism.
My two-cents on the whole image/idea dichotomy is that it’s really dumb. Not unlike most dichotomies. I mean, I think Ebert is as kindly and cuddly as can be, but I don’t go to him for serious discussions on the nature of language and image.
On the Internets these days the mere mention of simple dichotomies is resulting in some deep discussions. There’s the slow/fast one from last week. And now show/tell. Agree with bill and Tom R. so far. Godard’s films have always done both. And part of what Glenn’s getting at in this post is that critics usually focus on the “tell” parts in recent Godard films, declaring them too dense and obscure. Even BREATHLESS, brimming with philosophical, pop-cultural, literary and cinematic tells (like jumpcuts) is also full of show: what it’s like to be young and beautiful and poor in Paris, or to hang out with your sweetie or to fight with her. But I won’t keep telling, see for yourself. Here’s a bit of show from NOUVELLE VAGUE, a beautiful and simple tracking shot that offers up an everday moment I haven’t seen anywhere else in movies–a bit of poetry made out of turning off the lights for the evening in a country estate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK8sHqPGPwg
I like Fuzzy Bastard’s most recent post quite a bit. I can’t think of any Godard movies, even the ones I didn’t like, that didn’t have at least one striking, ‘whoa’ image in it, cinematically rendered. And yeah, his ‘ideas’ in In Praise of Love (especially his reflexive anti-Spielbergism) felt crabbed and trite.
Yes, dichotomies are simplistic and generally don’t lead anywhere interesting, I’ve read my Hegel, so please take my previous post with a grain of salt.
But they can also be useful to bring things into focus and if I’m told that I need to know the works of Guattari or whoever to understand a film that’s a bridge too far for me, and I would retort that while a certain amount of context might sometimes be needed, generally a work of art should be able to stand on its own and engage people without reference to other works or secondary sources.
And I’m not saying this because I’m afraid of philosophical reflection in works of art, in fact I am, or rather used to be, as intellectual as they come – it all depends on how its done, and sadly it is very often done in shallow and uninteresting ways.
Look at all these words! Godard would love it.
Ed above is right on: Godard is a movie- and culture-mad sampler, in the mode of an intellectual hip-hop artist. And just because I don’t get every reference or sample in an Eminem song doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of pleasures to be had in the listening. The eternal bane of serious film-making is that in the popular imagination the medium itself has this retarded necessity of being immediately intelligible on every level the first time through. Pauline Kael once wrote something very astute about Godard around the time of WEEKEND. It was to the effect that Godard was out ahead of everyone else without a net, like Joyce when he wrote ULYSSES. Nobody who’s ever read that book once can claim to have understood or even noticed every reference. And yet is anyone’s experience of that work severely constrained by its mere density? Godard at his best makes films like Joyce and Nabokov wrote novels: exquisitely and inexhaustibly layered.
“I would retort that while a certain amount of context might sometimes be needed, generally a work of art should be able to stand on its own and engage people without reference to other works or secondary sources.”
Setting aside the Obvious Crime of quotation, I’m not sure a work needs to entice you into deep criticism. If a work is a strong statement, but it requires a lot of work to uncover it and is actively alienating, then it still has that value; the question is whether or not it’s “worth it” to see if there’s anything there. Which you can’t know unless you’ve done the work. Which, it seems to me, is why Glenn isn’t especially happy with all the first reports from Cannes that assert there’s no there there without having done the work.
More generally, I’d say it’s the artist’s job to express not entertain. Sure it’s nice to make it clearly worth someone’s while to take in your artwork, but it’s certainly not a requirement.
Brad
I tire of the endless smug fights over Godard. both camps reek of desperation in their attempts to deconstruct the genius or harangue the fraud. Personally, I have no use for his post-60s work – it’s purposefully incomprehensible with no real point to it all as far as I’m concerned. But neither do I begrudge those who consider them masterworks and preternatural “cinema”. there is room for both arguments, but the fighting in between has grown absurd. No one can discuss him anymore with out being either a philistine or an elitist prig. There is no in-between, and it’s tiresome.
I do find it hilarious that a film JLG proclaims to confront the difficulties of language and communication is itself impenetrable and communicated nothing to many of the people who have seen it. (hence why i’ll always contend JLG is taking a piss on his fans and ‘purposefully’ creates works that are so fraught with disassociation that they are ultimately meaningless in and of themselves) But it’s not so amusing that i’ll bother wasting 2 hours of my life watching it…there is no point. I agree that he is simply terrible at making movies…or at least hasn’t made a good one in 40+ years while instead pursuing god knows what he’s doing. But I also believe he’s capable of creating visually arresting art, even stunning, in the guise of cinema, but isn’t itself film. it’s pretty pictures run together for reasons only JLG will ever know.
The fact that he refuses to deign to even discuss it is enough for me to know he’s full of shit. Like his critics and detractors, the press conference fiasco reeks of desperation.
Godard may be a great filmmaker, but he is not a good filmmaker.
So Glenn, assuming you have them, what are your favorite late-period Godard films?
And everyone else: regarding Godard as a sampler. I read anecdotes of him hanging out at parties or coming over to friends houses and picking books off the shelf which he’d read a few pages or paragraphs of at a time, quickly moving on to something else. Same with his viewing habits. He’d sometimes wander into or out of movies in progress, ahead of his time again I suppose, watching films much more like home videos or even clips on YouTube.
Godard’s imagination seems restless, promiscuous. You see it in his early work too, this flitting from one image/sound/narrative/idea to another. Especially in the proto-essay film 2 OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER, which at times approaches an almost mystical state of self-distraction. But also in films with more of a narrative thrust or with one central character like VIVRE SA VIE.
“Because there are more ideas–expressed as images, sounds and, yes, often as intellectual ideas in dialogue–in 10 minutes of most Godard films than in the entire careers of other directors.”
This is engagement? Sounds a lot like standard “I’m smarter than pretty much everyone because I am in the talented tenth who appreciate Godard’s genius” (tenth in this case being one tenth of one percent of people who watch movies).
I was wondering when some form of the “nobody watches these movies anyway so who gives a shit” argument would raise its head. Actually, I’m pleasantly surprised it took as long as it did. At least Brad was kind enough to bring it up in kind of a cagey way. Check out the big brain on Brad, as I think I heard in a movie once.
I’m reminded of Lester Bangs down-mouthed retort, apropos producer Mike Chapman’s comment that if you can’t make a hit record you should “fuck off and go chop meat” somewhere: “So long, Leonard Cohen, been nice knowing you, I guess.”
Also, Yann taking my Guatarri/Garrel joke as a dead serious announcement of my ostensible belief that one has to be thoroughly versed in Guatarri in order to understand Godard is just one more reason I love internet discourse.
I think part of the problem really is that film might be the wrong medium for most people to absorb this kind of information. I, for example, didn’t get Glenn’s references to Phillipe Garrel and Guatteri but I Googled them and was reminded that I had learned of Mr. Guatteri’s existence and then promptly forgot it, but I did get something out of it.
Movies don’t come with footnotes and you can’t stop to Google references. At the same time, I’m not saying Godard shouldn’t be doing exactly what he’s doing, even if most of his films seem to call for what someone called an “ideal audience.” His post-“Weekend” work is, I suspect, simply not for me based on what I’ve seen up to now.
In fact, I truly feel a bit unqualified to judge some of his even relatively early “Maoist” films, though I did review a couple a while back – which is not the same thing as being “underqualified.” No one can know about everything and these films call for a great deal of knowledge that could arguably be classified as esoteric and so I’m not sure it’s my “fault” that I’m unqualified, I just haven’t been obsessing over the same things as Mr. Godard.
Still, he’s gotta do what he’s gotta do in the way he’s gotta do it, and if it truly edifies or moves some people, then that’s a good thing. It’s like what Elvis Costello invariably says when writers ask him to explain the meaning of his often elliptical lyrics to them. “If I could say it in other words, I would.”
“The fact that he refuses to deign to even discuss it is enough for me to know he’s full of shit.”
He’s given a number of excellent interviews recently (which Craig Keller has done incredible work translating into English, you can read them here: http://cinemasparagus.blogspot.com/2010/05/jean-luc-godard-interviewed-by-jean.html and http://cinemasparagus.blogspot.com/2010/05/jean-luc-godard-speaks-with-daniel-cohn.html). Just because he doesn’t choose to show up at a press conference and answer idiotic questions (I say this solely based on the quality of the writing and total lack of engagement the movie has received from almost every mainstream critic not named Manohla Dargis – would Todd McCarthy have gone ahead and asked him whether he thinks his films would be better had he had a child?) hardly means that he has refused to talk about the ideas that are behind his film’s existence.
“There is no in-between”
You’ve written off 40 years of highly varied filmmaking as totally without worth to you. Your opinion on Godard isn’t in the in-between either.
Yann: Have you seen the films being discussed? Congrats on being a reformed “intellectual.” Congrat-u-fucking-lations. That is such a cop out. Basically what you are saying is “I used to pretend to care and now I am smarter.” Your assumptions about what you think you need to know are just that, assumptions. Watch a movie. Take from it what you will. The rest is you projecting your own insecurities. Jesus, you don’t have to master every text, every film, etc etc just watch a film and see if it does anything for you. If the shots move you in any way, if the ideas stir you, etc etc.
Brad, you aren’t a philistine, or incapable of comprehending, simply, you are a fuckwad. Don’t pretend to be open to understanding what Godard is doing and then say :
“i’ll always contend JLG is taking a piss on his fans and ‘purposefully’ creates works that are so fraught with disassociation that they are ultimately meaningless in and of themselves…But it’s not so amusing that i’ll bother wasting 2 hours of my life watching it…there is no point. I agree that he is simply terrible at making movies…or at least hasn’t made a good one in 40+ years while instead pursuing god knows what he’s doing. But I also believe he’s capable of creating visually arresting art, even stunning, in the guise of cinema, but isn’t itself film. it’s pretty pictures run together for reasons only JLG will ever know.
The fact that he refuses to deign to even discuss it is enough for me to know he’s full of shit. Like his critics and detractors, the press conference fiasco reeks of desperation.”
Basically, you are an ass. Its made in the guise of cinema but it isn’t film…What the fuck does that even mean? Jesus, it isn’t so fucking complicated. Read a little Bergson and you might have a clue. Even if you don’t it isn’t like these movies are incomprehensible. Any motherfucker can watch THE OLD PLACE and understand it if they just pay attention. You don’t have to master every reference and get every allusion. Just watch it and get what you will out of it. You are like the asshole who thinks he has to get every allusion and reference in ULYSSES to think he can talk about it. No. Just read the book and take what you will from it. You don’t have to get every little thing. Guess what? You are capable of forming your own opinion. The total dismissal because you don’t want to engage is a childish temper tantrum and deserves a slap on the bottom the likes of which you probably never got. You project the sheepish blush of the asshole who wants to tell everyone he got a 1600 on the SAT’s when he really scored a 1100, or even more the fake rebel who would rather have failed to show up because he thinks it is some kind of fake authenticity to “rebel” against the system, the system that doesn’t even exist.
Godard hasn’t made a good film in 40+ years? Really? How many have you seen? HISTOIRE(S) DU CINEMA is just utter shit? GERMANY YEAR ZERO? NOUVELLE VAGUE? He’s just taking a piss? They are meaningless? JLG/JLG is a joke? No point? That is terrible filmmaking? I don’t even know a good way to tell you to fuck off, I am that flabbergasted. Grow up. Stop thinking you are the be all end all. You are a fucking rebel, opposing the big bad Godard industry. Congratulations. God,
Joe: Your only response to lengthy engagement is to say: “Godard may be a great filmmaker, but he is not a good filmmaker.” What the fuck are you trying to say with that? You really think Godard doesn’t know his way around a shot, a montage? You have nothing to say about your own ridiculous theories of “literary” writing? I thought you decried aphorisms. Don’t be a hypocrite. It doesn’t suit you.
Warren: don’t believe the apocryphal. Watch NOUVELLE VAGUE. HISTOIRE(S) DU CINEMA, JLG/JLG for starters.
And “Joe the Lodger”, sorry that I took the time to engage you on your ideas and all you can muster is “Godard may be a great filmmaker but he is not a good filmmaker.” Really? Have anything to say to the questions posed to your ideas of the image and the word? This is not a just image, it is just an asshole.
Ugh, I guess that shows I was a dumbass for trying to engage on a level of serious discussion.
Sorry Joe for the double shout out. You might deserve one but not two. My apologies.
I’m genuinely puzzled. Given that 99.99999% of all films in the known universe connect with any given viewer without their having to have any familiarity with the philosophies of Feliz Guattari (or Alain Badiou, or Walter Benjamin), why is it such a complete fucking affront to so many people that late Godard makes this demand?
On the one hand, there’s the argument that expecting such extracurricular knowledge (either in advance or prior to a hypothetical second viewing) is an unreasonable, elitist demand. On the other hand, there’s the argument that Godard is simply making shallow quotations and that his engagement with said authors isn’t particularly enlightening anyhow (which I’m not sure how one would know, unless you’ve done the elitist homework you resent the film for demanding). And then, on our extra-dialectical third hand, there’s the charge that an artwork comprised largely of quotations is not an artwork at all. (Yawn. Thanks to Evelyn Roak for citing some nice pieces in refutation, especially Kaja’s “The Author as Receiver.”)
But the main point: why is it such a threat, or such a big deal, for Godard to make films that simply Aren’t For Everyone, when (a) there are obviously plenty of people who are willing to grapple with them, and (b) there are tens of thousands of other films that don’t make the same demands?
Lest I be misunderstood, I’m not saying they shouldn’t be critiqued. I’m just asking why, of all things critics or cinephiles can do, so many people keep coming back to the charges of elitism or insularity. And lately this is mostly being done via what Roland Barthes [QUOTATION ALERT!!!] called “Deaf and Dumb Criticism.” “I’m an expert, and this thing makes no sense to me whatsoever, so clearly it sucks and the rest of you don’t have to worry about it at all. Moving on.…”
Also, the “Hell” sequence of NOTRE MUSIQUE is a pinnacle of JLG’s horror-sublime, his 23RD PSALM BRANCH. Righteous eyeball acidbath.
For what it’s worth, I’d say ‘Sauve qui peut (la vie)’ (aka Every Man for Himself) (aka Slow Motion) is the best place to start for those not familiar with (or perhaps afraid of) Godard’s post-60’s body of work. His technique here is far less experimental than his Maoist-inspired video pieces of the 70’s and less, urm, intellectually alienating (for plebes like me) than much of what was to follow. It’s a film about people as much as ideas, and relies very much on the skills of its cast to communicate its intent.
Why do people seem to think that you can’t enjoy or appreciate Godard’s films unless you understand where all the references come from? That seems like such an absurd way to approach any movie. In *Nouvelle Vague*, all the dialogue is constructed out of quotations. In multiple viewings, I’ve never really known where more than a few lines come from – and those mostly from Raymond Chandler and Howard Hawks, showing how solid my intellectual bonafides are. But it doesn’t matter. These films aren’t games of “spot the reference.” The remarkable thing about *Nouvelle Vague* isn’t where Godard took the quotes from, but that he wove them together into a thematically rich, coherent work of his own – and a narrative work, even, with a clever and interesting story and a mirrored structure. As Warren says above, just because you don’t know where the samples come from, doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate what Godard does with them, how he positions them in relation to one another. I’m not denying that some additional context wouldn’t be rewarding, because of course it is, but it’s certainly not necessary as some people, both defenders and detractors, are alleging.
Everyone seems to think of Godard as this dour, humorless intellectual type, and dismiss his films as being for elites only. I guess these people have never seen Godard being goofily profound as Professor Pluggy, or performing slapstick routines and physical comedy in *Keep Your Right Up* and *Vladimir and Rosa*. He’s funny as hell, and his films are visually rich, and his themes and ideas are accessible to anyone who watches and listens, regardless of if you’ve ever heard of Guatari before Glenn brought him up (I hadn’t). He demands careful attention, yes, and he demands a commitment from his audience to dig into his juxtapositions of image and sound to probe the ideas he’s interested in. But he certainly doesn’t demand a comprehensive education in philosophy and literature to understand his films.
While it is absolutely true, and needed to be said in no uncertain terms, that Godard’s works can be enjoyed without getting all the references, it should be noted that the conversation began with a consideration of critics who were flabbergasted in the face of FILM SOCIALISME, in particular with the need to write something “intelligent” on the spot (and mostly throwing up their hands and blaming the film and JLG).
So in looking at the whole situation FILM SOCIALISME entered, we have what Althusser [REFERENCE ALERT!!!] would have called an “overdetermination.” Too many movies. The demand for instantaneous, reasonably cogent commentary. A (to put it politely) differentially qualified press corps, especially where Godard’s work is concerned. A general shift in film writing that privileges insularity over the wide-ranging humanistic knowledge base required to “get” Godard.…. Need I continue? Even the time necessary to sit with a Godard film and process its sound/image relationships (much less the critical ability to consider the way images and sounds complicate each other) isn’t going to be there, more often than not.
Advantage: Inarritu.
@ Ed Howard: I don’t disagree with you. And not to sound hypersensitive, I myself wasn’t arguing that Godard is best, or only, “got” by someone who understands each and every reference. I was protesting the arrogance of callow would-be critics who announce, in effect, “I don’t know where Godard’s coming from, and I don’t care, and I still want you to understand that my verdict that his new film is shit is completely authoritative.” This is the same kind of asshole, incidentally, who won’t hesitate to pat himself on the back for sussing out that the “Bogie” film playing in that theater in “Breathless” is “The Harder They Fall.”
I will chime in to say that obviously, a work with a lot of quotations can be Real Art. Just like a movie with a lot of fight scenes can be. It’s just a question of when the quotations (or the fight scenes) overwhelm the thing being quoted, or when the work becomes incoherent without whatever idiosyncratic web of allusions the author demands you get. That’s the difference between a masterpieces like Eliot’s “The Waste Land” and a slog like Pound’s late Cantos.
I do find interesting that the loudest screamers here, like Roak, seem incredibly unwilling to make any distinctions at all among Godard films. The idea that some late Godard films might be better than others is undiscussable to them, furthering my suspicion that they’re basically brand-loyal, rather than engaged with each film in itself.
“This is the same kind of asshole, incidentally, who won’t hesitate to pat himself on the back for sussing out that the “Bogie” film playing in that theater in “Breathless” is “The Harder They Fall.“ ‘
Ha! They’ll pick the fruit so long as it’s on a low hanging branch.
@msic: I think what you’re getting at there is that the whole culture of festival coverage isn’t exactly geared towards being able to write substantially about something like the new Godard film – super-fast, instantaneous commentary (much of it focused on festival economics and other irrelevancies) isn’t well-suited to dealing with a complex film.
@Glenn: I think we pretty much agree about Godard. I wasn’t talking about you at all, so much as the subset of detractors who seem bizarrely angered by the fact that they don’t instantly get everything there is to get about a film.
@Fuzzy Bastard: Who’s denying that there are differences, in quality and content, between individual Godard films? The conversation so far has been more generally about his post-60s film as a whole, but within that broad period there are numerous differences in intent, style, ideas and, yes, the level of success with which Godard gets across what he wants to get across.
Isn’t there any good Godard scholarship that punctures through all the mysticism that frustrates the hell out of the likes of Ebert and McCarthy?
Actually, Evelyn, my post about Godard being great but not good had nothing to do with your post. I rather considered it a Godardian one-off cutesy line.
In all fairness, I didn’t have much to say to your rather long post because there was nothing about it that riled me up enough to engage with it. That said, if you’re going to get angry and curse…
1) You said that movies, Godard’s in a particular, are as much about sound as image. Fine. However, reducing, if you remove the sound you still have a movie. If you remove the picture you do not. The fundamental base of a motion picture is the picture.
2) I’m not comparing a single image to a single word, per say, since you know, the old saying is that a picture equals a thousand words. Now do you understand where I’m coming from? I’m simply preferring that image to all those words. And by describing something using words (adjectives, possible descriptive metaphors, etc.), which are symbols, you’re immediately intellectualizing something that wasn’t necessarily inherently intellectual.
3) I suppose the real argument is how we define intellectual. Is it simply the intelligent expression of an idea (can that idea simply be an expression of form, as it often is in art), or is it the verbal/literary explanation of that expression? (Similarly, many intellectuals seem to have a disdain for the process of filmmaking because they don’t consider it intellectual – when in fact it’s a great deal MORE intellectual because it involves massive decision-making that affects all aspects of the finished project. Everything from cinematography to editing to VFX, for instance, is all about mathematics. Why do you think it takes so many people to make a movie?)
4) Yes, Godard understands filmmaking. I honestly just don’t believe his films are well-made. I never have. I find him utterly sophomoric in concept and execution. And I feel that most of his movies are essentially self-loathing excuses for having not made a real movie. They are formal/stylistic/narrative messes – and for every one great idea, another 10 fall flat or are not fully thought through. Some like that slapdash on-the-go approach. I do not. I’m not even in the pre-’67 camp. I don’t like anything he’s done, though I can at least sit through Breathless and Contempt without falling asleep. His movies in the ’60s were revolutionary in a sense because they existed against something else. But they’re not actually good. I’ll take any of his international contemporaries of that era – Bergman, Fellini, Kurosawa, Antonioni, Kubrick, etc. – over him any day. None of them were traditionalists, all formal experimenters, yet all of their work feels mature, fully realized, and made without winking at the audience the way Godard constantly needed to.
5) What do you think actual filmmakers talk about when they get together? Intellectual ideas? No. From my experience, they usually discuss process and shots. Filmmakers make movies because they are usually visual by nature and they love the process of making movies. Most filmmakers hate discussing their ideas, even though that’s what critics/journalists want – they much prefer to discuss process.
Joe -
1) Have you seen Jarman’s ‘Blue’?
4) What do you mean when you say ‘well-made’? Is Transformers well-made because the cinematography is colorful and sharp even though the story and characters are garbage? Or is Detour well-made because the story is compelling even though the look of the film is rushed and often murky? Your standards for quality are not shared by everyone.
5) Again, your experience does not match everyone else’s. Filmmakers talk about process and shots when they can’t think of anything else to talk about – like books they’ve read or music they admire. I’m sure Soderbergh has intellectual discussions as much as Ratner doesn’t.
I fully agree. I do not quite understand why editors even bothered to commit to print those poorly thought out reviews of Godard’s latest movie. On the other hand I was mildly gratified at seeing how lost for words and thoughts these sarcastic hacks were.
Jeff-
1) No, I have not.
2) Yes, by well-made, I mean a well-made. Transformers is a well-made movie, but that does not mean it is a good movie. With regard to Godard, I don’t feel his movies are either well-made or good. With regard to Detour, honestly, it’s a movie I could barely take seriously – it was barely an hour long, at least 45 of those minutes seemed to be narration, and the character motivations made no sense (though I did like some of the visuals).
3) No, filmmakers, when they talk to each other about movies, usually talk about aesthetics and process. Even Soderbergh. Especially Soderbergh – since he not only shoots/edits his films, but he’s formally experimental and likes using new technologies. In my experience, if you plan to sit down to interview a director, you’ll get much more out of them if you focus on process.
Joe, I’m asking what your definition of ‘well-made’ is. By my standards, Transformers is most definitely not well-made, because the story and characters are garbage. I think you mean ‘technically well-made’ which is a whole other ballgame. Detour, as far as I’m concerned, is a masterpiece.
And obviously we’ll have to agree to disagree about what filmmakers talk about with each other, unless you’ve been present at every conversation between filmmakers since the dawn of time. I don’t care about ‘interviewing’ a director.
Jeff-
I think both Detour and Transformers are disposable. By well-made, yes, I was talking about the production, or, what you call technical.
It’s really only a recent trend in art that technique has become considered unimportant by some. Why do you think ballerinas or composers or architects study and practice as much as they do? Because technique matters. Because abstract ideas (not formal ideas) can often be expressed across a wide variety of mediums (you could just as easily write an op-ed). The best art combines both technique and ideas – so, for the most part (and there are exceptions), with regard to movies, I feel that a movie cannot be good unless it is also well-made. A movie cannot be a good movie unless it is actually a good movie.
I’m speaking as a filmmaker who’s spoken to scores of filmmakers up and down the totem pole, including Soderbergh – and I can tell you that when we talk about movies, it’s usually about form, aesthetics and process.
I’m not sure how something can be made well and not be good. The point being that to be made well, a film’s making (i.e. its technical processes of cinematography, makeup, sound editing, etc.) should be as appropriate to a film’s purpose as possible. Which means the purpose, by which one would evaluate the success of the film itself, must be in place before the making, by which one would judge how well-made the film is.
Personal standards, as I see it, shouldn’t play into whether a film is well-made at all; the film doesn’t live up to your standards but its own. Of course your standards surely affect how well you respond to it, how bored or enraptured you are, or how much you eventually like it. None of which has much to do with how strong the film is in itself. But that’s a kind of absolutist/purist perspective where emotional engagement, which is kind of ineffable, no?, is out of the picture. When it comes to “real life” movie-watching, we naturally tend to want to watch films that we enjoy both intellectually and emotionally. Which is my way of saying I don’t begrudge anyone their need for a film to connect with them/seduce them/linger on Ingrid Bergman’s face, but I’m not sure it has anything to do with “objective” criticism. Which I’m not seeing a lot of re: Film Socialisme.
Joe, we’ll have to agree to disagree about a bunch of things, then. Yes, it’s only since the early 20th century that technique has diminished as an important feature in art, but I’d still call Duchamp, Warhol, John Cage, and Godard all major artists with several technique-free masterpieces under their belt. It all has to do with how you define ‘art’ and I personally don’t feel bound to say that art must be technically virtuosic. I’m more concerned with the production and resonance of emotion and inspiration by whatever means the artist finds most effective.
And again, as far as conversations with filmmakers go, conversations purely about form sound incredibly boring to me. I’m sure Fincher likes to talk about greenscreens and Kubrick liked to talk about lenses, but I also know that Bunuel liked to talk about art and literature and Cronenberg talks about philosophy and Lynch talks about meditation.
All good.
I actually think a really enlightening example of how filmmakers can be when they talk is found on the commentary track for Bubble, where Romanek is constantly grilling Soderbergh on every aspect of the production from the casting to the photography to the locations. It’s all how and why.
Images on film are always metaphors. They can’t help themselves. A tree (assuming it has not fallen in the forest with no one to see or hear it) is never just “a tree” because it’s part of a composition that exists in space and in time, so it relates not only to whatever else is in (or out of) the frame, but to the images that precede and come after it, which may alter the way we perceive it. In other words, as Godard said in this recent interview, “it’s all associations”:
“There aren’t any rules. The same applies to poetry, or to painting, or to mathematics. Especially to ancient geometry. The urge to compose figures, to put a circle around a square, to plot a tangent. It’s elementary geometry. If it’s elementary, there are elements. So I show the sea… Voilà, it can’t really be described — it’s associations. And if we’re saying “association,” we might be saying “socialism.” If we’re saying “socialism,” we might be speaking about politics.”
http://j.mp/a28dxk
I’d like to thank Evelyn for making my point so spectacularly. The only “childish temper tantrum” i see is hers. Lots of name calling (though you get bonus points for fuckwad…nice one!) and a supreme example of why discussing Godard is impossible. His acolytes can simply not stand for anything that suggests he’s anything less than a revolutionary genius, and in the case of myself and Joe, dare to argue that he doesn’t actually make anything worthwhile. That’s an opinion – that’s what he and I have taken from his work…how is that anymore invalid than Evelyn’s puritanical fervor?
I get that what I see as hackneyed art school rambling is for many a brave attempt to challenge the boundaries of the form…I GET IT. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it, or even appreciate it. If that makes me a fuckwad, then so be it – but dear Evelyn, your tirade only serves to make people who may be adverse to his work all the more so. Who wants to be in a club represented by you? That’s a nasty nasty attitude you have over a conversation with strangers about a guy who makes movies on the internet. My original point stands: It is impossible to bring up JLG without this kind of nastiness occurring.…though I do find it interesting that the nastiness is concentrated on one side of the argument, and it ain’t mine.
Brad’s got a point, you kids. Remember: it’s nice to be an acclaimed master of high modernism in cinema, but it’s more important to be nice!
“I do find interesting that the loudest screamers here, like Roak, seem incredibly unwilling to make any distinctions at all among Godard films. The idea that some late Godard films might be better than others is undiscussable to them, furthering my suspicion that they’re basically brand-loyal, rather than engaged with each film in itself.”
I don’t believe I ever stated that there are no distinctions between Godard’s films and that I have slavishly praised them all. That is hogwash. Of course some movies are better than others. Some work well, some do not. I have no idea where you got the idea that I believe Godard to be some Midas.
“You said that movies, Godard’s in a particular, are as much about sound as image. Fine. However, reducing, if you remove the sound you still have a movie. If you remove the picture you do not. The fundamental base of a motion picture is the picture.”
Please tell that to Guy Debord, Joao Cesar Monteiro, Marguerite Duras or Hollis Frampton to name just a few.
This distinction between images and words you make is one that seems as off-base as your privileging image/sound relationship. Sonimage. The purity of the image, that it is incapable of conveying an idea, that it is un-intellectualized ? Well, I think we have a fundamental difference of opinion there. You seem to be of the mind that all these things are one or the other when they are never so. They relate to each other, work with, against, etc etc in intricate ways. Love and Marriage.
Thank you Jim, you have stated this well.
As per what directors talk about. Not being a director I guess I can’t say but sure seems like you got a straw man going there. This q&a with Arnaud Desplechin by Kent Jones may be troublesome…
Joe, I have a hunch you don’t like LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT…
Brad, you shouldn’t take drunken ramblings so personally. My apologies for debasing the tenor of the conversation so horribly. Your nuanced, detailed positions, high on substantial analysis and without empty pronouncements deserved better.
“His acolytes can simply not stand for anything that suggests he’s anything less than a revolutionary genius, and in the case of myself and Joe, dare to argue that he doesn’t actually make anything worthwhile.”
As for this idea that people who have an interest in Godard’s movies are mindless spawn, prone to attack any who questions their dear leaders ability? Not so. If anything it was your empty typing, which actually said nothing of substance except that you believe Godard is just taking the piss. Please don’t couple yourself with Joe. I may not agree with Joe but am happy to engage him. At least he contributes substance to the conversation. I am more than happy to discuss Godard, or any other director we may disagree upon. You will notice many posts earlier in which I did so with evidence and analysis and thought. My reaction was not to your dislike of Godard, big whoop, it was with your blanket dismissals that had nothing to say. “he is simply terrible at making movies” Thanks, you swayed my mind with that. You aren’t a martyr.
Thank you Mother. I will be at the house later to pick up my laundry.
Umm, THIS q&a with Arnaud Desplechin. Excuse me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcDyPD8Zid4
I don’t like Desplechin. Got about 2 minutes into the video. Besides, that Q&A was moderated by Kent, who’s primarily a journalist/programmer. I’m talking about what filmmakers talk about.
Jeff brought up Fincher, who, obviously, had personal reasons for making Benjamin Button (he had mentioned his father’s death), yet at Q&A after Q&A he annoyed people by refusing to talk about the themes. As well, I recall a Q&A a few years ago where Joel Coen was asked what he looks for in somebody else’s film; it took him a while, but then he replied that he was usually intrigued by something visual.
Of course a photograph can express a thematic idea. I just keep repeating that an abstracted idea outside of basic formal concerns is not inherent to an image or the quality of the image. You can certainly intellectually analyze an image. You can certainly intellectually construct an image. But an image does not inherently require meaning. You can simply respond to the color or mood on a primal level without having to think about it.
Yes, I love The Last House on the Left. The ’72 version. Piss yer pants. Not sure what this has to do with anything, unless you’re suggesting it’s not ‘well-made.’ But I’d argue that for $90k in 16mm at that time it’s pretty well-made.
It would seem to me that the vitriol from any members of the pro-JLG crowd is coming mainly in reaction to these ridiculous leaps from “not to my taste” to “incompetent/poorly-made film”. The idea that the last 40 years of Godard’s career consists of a bunch of slapdash, shoddy filmmaking where ideas are wholly privileged over the creation of lasting images makes me think that the people on the con side have never actually watched any of these movies, and are arguing solely on reputation or something. Are the tracking shots that Godard and Lubchantsky use in Nouvelle Vague to connect these disparate spaces of quotation not “well-made”? What of the way light is used in Hail Mary to carve a tale of Biblical import out of the most mundane events of modern life? The staggeringly dense (but equally precise) soundtrack of King Lear, where 400 years of conflicting voices engage each other at once? Are these shoddy, tossed-off works? The matching of form and content (whether you think his content is bullshit is totally up to you, and respect that people don’t find him to be a profound thinker) in late-Godard is as meticulous as any in the history of cinema.
I will never begrudge anyone for disliking anything (would any of us love Manny Farber if that were the case?), but when someone says that the films of a person whose work means more to me than any other artist are incompetent and shoddy I would like to see that claim come with at least a modicum of critical thought.
To be fair, I was talking about his entire career, not the just past 40 years, when I referred to his work as slapdash. Furthermore, I did acknowledge that he can come up with a great idea – only that great idea is usually followed by another 10 that don’t work.
I am sorry that the Desplechin interview was not to your liking. While you may not enjoy Desplechin’s films, had you watched more than 2 minutes you would seen an interview/conversation in which Desplechin is both interested in and quite adept at discussing ideas (and not just mentions of themes but quite nuanced ideas about his own and others’ films, literature, philosophy, etc). But, because it was a discussion with Kent Jones, who does a wonderful job (their lengthy conversation on the KINGS & Queen DVD is excellent), it doesn’t count? But the following examples of Fincher and Joel Cohen, also as you note in Q&A’s, I imagine with journalists or programmers, not conducted by other filmmakers, are perfectly good examples that prove your point? Are you being disingenuous or simply obtuse? This seems to be as solid an argument as the broad pronouncement that began this tangent.
And now, a poetry break!:
Gadji beri bimba
gadji beri bimba glandridi laula lonni cadori
gadjama gramma berida bimbala glandri galassassa laulitalomini
gadji beri bin blassa glassala laula lonni cadorsu sassala bim
gadjama tuffm i zimzalla binban gligla wowolimai bin beri ban
o katalominai rhinozerossola hopsamen laulitalomini hoooo
gadjama rhinozerossola hopsamen
bluku terullala blaulala loooo
zimzim urullala zimzim urullala zimzim zanzibar zimzalla zam
elifantolim brussala bulomen brussala bulomen tromtata
velo da bang band affalo purzamai affalo purzamai lengado tor
gadjama bimbalo glandridi glassala zingtata pimpalo ögrögöööö
viola laxato viola zimbrabim viola uli paluji malooo
tuffm im zimbrabim negramai bumbalo negramai bumbalo tuffm i zim
gadjama bimbala oo beri gadjama gaga di gadjama affalo pinx
gaga di bumbalo bumbalo gadjamen
gaga di bling blong
gaga blung
‑Hugo Ball
While I would never suggest that LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT is poorly made, it is one of my absolute favorite films, by the technical standards of a TRANSFORMERS I can see how one might find it a bit ramshackle. My assumptions got the better of me. At least we can agree that LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT is a wonderful movie.
Joe, maybe Fincher didn’t want to talk about the themes of Benjamin Button because (in my opinion!) it’s not a very good film and it appears to have been compromised by too many cooks in the kitchen.
And if Last House on the Left was well-made for $90k in 1972, then surely Detour was well-made for being shot in six days on an even smaller budget, if that’s the benchmark.
Anyway, the very quality that you find unlikeable in the entirety of Godard’s career (slapdashness) is one of the very qualities that so many of the rest of us like about his films.
“It would seem to me that the vitriol from any members of the pro-JLG crowd is coming mainly in reaction to these ridiculous leaps from “not to my taste” to “incompetent/poorly-made film”.”
But that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? It’s not to my taste BECAUSE of the fact that his oeuvre is riddled with poorly made films. I would not say incompetent however…I don’t think that’s fair. And I overstepped with “terrible” or whatever it was I said that set Evelyn off. In the end, I think JLG has made a career out of experimenting with trying to translate philosophy into film, and I think overall he failed in that quest. I just don’t think it “works” – but that’s just me. The ideas may be incredibly profound and stimulating, but when it is conveyed in such nonsensical fashion that only he can divine, what is the point of it all? I don’t want to have to read 13 books to understand a movie…especially when its fans freely acknowledge that it isn’t understandable in the first place. Evelyn could not have been more wrong about my proclivities in that respect…I don’t need to get ever reference, and I don’t revel in being the smartest guy in the room because I can pretend to understand a movie.
What I think JLG has succeeded at, if success is the right word, is creating works that make people talk about them ad infinitum without ever coming to consensus about them. When a film takes that kind of work then in my mind it’s a failure. But some people apparently thrive when their intellect is challenged in the way Godard has…even if that means never fully grasping his meaning or intent because he never did in the first place. That facet of his work is why it all feels to me like pretentious art school fluff.…throw a lot of crap at the camera and see what sticks. Some people consider that genius, some consider it folly, some consider it silly. I’m somewhere in between the latter two. He may very well have “ideas” behind his work, but if no one can decipher what those are in any way that’s meaningful to THEM, then why bother?
I’ve seen a good portion of his work – always going back for more in the hopes that something would ultimately click…feeling as though there was something wrong with ME because I couldn’t find the passion that Evelyn et al feel when viewing them. I finally gave up after a dozen or so and accepted it simply wasn’t for me…and came to the conclusion that he’s pretty much full of shit. He just happened to come of age when being full of shit was en vogue, and made a name for himself among like minded wannabe philosophers, and has ridden that reputation into the 21st century, where it no longer flies. His real genius, again, is thus his ability to keep throwing stuff at the screen and getting people to argue about it for hours, days, weeks, months, and years on end. Maybe he’s flinging feces, maybe his spinning golden threads, I don’t really know…and today I don’t really care. What I find amazing, however, is how everyone still gets so damned nasty about it all.
Godard is a helluva drug…
Joe,
Just because a director prefers to discuss technique rather than ideas doesn’t mean that the director has no interest in ideas. I’ve never interviewed a director. I’ve never interviewed anyone. But I know that artists often prefer to discuss their craft rather than anything thematic because the latter is often not accessible to them in words. The finished artwork is the best way to express what they wanted to express, and the artist himself, as William Gaddis said, is “the dregs of his work, the human shambles that follows it around.” I agree with much of what you say. However, this technique/idea, image/idea dichotomy that you’ve created is far too rickety to hold together.
I only mentioned Fincher and Coen to point out that a lot of filmmakers are uncomfortable explaining their themes. They’ve expressed them already through images, not words, and that’s how they prefer to present them. (And I wasn’t suggesting Button is a good movie, just that from what I gather it was a personal film for Fincher.) Furthermore, I’m saying that’s the difference between the way that critics/journalists think and the way filmmakers think – journalists want to discuss themes, filmmakers want to discuss process/technique.
If Detour was made in 6 days, then under those circumstances what they did was impressive. I still don’t think it’s a good movie though. Last House, though, at least for me, exploitation aspects aside, really does capture a moment in America in the early ’70s where the culture was imploding – it was that post-hippie/Vietnam era – and I think it does a great job of exploring civilization vs. barbarism (just as Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes and Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre did).
As for slapdash, yeah, I believe I stated earlier that that’s a quality a lot of his admirers appreciate. For me, I prefer to see something more fully realized. I’ve often thought Godard specialized in sketches, but he never created drawings. If that makes sense.
A couple of things just popped into my head about the use of images vs. words.
The first is from an old interview with Kubrick where he’s discussing how he intended 2001 to be a visual/aural experience first and foremost. He brings up the Mona Lisa’s smile and its ambiguity. What is she smiling about? The whole mystique of the image would be ruined if that was ever explained.
The second is how the title of Koyaanisqatsi influenced the film’s initial reviews because the critics inherently viewed the intent of the picture through the prism of “life out of balance.” Yet, Reggio had originally intended the film to be untitled and wanted it to simply be a visual/musical experience, but eventually had to title it so people would know what to call it.
I’m just trying to show the way that applied meaning can often influence the way we look at something that is intended as experiential.
Joe, as long as we both agree that ‘slapdashness’ is something to be appreciated or not preferred, then we’re in agreement. Of course, I’d argue that the slapdashness is often on purpose, for a specific conceptual reason, but that’s another argument…
And I don’t think we disagree about what you’re talking about in terms of inherent meaning vs. explicit meaning, because I’d say that in Godard’s best films (for me, Contempt, Band of Outsiders, and Weekend) the meanings are implicit within the work and not stated blatantly (as they are within his lesser films, in my opinion.)
My god, Joe, this shouldn’t be so difficult. You claimed that directors prefer to talk about their technical craft rather than ideas. Full stop. I merely pointed out a Q&A, like you cited as evidence, that showed something different. You can’t have it both ways. Now Q&A’s are out of bounds because journalists are involved. So why cite that originally? Ok, now I’m just scratching deeper at an obstinate side point. That wasn’t even the main thrust. At its base level you made yet another fundamental claim that is clearly reductive and amazingly broad. Not all directors are A. Not all journalists are B. Not all athletes are C. When A.C. Green and Shawn Kemp can be grouped together in the same general statement about preferences and action and ideas, let me know. “That’s how they prefer to present them.” Directors don’t like to talk about ideas…etc etc. These gross generalizations are maddening and unproductive.
No one has said that images cannot be ambiguous, hell I challenged you that your strict definition of words was faulty in that they too can be ambiguous. That Hugo Ball poem wasn’t there just for the joys of poetry break. We might have to get a little more serious and have a Wittgenstein break. Anyways, ambiguity doesn’t mean empty. Experiential isn’t empty of ideas. Your examples here are about interpretation, not the image itself.
I have repeatedly stated that it was the contrast of image/word and idea that was faulty. That Godard’s work, alone and with Mieville, is largely based upon the relationship of images and sounds and that your pronouncements were reductionism and overlooked this. You keep on trying to bring large concepts and ideas to their base fundamental formulations, formulations which don’t exist. This absolutism is just absurdity. I’ll see you at Mao.
Brad, your straw men are growing tired and may need a rest soon. These people you conjure sound like a real insipid bunch. I’m glad they don’t exist. You can continue to be the martyr, caught in the web of the mean Godard bunch who just have to get so darn malicious about things but you still haven’t said anything of substance. You have merely thrown around caricatures of people, history, ideas, criticism, dialogues, motivations, movies, and oh so much more.
“As for slapdash, yeah, I believe I stated earlier that that’s a quality a lot of his admirers appreciate. For me, I prefer to see something more fully realized.”
But the thing is, from, say, 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her onwards none of his movies have the “slapdash” quality (which is a total misreading anyways) of his earlier films. What about Numero Deux or Nouvelle Vague or Hail Mary or King Lear or Notre Musique or etc. etc. isn’t “fully realized”? Please try to verbalize this in specific language and examples instead of doing exactly what you’re accusing JLG of: spouting platitudes.
I’ve done no such thing – nor do I see anything in what i’ve said as remotely akin to a martyr. You have a curious sense of righteousness when it comes to reading between the lines of other folk’s thoughts and meaning. I think I made myself quite clear, and the reasons for my opinion even clearer. I do not find JLG’s self-indulgence remotely convincing. How am I supposed to take seriously a man who makes an autobiographical film centered around the “death of cinema” – because he doesn’t like where it’s gone? the hubris behind his belief that the medium has died because he no longer fits within it is astonishing. Never mind the ways in which he viciously attacks his contemporaries, finding pitifully few film makers worthy of his attention, let alone praise. The man is an egomaniac on top of obtuse.
In my opinion, Godard has become the very personification of the Emperor’s New Clothes.…and it’s clear that those who see him fully clothed in the finest regalia ever sewn will not stand for anyone suggesting he’s even missing a sock, even as his pecker pokes them in the eye as they bow before him to kiss the ring 🙂
FWIW, I’d like to thank Glenn for this blog – it is perhaps my favorite of them all, and I am especially thankful that he keeps it open enough that I may be called a fuckwad for taking a stance on something – and I mean that in all sincerity. Too many corners of the interwebs are so heavily moderated as to be worthless. David Kehr’s for instance, submits every single post for moderation, and thus robs any discussion of it’s emotion…something that is vital to discussion of film.
Thanks Brad. I don’t necessarily cotton to the throwing around of terms such as “fuckwad,” but it does happen, and I’m thankful that it doesn’t happen much in these parts. On the other hand, on a comments thread at another site, somebody compared me to Mark David Chapman, and incidents like that give me a “if I can take it, then…” sort of toughened hide!…
“Translating philosophy into film.” If we are going to use those terms I would say “doing” is much more apt. Why can’t one “do” philosophy in film? Seems like Chris Marker is doing a‑ok. And I don’t think it has been a failure.
“it is conveyed in such nonsensical fashion that only he can divine, what is the point of it all?”
One can cite numerous works that engage with and productively study Godard’s films and videos, from Jonathan Ronsenbaum, to the earlier mentioned Kaja Silverman to Serge Daney, to Richard Brody who pokes his head in here every once in awhile to many many more. I don’t think one necessarily has to do such to show that his works aren’t nonsensical and made by some secret code only Jean-Luc Godard holds but there you go.
“I don’t want to have to read 13 books to understand a movie…especially when its fans freely acknowledge that it isn’t understandable in the first place.”
Really, no straw men? Nobody is saying that. That’s creating a bogeyman where he doesn’t exist.
“don’t need to get ever reference, and I don’t revel in being the smartest guy in the room because I can pretend to understand a movie.”
Ibid.
“I think JLG has succeeded at, if success is the right word, is creating works that make people talk about them ad infinitum without ever coming to consensus about them”
So, consensus is the critical standard for movies and books and records? I don’t really think you believe that, at least I hope not. “When a film takes that kind of work then in my mind it’s a failure.” As Joel has quoted William Gaddis let me champion Jack Green in this instance…
“if that means never fully grasping his meaning or intent because he never did in the first place. That facet of his work is why it all feels to me like pretentious art school fluff.…throw a lot of crap at the camera and see what sticks”
The hits keep on coming. I mean, come on. I don’t care if you don’t like Godard. I don’t care if you don’t like anything I like. Hate The Mekons? That’s cool with me. Just don’t create these fantasies of what you think they are doing or what you think their fans are trying to compensate for, or something, as your rationalization. You are throwing around specious generalizations like they mean anything.
“may very well have “ideas” behind his work, but if no one can decipher what those are in any way that’s meaningful to THEM”
Ok, there we go. Guess what? People can “decipher”. or even just watch, enjoy, think with, etc. these films in ways that are meaningful to themselves, obviously. So it doesn’t work for you, that is fine, but to claim for all people out there that it doesn’t mean anything to “THEM” is both as broad as can be and quite easily proven wrong, see the scratching of the surface of names above. You are on the right track in at least coming close to acknowledging that it may be meaningful for some, though you dismiss the idea just as quickly.
“I finally gave up after a dozen or so and accepted it simply wasn’t for me…and came to the conclusion that he’s pretty much full of shit.”
Yes, if you don’t like something it must be full of shit. There are filmmakers and writers I can’t stand, that it isn’t for me, but I can understand their ideas and art and work and accept that it has meaning and style, or whatever, it just happens to not agree with me, or me with it, and I will gladly elucidate why rather than just assume that they must be full of shit.
“He just happened to come of age when being full of shit was en vogue, and made a name for himself among like minded wannabe philosophers, and has ridden that reputation into the 21st century, where it no longer flies.”
I’m just going to let this one stand on its own.
At least the students of May-’68 had some style to their insults: “Godard. The biggest of the pro-Chinese Swiss assholes.”
“I’d like to thank Glenn for this blog – it is perhaps my favorite of them all, and I am especially thankful that he keeps it open enough that I may be called a fuckwad for taking a stance on something – and I mean that in all sincerity.”
This I second passionately and I am glad we can come to an agreement on this point. Cheers to Glenn. Sorry I soiled these pages with the word “fuckwad.” Though I though that the word “fuckwad” is absurd enough to be taken with a not too fine grain of salt. Of all people, I would think you Glenn would understand that. I am sorry my drunken ramblings took such a turn. But, yes, a hearty cheers to you Glenn, your writing is excellent, on all topics under the sun, and I do truly appreciate your work elsewhere and on this here website.
Don’t get me wrong, Evelyn, I DO enjoy a little rhetorical excess as much, if not more, than the next fellow, to be sure. By the same token though (or is it on the other hand?) I’ve learned from bitter experience that comments thread and inebriated states aren’t often the best match. So there’s that, too. But thanks to you too for the kind words. Carry on!
I’ll stay well away from the Godard squabble here, but can’t resist quoting this marvel of perception:
“I feel that a movie cannot be good unless it is also well-made.”
Well, ok then: that rules out UN CHIEN ANDALOU, Kenneth Anger, Maya Deren, Jack Smith, Andy Warhol, Oscar Micheaux…
And to think we’ve been admiring all those shitty, poorly-made, BAD films all these years…
I’m with Charlie Kaufmann on this whole matter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JK2F0WzZkxM
Quote: “It works or it doesn’t work, based on your interaction with it … It’s irrelevant what I think.”
In the same way it is irrelevant to me what Godard thinks, or any other artists for that matter, if is not communicated through the artwork itself.
Now I might, or might not, be interested in Godard, or other artists, as a philosopher, theoretician or writer, but that’s a different cup of tea.
This thread is awesome and I really appreciate it. For me the thing is, I’ve seen some Godard here and there and didn’t get it. But to compound matters, I don’t know how one goes about “getting it” without running the gauntlet of arrogant, condescending people staring down their nose at you about the man and his work. This thread was basically started in an arrogant, snobbish fashion and then Evelyn reminded me why I’ve avoided Godard after my initial aversion to him. You seem to have calmed down, Evelyn…but still, the initial smack-down and fuckwit comment made me realize why I’m often scared to broach difficult work I probably don’t “get.”
But I’ve managed to glean some understanding of how to approach his work here (and in other places) and am now excited to dive back in with new knowledge. But my question is, how does one begin to approach, decipher and grasp what heavier people are doing when it’s difficult to find a place to start the conversation? Granted, I was lucky enough to go to college and study film, but we never really covered Godard. What about people who just really love film and want to know WTF they’re watching is trying to say but can’t afford college. Or, they live in the middle of nowhere?
It reminds me of when I was 14 or 15 and wanted to listen to more Bob Dylan. I went to my local record store and was basically harangued by the “High Fidelity”-esque employees for not having any Dylan already till I ended up just buying Survivor “Vital Signs” and being done with it.
I’m glad there’s blogs and threads like this and places like Mubi where people can at least get at these films, but it’s tough to find a place to learn more without feeling like an idiot and to find knowledgeable people who are willing to prod you along without condescending you. Maybe the kidcrits don’t get it but have no way of trying TO get it without someone flipping out and chasing them down the street with a rolled up issue of Cahiers du Cinema in their hand.
“What about people who just really love film and want to know WTF they’re watching is trying to say but can’t afford college. Or, they live in the middle of nowhere?”
A bright idea from the past: read a book.
@ don r. lewis:
Apparently, you’ve rented out valuable real estate in your own skull to people who won’t share their book collections with you. What’s that like?
@ Don: It’s a good question! Godard can seem pretty inaccessible, but I think that enjoying Godard has more to do with letting go of expectations—like narrative or character—rather than building them up (he’s like theater director Richard Foreman that way, whose book “Unbalancing Acts” might be an interesting lead-in).
I actually think that if you relax the sense of intellectual obligation, and just roll with the flow of images and thoughts, you’ll find the movies much more rewarding. I say just watch some of the Godard classics and get out of them whatever you get out of them—start with CONTEMPT and WEEK END, move on to KING LEAR and DETECTIVE, and then feel you way around.
There was actually some good discussion in the comments at http://wwwbillblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/yet-more-capsule-reviews.html , without the sneering and shouting that mars this site’s comment threads. As Chuck is trying to say in his prep-school bully fashion, there’s also plenty of books and essays about Godard’s work, and some Googling around might yield interesting pieces.
Yes it’s true: only people in prep schools read books, and all of those people are bullies. Reading books is probably a bad idea. Probably better to stay right here and get your advice from someone hides behind a name like “Fuzzy Bastard”.
@ Don
Being generationally close to many of the Kidcrits, I think you have misdiagnosed the problem. I would bet most of them have seen at least a handful of Godards and have a working knowledge of the French New Wave so it’s not like they’re coming in without having any prior knowledge. I see far to great a willingness to ” slay the giant” without engaging a work in good faith. What is truly frustrating to me is that they carry this attitude as some sort of badge of honor. It has nothing do with being intimidated by some film snob; in fact they take comfort in taking an anti- elitist stance if they can score some points.
Well, my stars, Don, Brad, et. al I am sorry for having ruined Godard for so many. If you must, please note that my initial contributions to the conversation were not the “smack-down and fuckwit comment”(and I must correct you and point out it was “fuckwad”) but a few posts in which I discussed reasonably the ideas being thrown about, including, gasp, actual examples from a Godard/Mieville video. It was only when faced with the broad sneering generalizations that I replied in kind. As Glenn has pointed out inebriated blog posting can get the best of us all at times. I think I have stated I agree and recanted the “fuckwad” incident. Please don’t indict a whole oeuvre based upon one foolish person on the internet.
That said, this idea that one is necessarily going to be sneered at, condescended to and generally made to feel they don’t belong at the party is hogwash. I believe the sneering was reserved for those arguing that Godard is just terrible and people who say they like him are just doing it to be thought of as the intellectual élite. Sometimes one fights fire with fire and ends up wishing they had grabbed the extinguisher, oh well, you live and learn.
Fuzzy is correct. As I said earlier, to go into a film or book or play or art exhibit or anything and think you have to be the master of all meanings is never going to work out well. Watch the film, read the book, see what it makes you think or feel and then continue thinking and feeling. Watch again, read again, read some criticism or essays that piqué your interest or just think some more.
I mentioned earlier Kaja Silverman and Harun Farocki’s “Speaking About Godard” as a tremendous book that covers, in the form of conversations between the two authors, a wide breath of Godard films. Alfred Guzetti’s “Two or Three Things I Know About Her: Analysis of a Film by Godard” is a breathtaking in depth study of one film. Robert Stam’s first book “Reflexivity and Film and Literature”, besides being wonderful on its own, has some very good discussions of Godard. Jonathan Rosenbaum has been one of the best critics, period, for quite some time and has written very good things about Godard. Ditto for Adrian Martin. There is a lot out there.
Wait…books? They have books on film??? Well, which ones should I get? Every one? Can I torrent these books? Maybe I have no friends who read books period let alone books ON FILM. Further, I’m unsure what books to get because people oh-so-much-smarter than I would rather be snooty than, you know, helpful.
Or, how about a nice, genial conversation brought about by the subject and discussed with a multitude of people who have thoughts on it? Maybe even in a blog or message board? That would be neat. Thanks, Fuzzy Bastard. You’re clearly a cool guy unlike the guy hiding behind the moniker “Chuck Stephens.” No one under age 60 goes by Chuck any more so he’s clearly an old cranky sourpuss. But seriously…
@ Nathan- I agree with that. There’s a certain groupthink that goes on amidst critical circles of all kind and it can be annoying to say the least. Good point.
And Evelyn, I’m not mad or anything…I just feel that when people posit opinions that are uninformed but seeking to BE informed, people snap at them and that kills the convo, or turns it into a flame war. You’re the bees knees in my book.
Evelyn, I haven’t read the full run of your contribution here, but I’ve loved what I’ve seen. Hope to get a moment to read this thread more fully.
Don, to paraphrase Eleanor Roosevelt, nobody can break your balls about not “getting” something unless you let them.
But if you take a difficult filmmaker who is CLEARLY supported by people who love movies, it may be (or IT IS) the case that there are new ways to see that you haven’t tried, that you can enjoy, as well. If you want.
I can imagine watching Godard’s activity in maybe ’68, or the ’70s, even the ’80s, and thinking, “This fucking guy made BREATHLESS? I guess the fame got to him, he’s a punch-drunk loon.” and so on. But fifty-plus years not just making films but making films that continue to challenge and excite people.……I dunno, that’s a lot to ignore.
Oh come on Don, your post was just begging to be dissed and dismissed. I mean, you’re a critic right? And you don’t know how to “start the conversation”? There have been any number of considerate comments on this very thread aimed to guide the uninitiated towards an accessible entry-point. If the hunger to acquaint yourself with the work is there, I guarantee the fear of earning the disapprobation of some phantom cine-intelligentsia will feel less…oppressive.
@ Everyone:
What’s your takeaway from this thread?
If you parse it carefully, look past the hostility, there are lots of helpful ways to approach Godard. I like what Ed had to say about NOUVELLE VAGUE, for example – a new way of thinking about (and seeing) the film as well as a new way of thinking about and seeing the original New Wave films, and THEIR relation to pulp texts and tradition-of-quality predecessors, and, bigger picture, artists/writers and (at the risk of dealing up academic concepts) the anxiety of influence, and so forth.
Of course, you could also read it and say, “Nah, Godard is bullshit.” You have that option, too.
Has this been the longest SCR thread to date? Whatever one’s view of JLG – and I’d definitely put myself in the fan-camp – it’s hard to imagine many other filmmakers generating anything like this degree of debate; surely a clear rebuttal of McCarthy’s sense of the negligible nature of Godard’s audiences? (Isn’t it better to have an audience of 10 000 engaged in impassioned debate than 10 million ‘meh’?
On the matters raised above regarding the ‘shoddyness’ of Godard’s work, I would argue that Godard’s images are seeking beauty without being seduced by the merely decorative. I remember as a neophyte cineaste being somewhat troubled by the seeming ‘ugliness’ or ‘roughness’ of some of his work; especially when compared to that of Scorsese or Kieslowski (the two directors who first really inspired me as a teenager); it was only after a few more years that I began to see Godard afresh, and to realise that his images are not necessarily to be looked at; rather they are more concerned with teaching one *how* to look… This phenomenological approach is essentially from Bresson, by way of Bazin. The other side of his work – the historical and dialectical I suppose – seems to come from Eisenstein and Benjamin; late Godard – post Histoire(s) – seems to be about finding a cinematographic language that can unite this fourfold – to pinch a term from Heidegger…
And thanks Glenn for letting this discussion run on – it’s been good to follow for the last couple of days…
Well, “slaying giants” is the privilege of youth, and the nouvelle vague did plenty of that, often being quite unfair and not always sufficiently knowledgeable – so what’s the big deal? In fact such contempt comes and goes in waves and more often than not has been a dynamic force in the history of the arts.
don, you asked a question, i answered it. i’m sorry you find using a card catalogue such a bafflement: all that time in college for naught.
“Has this been the longest SCR thread to date? Whatever one’s view of JLG – and I’d definitely put myself in the fan-camp – it’s hard to imagine many other filmmakers generating anything like this degree of debate; surely a clear rebuttal of McCarthy’s sense of the negligible nature of Godard’s audiences? (Isn’t it better to have an audience of 10 000 engaged in impassioned debate than 10 million ‘meh’?”
That’s been exactly my point flaubertine! As I said before, if there is a genius at work in JLG, it’s his ability to generate this thread, and the passions that drove it. If anything, his contributions to film DISCUSSION is far greater than his contribution to cinema. Which is the part that giggle at and imagine him doing the same from his Swiss Chalet, feeling very comfortable in the fact that no one “got it” – and they never will. I’m probably wrong on his view of these kind of back and forths, but it’s fun to imagine.
I guess I’ll just some it up as thus: I consider Godard Cinema’s greatest trickster (in a very real American Indian sense)…mucking up the works all over the place and getting everyone to pay attention as he’s sticking a burning stick up his own bum or chasing turtles to the bottom of the sea. Some laugh at him, some take him extremely seriously, but no one can agree on just what the hell he is doing. None of that is necessarily bad or illegitimate, and there is plenty of room for each perspective…for without them this thread and the millions of discussions about his films that have taken place over the last 50 years wouldn’t exist. People have argued that JLG is full of shit for a very very long time…there’s no reason to take it so personally NOW.
eesh…no edit feature.…
*the part that *I* giggle at
*sum it up
The movie’s reach at this point is beyond this blog and its comments.
The real place to discuss its beauty, wisdom, and grace, is elsewhere.
So I believe it has succeeded.
Brad, you’ve done it. You have cracked the code. All that sneering and nose wrinkling has failed, you have seen through the lies and peered into the beds at night where the lonely Godard fan giggles to him or herself, smug that he or she has managed to convince the unenlightened masses that (s)he is just that little bit above them. Now the jig is up. We cower and pull the covers over our heads, finally enlightened that this whole time they were laughing at us. We were the rube, conned yet again by that man in the Swiss Chalet who delights in this victory even more than you.
The consensus has never gathered to form one group opinion of just what it is Godard may be doing besides laughing all the way to the bank. My reddened face tells the story of my, nay our collective, shame and defeat.
Oh wait, a light, in the darkness, a reprieve! You’ve continued to march out your caricatures and never once said anything of substance about what it is that makes these films the long con, never given an example of just why they may not work. Rather, you hold tightly to this bogus notion that consensus must exist for a film or book or piece of music to be of worth, pretty much throwing out the entirety of art with your proverbial bathwater.
If you think Godard is full of shit, that is fine. Just say WHY. As of now your rhetoric and the base of your argument is weak. Like clock radio speakers.
“If you think Godard is full of shit, that is fine. Just say WHY”
can’t someone just not like godard w/o having to defend it? w/o dissertations about polemics and multivalent allegorical trans-modality chitter chatter? i’m still stuck on what mccarthy’s great transgression was. he didn’t like a movie?
Indeed, bp, that’s exactly it. As millions of gruff, cranky dads like to say, opinions are like assholes, everybody’s got one! And why should anyone be expected to support an opinion, especially on a comments thread on a blog, of all things? Jesus.
“Just say WHY.”
I’ve asked in 3 separate posts now for specific examples of Godard’s purportedly “shoddy” filmmaking post-1965, and as far as I can tell no-one wants to step up and provide that. I realize it’s easier to say “Godard isn’t good at making films” and leave it at that, but some actual examples from his works would go a long way in making this a more fruitful discussion/less of a pissing match.
“can’t someone just not like godard w/o having to defend it?”
Sure. Though if this is the level of discourse someone wants to function at, they should probably not be, you know, a paid film critic (or bother posting blog comments for that matter). I’m not sure what anyone gains from someone screaming into the internet void, “I don’t like this. I’m not going to expand on the reasons why I don’t like this in any sort of critical way that actually engages the thing that I don’t like, but damnit, you BETTER BELIEVE THAT I DON’T LIKE THIS.” Commentary like this is basically why I don’t begrudge people for thinking my generation (and the internet in general) is full of shit . To have it coming from someone like Todd McCarthy – who should obviously know better – makes it doubly disappointing.
Hoberman didn’t like the film either. It’s not just McCarthy and a bunch of youngsters. Even Manohla ultimately concluded she was “tentative,” which translates as: I can’t actively say it was good, but because it’s Godard, I’ll reserve my final thoughts until later, assuming somebody can intellectually explain it.
Is it possible, Godard lovers/haters on either side, that this movie, Film Socialism, simply by itself is not good?
@Jim- Yeah, kinda. I’m just saying as a *whole* it’s difficult to get into artists like Godard when it’s all so dense. I know how to poke around and find avenues towards better understanding, but I was making a generalization, not necessarily speaking for myself. I *always* admit when I don’t get something. For instance, what’s the deal with Mingus?
@Chuck. CARD CATALOGUE??? I take back what I said, you’re clearly over 80 years old. (And, I’m just joking around with you, sheesh).
Godard might be a matter of taste, Don, but Mingus is an eternal fucking truth. There is no good reason not to like him. I’m sure you were just kidding around.
I admit that I laughed at myself for writing “card catalogue” so, well done. point: yours.
books are your friends, even the bad ones, which help show you which ones the good ones are, which is why i answered so curtly: just start picking them up at random whenever you see them. better still, just read the back covers: “that’s how Godard makes his films.” that’s what jim hoberman told me once.
true story.
I have oodles upon oodles of books, I can’t have any more books. I refuse to get any more until I read at least 1/2 the ones I have already which, I don’t see happening any time soon.
And yeah, I was kidding joel, but it still gets to my point of having a great artist on your radar but no real diving off point when they are doing something outside what one is used to. The fear in asking is you come off like a poser or luddite which as someone said earlier, you have to suck it up and not feel that way, but still.
Don -
You shouldn’t have to read books on a filmmaker in order to appreciate their films. Literature can help you further your understanding, but if a director’s films simply don’t work on you, then the director’s work doesn’t work for you. You shouldn’t need to get the references in order to understand what he’s doing on a fundamental filmmaking basis.
Phil -
I can give you a few examples.
First, I saw 2 or 3 Things on a date with a French girl – and I dozed off in the middle. As I said earlier, Godard will deliver one great idea, then fall flat for another 10, and repeat this constantly throughout his films. After about 20 minutes I got so numb… I honestly can’t remember anything other than the whore housewife at the beginning dropping off the kids for daycare, and when my date pointed out the housing developments that had recently rioted.
Second, Notre Musique. It wasn’t difficult to understand in any way. It just played like it was made by a college student who’s just been filled with a whole lot of theory and philosophy and tried to slam everything together into a movie. It was not a professional film. It’s not the type of film you see from a filmmaker who matures and learns how to subtly layer ideas into a fully functioning form.
See, here’s the thing. I think somebody like Godard works great for academic-type minds – minds filled with all of these theories and so on. This type of mind is usually not watching the film for what it is; it’s an inherently critical mind, brainwashed and filled with artificial structures, and everything must be filtered and disassembled. For myself, I have put a great deal of effort into not being that type of mind. When I was younger and studying film, I found myself unable to simply enjoy a film – my mind had been filled with all of these ideas about what’s supposed to be good, this technique, that, this use of language. The film was no longer an experience, but something to be intellectually scoured. The thing that finally put me over was that I found myself at one point unable to watch a narrative without rigidly breaking down and comparing its structure. From the moment I became conscious that I was doing that, and thus disliking certain films I otherwise should’ve enjoyed, I spent the following 2 years basically wiping all of that crap out of my head. Now, when I watch a film for the first time, I don’t do any thinking – the movie needs to simply work on me. Only then, if it’s worked on me, and I’m further intrigued, will I start analyzing it.
joel_gordon RE: Mingus “There is no good reason not to like him.”
Well maybe if you were Jimmy Knepper and Charles just punched you in the chops. But, yeah, even Jimmy eventually got over it.
Joe the Lodger RE: NOTRE MUSIQUE “It was not a professional film”
This plays a huge part, for me at least, in why Godard still matters and is still a master. He may receive income from his work, but he continues to make films as an amateur, in the Old French use of the term.
Nice to see a mention of William Gaddis/THE RECOGNITIONS/Jack Green, for it relates quite well to Glenn’s post.
There are a lot of ways of shutting down sustained thinking about Godard.
On the one hand, there’s Ebert’s “intellectual justification of bad filmmaking” idea, or the “talentless hack” idea, or the “provocateur” à la Jeff Koons idea. On the other hand there are the many varieties of rapt veneration, and there’s a tendency to write about Godard or speak of him as it seems he would want to be spoken of. Colin Macabe labeling him a secular saint, however ironically, is in this vein.
My shelves are filled with DVDs and old VHS tapes of JLG’s films, but I’ve never thought he should be approached on bended knee, and I’ve spent a lot of time trying to find a way of speaking about him and arguing with his films – that’s arguing in the Platonic sense, as he and Daniel Cohn Bendit put it in their recent discussion. I feel like I haven’t even begun.
I saw FILM SOCIALISME the other day. Like NOTRE MUSIQUE, it breaks down into three parts, and the final part strongly resembles the opening section of NOTRE MUSIQUE. As in many late Godard films, a certain inertia sets in after about an hour (not true of NOTRE MUSIQUE, in my opinion), and I have no patience for the “antic” stuff with actors (running around, banging themselves against windows, jumping in the way of cars, etc.). All the same, it was one of the most exciting films I saw in Cannes. In the opening shipboard section, which moves with a relentlessness that is unusual in Godard, he works a lot with degraded images, some of which look like they were shot with Flips or even cell phones. He also takes the sound of wind recorded with a tiny microphone, that flapping, slapping sound, and works it as an aesthetic element. A lot of people have been buzzing about this as his “YouTube film,” and I understand why. And at a certain point, as you’re watching passengers roaming around this cruise ship-of-state, gambling, eating, being entertained and even receiving communion, I found it truly terrifying – the film may be called “socialisme” but he gives you a hair-raising portrait of consumption. As always, the acute insights and piercing moments are scattered like seeds. And as with many of the late films, he hits a stretch where he settles into a rhythm that’s fairly breathtaking.
Don’t really want to wade too much into the aftermath of the Godard-grenade that Glenn (I assume unwittingly) tossed in here, but for those of you who are interested in approaching or re-approaching Godard (or simply those interested in Godard, period), I just wanted to recommend a short essay film by Godard’s former collaborator Jean-Pierre Gorin titled “A Pierrot Primer.” It’s on the Criterion DVD and Blu-ray of “Pierrot Le Fou.” (I’m sure it can also be found online somewhere, since those editions are unfortunately now out of print).
Anyway, “A Pierrot Primer” is essentially a great introduction to close-reading (or close-viewing) Godard, as well as appreciating some of the techniques he uses. At a time when I was struggling to get a grasp on much of Godard’s work (especially his denser and more difficult later films), it played a small but very important role in opening up not just “Pierrot Le Fou” (from which all the footage of Gorin’s film is taken), but a lot of other Godard films as well. Of course, those of you looking for a more objective view of Godard may wish to look elsewhere, but regardless, it’s a great piece of criticism, a solid intro to Godard, and well worth the 20 something minutes it takes to watch.
@ Joe the Lodger:
1. Nice Bowie joke.
2. It may be the movies you’ve seen. I side with Godard-acolyte Ian W. Hill in considering BREATHLESS and A WOMAN IS A WOMAN promising juvenelia, and I’m not that big a fan of TWO OR THREE THINGS. There’s plenty to like in them, but it’s a bit like basing your opinion of Altman on A PERFECT COUPLE and IMAGES. Much better to start with WEEK END, CONTEMPT, or ALPHAVILLE (a beautiful movie marred by a terribly childish dialogue at the end, not unlike IN PRAISE OF LOVE), then try KING LEAR or DETECTIVE.
“Phil – I can give you a few examples.”
So your examples are that you fell asleep and “It just played like it was made by a college student who’s just been filled with a whole lot of theory and philosophy and tried to slam everything together into a movie”. Those are not specific examples of anything. Try again.
“See, here’s the thing. I think somebody like Godard works great for academic-type minds, etc…”
Full disclosure: I’m a 23 year old grad student in critical studies. Having said that, just as one example, I count Nimrod Antal (Kontroll, Vacancy, Armored) among the 10–15 greatest filmmakers of the last decade. A director whose films I can enjoy as purely entertaining works of pulp first, and as a coherent discourse on the nature of individuals and relationships trapped in closed space second. I very much approach late-Godard in the same way: reveling in the aesthetic richness of them first, and only after several more viewings starting to seriously parse through the theoretical implications that he’s playing with. Trying to project some false assumption that anyone who thinks critically and/or theoretically about films inevitably doesn’t watch them for enjoyment and is in turn full of shit or something is just a lazy argument and adds absolutely nothing of worth to the conversation.
Also, thanks to Kent for weighing in (having actually seen the film) with very much the level of insight and intelligence I’ve come to expect from everything you write.
“Those are not specific examples of anything. Try again.”
Why don’t you in turn provide us with some “specific examples” of the “theoretical implications” of Godard’s work?
The Godard appreciation society here has for the most part indulged in name-dropping and referring to secondary sources. So we have Godard referring to this author or that idea in his films and then we have his fans referring either to the amorphous intellectual “work” that needs to be done, or referring to what other people have written about Godard – this is a pretty unsatisfactory state of affairs.
I do have my doubts that Godard himself really understands everything he is referring to and those doubts grow even stronger when it comes to his fans – but feel free to convince me otherwise.
Actually, Phil, those are specific examples. I’m sorry that you’d prefer I go into greater detail, but the whole point of those examples was how utterly bored and disconnected I was watching both films, and how poor I thought the craftsmanship was. Furthermore, I saw them 4 and 6 years ago, respectively.
Your entire post, though you claim to just sit back and watch, was written from exactly the type of mindset I warned against – right down to the cliché thumping for a b director as some sort of misunderstood genius.
Uh-huh.
Wow, Joe…when we get right down to cases, you’re really a bit of a bitter fellow (I had a harsher word in mind, beginning with a “p,” but I’m trying to wean myself off of name-calling) aren’t you? I understand you feel so terribly, terribly oppressed by all these fascist Godardophiles and academics harshing on your craftsmanship buzz, but seriously…your campaign to get Godard removed from the canon is faring even less well than a prior quixotic quest you embarked on under a different handle. Someday I’d be really interested in hearing you hold forth on a filmmaker who has earned your unqualified admiration, just so the rest of us know exactly where you’re setting your bar.
Oh, Glenn, I’m just having fun. Not bitter. Not trying to remove anybody from the canon. There’s no denying influence.
I simply believe that it’s good to question certain things many take for granted.
I just tend to follow a more old school philosophy regarding craft. Not necessarily to the extreme of say Frank Lloyd Wright (though it is pretty funny that he called abstract expressionism “finger painting,” and when artists protested his design for the Guggenheim, he told them they’d be so happy to have their work shown there that they’d create better art.)
There’s a pretty funny story I read once about Glenn Friedman having a gallery show, and he’s taking a tour of the museum – but he had no interest in the modern art and only wanted to look at the old masters because their work seemed inhuman in its effort.
This nitwit slob-snob notion that one needs a pedigree in philosophy and lit in order to decode Godard, and that the pleasure in being able to do so is born in arrogance and elitism, is idiotic and supremely cynical. It implies that one’s ONLY interest in versing themselves in JLG’s reference points is to be able to read his body of work. Of course, for many of us, an interest in philosophy, history, art, literature, etc. run in tandem with Godard’s. And in this way, he has become an incredibly edifying semaphore, pointing young, hungry, budding intellectuals towards tons of vastly enriching, seminal schools of art and thought (the same way, say, Woody Allen once pointed a 15 year old twit – read: me – towards Bergman). But since ‘Joe’ isnt interested in these particular pursuits, well, anyone who is is suspect.
Um, I think you’re kind of manufacturing some conjecture there at the end there, Jim.
The problem isn’t that he uses references or points to history, philosophy, etc. It’s that he fails to create a successful film body that can contain those ideas. It’s really an issue of where you begin. Most filmmakers start with, say, a story, then they use that story to convey their themes – so, basically, they start with form. Godard, on the other hand, starts with his themes, then tries to fashion a form around them. In theory, there’s nothing wrong with that. I just don’t think his forms are successful – and that’s why so many people are put off by his films: He confuses the drug for the delivery of the drug. This is why I’ve suggested his films play better to an academic-type mind that is more interested in the abstract ideas than what’s actually on the screen.
Joe, don’t take this the wrong way, but I think your speculation as to the kind of mindset that best or most naturally appreciates Godard is way off base, and that your argument is being determined too much by your own set of prejudices/assumptions. One thing I meant to suggest in my post titled “Images and wisdom delivery,” which consists in part of a section of a film review by Godard from 1957, is that Godard has maintained a pretty consistent voice for the better part of fifty years. The allusions in that piece of prose, the juxtapositions between classic and modern, the insistence on his perspective, the density; those are all hallmarks of his current work. For all the bizarre quirks of his personality and politics that have manifested themselves over the years, his essential Godard-ness has remained in some crucial ways incredibly undeviating. As for the ability to key into and/or enjoy that Godard-ness, well, I’m someone who can only check the box that says “some college” on a job application or poll, so consider me one non-academic who has a gay old time with the crank, who I consider less a virtuoso of abstract ideas than a genuine provocateur.
Yeah, honestly, I didn’t comment about the Godard quote because it all does come down to the same thing. I honestly don’t think he’s saying anything in that. It’s a whole lot of comparative references and literary flourishes. But in the end, the real substance basically breaks down to: “I really liked this. The director was creative and should be congratulated for getting a good performance out of Dean Martin, and one day we will see his name used as an adjective.”
In my opinion, the writing is more about Godard than it is about the movie he’s reviewing. In other words, it’s bad writing. It’s like when Armond White goes on comparative tangents that show off how much he’s read/watched, but he hasn’t actually said anything about the movie itself.
It’s okay re: college. Even putting “some” is more than me.
Having just caught up on this thread, I’m now in awe of “Joe the Lodger” for the confidence with which he asserts his ignorance.
I don’t know which is better – his judgment that “Two or Three Things I Know About Her” is a bad movie because he fell asleep during it or his claim about “Notre Musique” that “It was not a professional film.”
I also enjoy the scene-setting he deploys – he only saw the “Two or Three Things” because he was trying to lay this French broad, see? And using “Notre Musique” as an example of how Godard failed to mature as a filmmaker is equally impressive in its way.
Joe, it was helpful in understanding your views that you described having spent two years of your life making yourself purposefully ignorant. It’s a shame that you find critical engagement to be at cross-purposes with pleasure, but for most of us here, that’s not the case. Please don’t assume that we’re wired like you. Some of us find that thinking can enhance the viewing experience.
Gee, DUH, you’re mighty prickly. But you’re pretty much wrong in all of your assertions. I didn’t see 2 or 3 to get laid, and I didn’t – but in a similar sense, I wouldn’t have seen it if she didn’t want to take me (and that’s because I’d seen more than enough Godard already to know I didn’t appreciate him). As for NM, it’s not an example of how he hasn’t matured, so much as an example of how he’s remained essentially, by choice, an amateur filmmaker for 50 years.
Two years making myself purposefully ignorant? No. Two years correcting my thought processes so I can see things clearly for what they are, rather than to have artificial mechanisms processing how I’m supposed to think.
The whole point of everything I’ve said here is that it’s better to think for yourself. You might like to try it some time. If you’re intelligent enough to try.
“Why don’t you in turn provide us with some “specific examples” of the “theoretical implications” of Godard’s work?”
Ok, let’s take Godard’s short trailer for the 2008 Viennale (you can watch here: http://www.viennale.at/real/trailer/viennale08.mp4). In 60-some seconds it manages to be, among other things, a beautiful and heartbreaking examination of violence and love in the modern world and an essay on the relationship between sound and image. Yes, it is coarse. Perhaps this is what people take for shoddy: the way the sound abruptly cuts in and out, the jarring edits, the jerky manipulated images. But these couldn’t be any other way and still achieve what Godard needs them to. This is no more amateur or shoddy than the bristling of elements in one of Rauschenberg’s collages or the crudity and awkwardness of the clashing tones in Pynchon’s prose. (Though maybe you’d find both of them amateurish artists as well.)
The combination of the sounds of a tennis match and images from a film by Eisenstein are the thesis here: the use of montage in sounds/images/sounds + images to put multiple dialectics in conversation with one another (this being the “theoretical implications” here). Images of war stripped of their sounds and digitally manipulated become beautiful. We see the richly-colored shot of a bomber after we have already heard the sound of the destruction it brings; perhaps it’s not a kosher argument, but in tracing this arc from disaster/violence to romance/love Godard finds beauty even in terrible images…and maybe the beauty is even greater when we are previously made aware of the violence which only cinema can remove from it. Love finally arrives in the form of something unspeakable, and it exists in the contrast of a manipulated image of affection with layered voices reading a poem. It is both as gorgeous and as oppressively unsettling as the sounds-images of war.
I’ve only spoken literally about the sounds and images of Godard’s video, because as a number of people have pointed out, getting every reference is hardly necessary to engage with his works. That said, it certainly becomes richer when ones brings in, for example, the fact that the image at the end comes from Siodmak, et al.’s People On Sunday, a film very much concerned with the tension between work and leisure; the dialectic between disaster and love now extends into the workaday world – what is disaster and what is love in the age of late capitalism? (For as good an explication of the rest of this dense little piece as anyone could hope for, Craig Keller – surprise, surprise – has an excellent essay on his blog: http://cinemasparagus.blogspot.com/2008/10/une-catastrophe.html).
“Your entire post, though you claim to just sit back and watch, was written from exactly the type of mindset I warned against – right down to the cliché thumping for a b director as some sort of misunderstood genius.”
As Glenn already mentioned, you’re doing a lot of projecting here. My appreciation for Antal doesn’t stem from the fact that, as you presume, it allows for me to stump for him as some misunderstood genius. It comes from the fact that I love how he finds excitement in cruddy, tiny spaces (the subway, a cheap motel, an armored car in an abandoned warehouse). From the suddenness of the action. From the way he shoots Luke Wilson and Matt Dillon’s goofy mugs. If, in turn, the coherence of thought and style in his 3 movies so far also thrills me (and becomes just as fulfilling and important to me as the pure enjoyment of watching them) it just means that he moves from someone whose movies I like to someone I truly treasure as an artist. Your argument seems to be that unless you’re watching movies with your brain firmly switched off then you’re doing it wrong…which, you know, more power to you, but no thanks.
Joe, I’m not entirely sure how the point of your comments was “it’s better to think for yourself,” given that you earlier said, “when I watch a film for the first time, I don’t do any thinking.” I suppose there’s a sense in which that’s thinking for yourself, but I may have a different conception of thinking than you do.
It sounds like you’re suggesting that other people’s views or concepts are an obstacle to thinking for yourself and I think that’s wrong. I mean, thinking is hard. It takes time and practice. And learning how to think for yourself is compatible with learning from others. (Some of those others may even write books that are worth reading.) But all this is “artificial” to you?
That’s a genuine question because I don’t understand why you feel that you were perverted by criticism or why the appropriate response to that is to not think about films as you watch them.
From your self-description, it sounds like you spent two years refusing to listen to what other people had to say and as a result, you appear to think that asserting your preference for “craftsmanship” is the equivalent of making an argument.
Anyway, if your views are anything close to what I’ve supposed, I can see why you don’t like Godard. Godard’s movies do require you to think for yourself, but in a fashion more like my model of thinking than like yours.
Phil-
I actually, or rather typically, really didn’t like the trailer. First of all, and this is my own preference, I don’t really care much for the fetishization of existing footage. I’d have preferred it if he’d shot something original. The other thing, and you mentioned the way the sound cuts abruptly, that approach isn’t really jarring to me in theory so much as it sounds as if he simply made a direct edit in the sound without smoothing it. Generally, if you’re an editor, what you do on an abrupt sound edit is to either drop a 2‑frame fade out on the clip, which is so brief you can’t hear it, or you can manually drag the level down over 2 frames. This is done to avoid a clicking sound that often occurs when a sound breaks midway. It sounds to me that Godard didn’t bother to drop it off, and little things like that are typical of his technique (calling attention to flaws) which I loathe – because in any other context it would be considered amateurish. That’s why I earlier linked to that quote saying his work was intellectualized bad filmmaking.
DUH -
Let me give you an example of what I mean, in terms of why I might not want to think too hard about story structure, for instance, while I’m watching a movie for the first time. The Graduate. A typical narrative is 3‑acts broken into 4 quarters – 1st Act is 1/4, 2nd Act is 1/2 with a midpoint event, 3rd Act is 1/4.
Now, in appearance, The Graduate seems to fit this mold: 2nd Act begins with the affair, midpoint event is the date with Elaine, 3rd Act is going after Elaine.
But then… There are some who believe that the movie’s 1st Act is actually half the movie. This argument says that the plot is about Ben deciding what he wants to do, and by having the affair he’s actually putting off deciding, he’s drifting. Therefore, the date with Elaine starts the 2nd Act midway through the film because that’s when he makes his decision.
The point is, I should be able to watch The Graduate and simply enjoy the story for what it is regardless of where the plot points are. But once you’ve studied screenwriting and have all of these ideas about structure and motivation in your head, you’re too busy analyzing the picture to simply let it work on you.
This doesn’t mean that I’m not thinking. I’m very aware of what I’m watching as I’m watching it. I’ll spot tech idiosyncrasies you don’t even know exist.
The best example I can give you is that it’s like at the end of the original Star Wars when Luke turns off all the gadgets and uses the Force. Does that make sense?
“It sounds to me that Godard didn’t bother to drop it off, and little things like that are typical of his technique (calling attention to flaws) which I loathe – because in any other context it would be considered amateurish. That’s why I earlier linked to that quote saying his work was intellectualized bad filmmaking.”
But when he’s using these jarring techniques consciously and effectively to call attention to the contrasts and dynamics of the image-sound relationship here how is that “bad filmmaking”? You’re chastising Godard for not subscribing to traditional notions of invisible style, which is precisely the opposite of what he’s going for (intentionally, not because he doesn’t know better). I’m also not sure where there’s “fetishization of existing footage” here; that doesn’t seem like a very accurate use of that idea to me. In the interviews I linked earlier Godard talks about his use of existing footage, and it doesn’t have anything to do with some imagined higher level of worth to it. To be reductive, it basically comes down to the fact that for him if an image exists and it interests him and he can use it, why bother creating a new image just for the sake of novelty?
I don’t think your example of story structure in The Graduate is a very good one (but maybe that has to do more with the fact that I think most institutionalized thought w/r/t screenwriting, act structures, etc. is nonsense). The difference between being aware of superficial and ultimately pointlessly arbitrary distinctions in the story structure and being aware of the implications and connections in the formal elements at play in the image and sound (you know, things that are really present in what you’re watching) seems pretty self-evident to me.
But Godard’s entire aesthetic from his first film on has been based around calling attention to bad technique. That was the whole novelty of the Breathless jump-cuts. That’s his shtick. It’s quite different than, say, Kubrick, whose films are highly controlled, yet, every once in a while, he’ll throw something at the audience that smarts them – because it exists in contrast to its surroundings. Godard never offers a contrast for his bad technique, so, effectively, he’s using amateurish devices that in any other context would be just that.
Again, I’m not interested in seeing manipulated old footage. Good for him if he isn’t interested in bothering to create new images.
The question then becomes, if he’s using amateurish technique, and he isn’t creating the images himself, isn’t that just plain lazy?…
The Graduate is a perfect example of what I’m discussing. There’s nothing superficial about story structure. I’m not arguing for the standard film structure at all. This is simply an example of how processing a film based on abstract analysis on your first viewing can get in the way of simply viewing it for what it is.
The way I used to view films was in a purely analytical manner. It would take me 3–4 viewings before I could just relax and enjoy a movie. I consciously chose to reverse that process, so I can let the movie affect me – then, the more I watch it, the more I pick it apart.
It’s not that I don’t analyze – it’s simply the order in which it’s done.
I don´t understand why you all try to discuss with joe the plumber. He obvioulsly has seen 2 or 3 films by Godard and didn´t like them, probably because the he´s enarmored with the directoral quality of films by Mike Nichols. Nevertheles I wonder what he would think of films by Huillet/Straub.
Thomas
Just so we’re clear, Phil, you are talking about the guy who’s directing the new Predator movie, right?
Yup. And from everything I know about it so far, Predators seems like it will be another opportunity for him to find ways to make closed spaces exciting and dynamic. Looking forward to it as much as anything not called Film Socialisme this year.
“Good for him if he isn’t interested in bothering to create new images.”
Well, no, that’s not what I said at all. The trailers for Film Socialisme have a number of images in them that are unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
Also, equating amateur (though that’s still a misreading here) with lazy is pretty strange. Why exactly can’t a lack of polish be an aesthetic choice that’s made with intelligence and rigorous consideration?
-Why exactly can’t a lack of polish be an aesthetic choice that’s made with intelligence and rigorous consideration?
It can. But it’s still lazy. And to maintain that approach over an entire career is simply mind-numbing.
Thomas-
I’ve watched (or watched in part) I think at least 8 of his films spread across his career. Which is enough of a sampler to know what he’s about.
And I could give a rat’s ass about Mike Nichols. Besides, Buck Henry and Calder Willingham wrote the screenplay, you twit.
Thomas, I knew that I was done having a discussion with Joe when he informed me that he spots tech idiosyncrasies I don’t even know exist. Obviously, given my evident blindness, I couldn’t have anything of value to contribute to our conversation. I’ve apparently been talking with a veritable Jedi Knight of movie-watching and I’m not even a padawan learner!
DUH, the point goes back farther in the thread where I was talking about how filmmakers watch and discuss films in a different manner than critics. Invariably, if you’re a filmmaker and you understand the technical craft and processes involved in making a film, you’re going to be watching it from a certain perspective. That’s all.
” In 60-some seconds it manages to be, among other things, a beautiful and heartbreaking examination of violence and love in the modern world and an essay on the relationship between sound and image.”
First, your link does not work.…but I found the trailer you referenced and all I can say to your, erm, interpretation is, well, huh? that was an “essay” on violence and love? I guess this is at an impasse, because all I saw was a film school level effort to be profound by showing some tanks and then some sort of black and white coupling that may or may not express love – given her hand on his face. But i certainly didn’t see anything brilliant, let alone an ESSAY!
And for the record, I know the response to that is invariably “you just don’t WANT to see it, therefore you can’t” – and that could not be more wrong in my case. every second of Godard i’ve watched has been prefaced by a sincere hope that THIS TIME it will click. I get myself psyched up that the next one will be THE one that finally proves to work on various levels and scream profundity at me. And all I’ve ever gotten out of all that excitement is a deep sense of ennui and a shrug of the shoulders saying oh well, maybe next time. And for all of my straw men and words about nothing, I guarantee i’ll inevitably return to something or other…I remain befuddled by it all and will continue to pursue some sense of equilibrium between my professed opinion of JLG and that of his most ardent admirers. But until then, you can never convince me that proclaiming that trailer is what the quote above argues is anything but some combination of bullshit and wishful thinking.
As a general rule, I’m not the sort to cast doubt on an internet commentator because of his or her preference for operating under a pseudonym.
But, y’know, Mr. the Lodger, if you’re going to play the “I’m a filmmaker, so I understand the technical craft and processes involved” card, which implies that M. Godard’s understanding of that craft is limited in comparison to yours, then you had better be a filmmaker of impeccable technical credentials.
If you’re going to sing it, as they say, you had better damn well bring it. And that goes double for someone who has name-dropped as you have.
Again, I’m not someone who typically has an axe to grind against those who wish to remain anonymous, and I’m not trying to push or bully you into casting off your nom de internet, but if you’re going to imply that your understanding of the craft of filmmaking is greater than Godard’s, no one is going to take that argument seriously until you reveal your real name, Mr. Spielberg.
I never said Godard had a poor understanding of film craft. I said he’s bad at executing film craft.
” But until then, you can never convince me that proclaiming that trailer is what the quote above argues is anything but some combination of bullshit and wishful thinking.”
I dunno, I mean, I typed out the evidence there in it that led me to the way that I feel about it. I don’t really stand to gain much by bullshitting people I’ll probably never meet in the comments section on a blog, and writing it off as wishful thinking just seems sort of juvenile to me. When it was first released I watched it probably 40 or 50 times over the course of a few days, the first dozen or so just being taken by the images (what you see as just a hand on a face absolutely breaks my heart every time I watch it – different strokes) and the rest going through and beginning to make connections and suss out the ideas at play. So yeah, you don’t have to agree with what I wrote on it, or even find any worth in it, but please don’t imply that I’m bullshitting for some completely irrational reason.
That said, if you don’t like it that’s cool (FWIW, your 2nd paragraph there is roughly the exact same way I feel about Bergman, outside of Persona, so I can relate to that feeling), and I appreciate that you’re at least willing to watch Godard’s works (as opposed to certain other folks here).
Also, on the link for anyone else who wants to give it a try, you just have to delete the ”).” from the end; some how got messed up in the autolinking here. Apologies.
Phil, thanks for providing some insight into what you find intriguing about Godard. Unsurprisingly, I am unable to see many of the things you and Blake see in this short piece. Would you really have watched this trailer 40 times and spent a lot of time analyzing it afterwards, if you had come across it by chance on youtube, not knowing it was by Godard?
I also am not a big fan of the type of criticism that relies a lot on prior knowledge and free-floating association, as exemplified in Blake’s piece. The type of language game played there is too hermetic for me and I just cannot connect with it, so there just is not enough convergence between our approaches to ensure a fruitful debate. But I might give Godard another shot and maybe I’ll find things that piqué my interest using a different approach.
On a conciliatory note, here’s a piece by Kristin Thompson, that has a little bit for everyone:
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=8308
The problem with the Godard-dissers is that many assume his admirers experience his films the same way they do – the only difference being that they value this experience. But while some Godard films, including many of his most acclaimed – Vivre sa vie, 2 or 3 Things, Contempt – leave me somewhat cold (the first and third I admire, the second failed for me) my favorite Godards are thrilling, exciting, visceral experiences. If you don’t get that from Godard, then I’m not sure you’re getting Godard at all.
Everyone’s been a bit harsh on Joe, er, Mr. Spielberg. His Skywalker-in-the-Death-Star-trench analogy captures the sense of sustaining involvement without overdosing on analysis better than any other I’ve heard. As someone whose rocketed back and forth between intense formal awareness (at the expense of the overall experience) and writerly thematic concerns (at the expense of the work’s tactile qualities), I would like to rediscover that Zen zone again. Where’s Obi-Wan’s voice when you need it?
Btw, did anyone see David Thomson’s recent hatchet job on Breathless in the New Republic? Actually, I’m not even sure it’s supposed to be a hatchet job, like much of Thomsons’ recent movie-weary output it leaves me a bit befuddled. Didn’t he adore Godard once? Heck, didn’t Ebert? What’s with all these old-timers losing the faith? Are they trying to suck up to the yoots? (As a 26-year-old, I take umbrage.) I used to be a subscriber over at TNR so I wish I could leap in to stick up for JLG (Thomson/detractors in comments thread, please note: Godard is not nihilistically vetoing classical form, he’s proving that intense self-consciousness and the “magic” of innocent, imaginative cinema can actually co-exist, that the film form is, or was anyway, strong enough to contain both – and I say was because Godard’s supposed anticinema was far more “cinematic” than your run-of-the-mill blockbuster today.)
Dan, if you’re still around & looking for film books (I know, you said you’ve got too many to read now and I sympathize – I’m currently sunk in 26 tomes, some of which I’ve been “reading” since February – but you also expressed a disorientation in terms of which books to read):
http://thedancingimage.blogspot.com/2009/07/movie-bookshelf.html
Shameless self-pimping and not exactly a winnowing all things considered, but ya gotta start somewhere.