The current cinema, the "always-pleasant-and-easy-to-get-along-with-Jean-Luc-Godard" edition

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• Tom Carson says:

  May 31, 2011 at 7:27 pm

  GK – won­der­ful, won­der­ful piece. As for me, the only way I can describe my feel­ings about Film Socialisme is that I hated every minute and loved the whole thing.

• James R says:

  May 31, 2011 at 9:56 pm

  “with late-period Godard, it’s not really a full exper­i­ence without at least a little ser­i­ous view­er irritation”
  Hmmm… that pretty much sums up my acquaint­ance with almost the entirety of Godard’s oeuvre, not just the recent films.

• haice says:

  May 31, 2011 at 10:25 pm

  It takes a crank to know a crank. Beautiful.

• Jason M. says:

  June 1, 2011 at 9:19 am

  In my some­what loopy sleep-deprived state this morn­ing, I ini­tially read “Eisenstein’s ‘Potemkin’ ” as “Eisenstein’s ‘Pokemon’ ” and my mind was imme­di­ately blown.
  Great writeup on Film Socialisme, too. I can­’t wait to see it again on the big screen.

• Learn to Fly says:

  June 1, 2011 at 2:15 pm

  Just saw this at Toronto Film Festival. Quite con­trary to my expect­a­tions, this is a ter­rible, extremely bor­ing film.

• Graig says:

  June 3, 2011 at 9:20 pm

  Thanks for writ­ing this, Glenn, which is prob­ably my favor­ite thing of yours in a bit. I saw FILM SOCIALISME at UCLA a week or two ago and found it to be pretty rough going to be hon­est, though of course I knew that would be the case going in. I wished Godard had stayed on the boat because at least that sec­tion was form­ally inter­est­ing in terms of col­or, tex­ture, etc. Once he shifts focus to the fam­ily in the French countryside…well, I don’t know what the rest of the film was about at all. But JLG isn’t ter­ribly inter­ested in my wants and needs now, is he?

• Kent Jones says:

  June 3, 2011 at 11:03 pm

  I was­n’t so fond of the fam­ily sec­tion myself, par­tic­u­larly the film­maker in hot pants. But I found the people who played the fam­ily, par­tic­u­larly the hus­band and wife, mov­ing. They really looked and spoke and behaved like people who made a liv­ing run­ning a gas station.
  The rhythm of that first sec­tion is unfor­get­table, and it reaches some kind of cres­cendo when he crashes into one of those visu­ally and aur­ally assault­ive cell phone shots. He also makes a real event out of the dis­tor­ted sound on the small in-camera mikes.

• edo says:

  June 3, 2011 at 11:27 pm

  I agree about his raw use of those mics. For instance, how he does­n’t both­er to pro­tect them from the wind whip­ping the deck of the ship. The res­ult is that it feels like all these images are being relayed to us, some­times with crys­tal clar­ity, some­times in a muddle of pixels and dis­tor­tions, through these vari­ous media. As if our access to the world viewed is always threat­en­ing to break down into a jumble of information…
  The first time I saw it, I was­n’t aware that everything had been shot on board the same cruise ship. There were spaces that seemed so massive that I felt they had to have been shot some­where on dry land. How little did I know about such ves­sels! By my second view­ing, I had cleared this up and the end­less, irresolv­able depths of that ship’s spec­tac­u­lar banal­it­ies really came together.
  The fam­ily sec­tion struck me as slack even when it was good. He just does­n’t seem to have inves­ted as much thought into each of that seg­ment’s vign­ettes as he seems to have put into every com­pos­i­tion on the ship and the way they’re layered and stacked upon each oth­er. I really love a num­ber of moments, how­ever, espe­cially that where the little boy is strok­ing his mother­’s back while she washes dishes, and that where the moth­er is speak­ing to her daugh­ter in the bath­room about life’s disappointments.

• ted says:

  June 5, 2011 at 10:36 am

  Some back­ground inform­a­tion on the Otto Goldberg/Richard Christmann char­ac­ter from INDEPENDENCIA that I translated:
  “Today, what has changed, is that bas­tards are sin­cere.” This sen­tence is said two times, in the first and second parts. But which bas­tards exactly? Richard Christmann, first, a his­tor­ic­al char­ac­ter around whom the prot­ag­on­ists of the first part grav­it­ate. This former spy of Abwher, a Nazi inform­a­tion net­work, would have been a double agent, indeed a triple agent, dur­ing World War II. In 1940, in the story inven­ted by Godard, he would have par­ti­cip­ated in the embez­zle­ment of the Spanish gold between Barcelona and Odessa. He was, fur­ther­more, one of the people respons­ible for the arrest of mem­bers of the Musee de l’Homme net­work, includ­ing Alice Simmonet, who he would have tor­tured. He is next found serving the Algerian FLN, then “rep­res­ent­at­ive of Bayer and Rhone-Poulenc.” Known under dif­fer­ent pseud­onyms like Leopold Krivitsky, Markus, and Moise Shmucke, he presents him­self dur­ing the cruise under the name of Otto Goldberg. Two oth­er pas­sen­gers are look­ing for him: Major Kamenskaia, charged with find­ing the traces of the miss­ing gold for the bank of the Russian gov­ern­ment, and lieu­tentant Delmas, who Godard makes a former lov­er of Alice Simmonet in the inter­view with Mediapart.
  They will cross paths with sev­er­al groups of char­ac­ters cross­ing the Mediteranean for diverse reas­ons: a spy for Mossad and his golden tooth, a Palestinian couple, three intel­lec­tu­als, respect­ively a writer, a philo­soph­er and an eco­nom­ist, a young girl, Constance, her friend, and her young­er broth­er, Ludo, who becomes friends with Alissa, Richard Christmann’s daugh­ter. It is there­fore less a mat­ter of a tour­ist cruise than an inter­na­tion­al sum­mit of bas­tards. When the old man and the daugh­ter walk down the hall, they are observed by a sur­veil­lance cam­era: the trav­el­ers spy on each oth­er. Later on, lieu­ten­ant Delmas repeats a ges­ture the hero of The Ghost Writer and the hero of Green Zone accom­plished before him: he searches for – and finds- inform­a­tion on the inter­net. Descriptive sheets, shame­ful crimes, State secrets, everything is now avail­able on Google.

• ted says:

  June 5, 2011 at 11:43 am

  I’m also curi­ous Glenn why you fol­lowed suit with all the oth­er New York crit­ics in not dis­cuss­ing the lines to which the line “Yes…but the strange thing is that Hollywood was inven­ted by Jews,” is a response to. How this can be mis­con­strued as either anti-Semetic or anti-Zionist is bey­ond me (hav­ing under­stood the French and gone through the effort of down­load­ing com­plete sub­titles for the film be sure of what was said in the film).

• Kino Slang says:

  June 6, 2011 at 6:19 am

  It is insens­it­ive and idi­ot­ic (and inten­tion­ally so I believe) not to men­tion Hebrew and Arabic as among the lan­guages spoken in FILM SOCIALISME. These lan­guages come (you heard it and saw it I’m sure) late in the film, togeth­er, as part of a simple ima­gin­ing of a vir­tu­osic peace between the Semites: the two lan­guages mixed over an image of acrobats seen to be mutu­ally depend­ent on one anoth­er in mid air.
  You essen­tially ques­tion the need to make “con­ven­tion­al sense” of the movie (only to replace it, as did Kent Jones, with talk of Godard’s movie as if it were a light show, or a Brakhage film…a nice way to exon­er­ate yourselves of mean­ing there), but a para­graph earli­er you had just forced some very con­ven­tion­al sense into it by fur­ther con­trib­ut­ing to the “Godard-the-Anti-Semite” con­ven­tion. A rather under­han­ded thing to do to the reader.
  But, I’m find­ing more and more people who, without the slight­est prompt, defend Godard against your (and the oth­ers) obsess­ive reduc­tions vis a vis Godard and the Semites. They, to para­phrase James Baldwin, quite nat­ur­ally “give your prob­lem back to you” and think about the film instead of poli­cing it.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  June 6, 2011 at 6:45 am

  @ Kino Slang: Oh, bull­shit. And the word you’re look­ing for is “vir­tu­al,” not “vir­tu­osic.” You get bonus points for try­ing to give Godard, of all artists, cred­it for a “kum­baya” moment.
  I’d expound a bit on the levels of mean­ing found in the film, as the intrep­id Richard Brody has done on his blog (see here, for instance, http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2011/06/film-socialisme-humanism-and-paranoia.html), levels not really pos­sible to plumb in a single 1,000-word review…and I think Brody’s phrase “blend of his­tor­ic­al curi­os­ity and free-flowing hos­til­ity” with respect to the film is entirely apt, and flies nicely in the face of your rather des­per­ate attempt to cred­it Godard with a kum­baya moment of all things. But I don’t like your tone much, so I’d rather not both­er with you at all.
  James Baldwin, huh? Jesus.

• edo says:

  June 6, 2011 at 7:49 am

  Kino Slang, or Andy (is that you, Mr. Rector?), I don’t see how attempt­ing to dis­cuss the film from the stand­point of its aes­thet­ic qual­it­ies, such as its dense sound­scape, amounts to dodging the quest to extract some sort of mean­ing out of it. So far as I can tell, in his piece, Glenn is merely acknow­ledging that the film is too open-ended and intric­ate an object to reduce it to a grab-bag of slo­gans and state­ments. And Glenn’s objec­tion to the moments in the film where Godard seems to con­sciously pro­voke accus­a­tions of anti-semitism seem more against these acts of pro­voca­tion as such, as trite little cock teases, rather than tough-minded attempts to engage with a dire issue (am I on the right track, Glenn?). I think if you look back through the piece you’ll find that Glenn nev­er flatly accuses Godard of anti-semitism. Rather he expresses frus­tra­tion at the impres­sion that Godard is act­ively bait­ing us to make such an accus­a­tion. I’m not sure if I agree (I’d need to see the film again), but either way I don’t see how this is a manip­u­lat­ive or hypo­crit­ic­al move of Glenn to make.
  Also, I feel like Brakhage would­n’t be too happy with you pla­cing him in the boat of pre-conceptual, aes­thet­ic pur­ity. After all, Brakhage con­sciously took on social and polit­ic­al issues in his work. He was­n’t just a fab­ric­at­or of mys­tic­ally elev­ated light play.

• Kent Jones says:

  June 6, 2011 at 9:22 am

  The oth­er day, I was play­ing in my sand­box when I was so over­whelmed by the play of sun­light through the trees that I dropped my Tonka trucks and spun around until I got dizzy. And I remem­ber think­ing, “Gee, this reminds me of TEXT OF LIGHT…and FILM SOCIALISME.” Then I star­ted crush­ing some rocks with some big­ger rocks.
  “Insensitive”…“idiotic”…“exonerate”…“underhanded”…“obsessive reductions”…“policing” – no dis­cus­sion pos­sible. So, to quote Godard, “NO COMMENT”

• David Ehrenstein says:

  June 6, 2011 at 10:05 am

  “Film Socialisme” is the greatest work Godard has ever made.

• Kino Slang says:

  June 7, 2011 at 3:10 am

  If you’re will­ing Glenn, I’d like to know then your inter­pret­a­tion, feel­ing, whatever, on that shot of the acrobats in FILM SOCIALISME (the acrobats from Varda’s film + recit­a­tions from the Torah + recit­a­tions from the Qu’ran). Does it spell hos­til­ity toward Jews for you? Pure body? Does it make mean­ing at all? Since you seem to think I’m for­cing “kum­baya” on it, I won­der what altern­at­ive views there are on that shot, and how the abso­lutely cer­tain, neces­sary hate else­where in FILM SOCIALISME (a hate dir­ec­ted at his­tory, the way things have turned out– always a pro­pos de Socialisme) is evid­ent par­tic­u­larly there…
  I was­n’t sure of the true implic­a­tions of the word “kum­baya” but am pleased to find when look­ing it up that, after its redis­cov­ery as an African-American spirtu­al, Joan Baez sung an early ver­sion it. And Joan Baez’s “Sagt Mir Wo Die Blumen Sind” (“Where have all the flowers gone?”) is played on the soundtrack in FILM SOCIALISME, right in the vicin­ity of the shot I’m dis­cuss­ing. One Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach sang it the same year as Baez, 1962. Pete Seeger also did an early ver­sion; the man who said of his gui­tar “This machine kills fas­cists”. Regrettably FILM SOCIALISME isn’t strong enough to do that. What’s more, the ori­gin­al lyr­ics have noth­ing to do with peace. Like David Wain in ROLE MODELS, I won­der about your abil­ity to play Kumbaya at all, my friend.
  To edo: my point is that it is vari­ous writers seiz­ing upon a trend­ily per­ceived anti-Semitism who are the ones bait­ing the read­er (not the unpre­ju­diced view­er of the film) into won­der­ing wheth­er Godard is an anti-Semite. Godard isn’t doing this. It’s those crit­ics Navajo sub­title to Godard’s films after the great ICI ET AILLEURS. Judging by the film itself, its con­stant play of dia­lectics, Godard is pro­vok­ing one to think of ori­gins (Hollywood, Jews, Mecca, the reli­gious pos­ture of cinema, the his­tor­ic­al liber­ties taken by capitalists/fascists, those con­tra­dic­tions of interests [the Holocaust]…). I don’t see any­thing sexu­al (“trite little cock teases”[!]) about Godard’s anti-Semitism or (more appro­pri­ately) Semitism.
  Kent: the feel­ing is mutu­al. Or as Mme Huillet said “Honey, I have too many prob­lems with things that exist to worry about things that don’t.”
  Thank you Ted and David E for your work on this film.
  ‑Andy Rector
  PS- Glenn, “vir­tu­osic” is exactly the word I meant and did­n’t need to “look for” it, let alone have you find anoth­er, as it’s clearly sug­ges­ted to me from the film. It would take equal vir­tu­os­ity, threat of harm and threat of safety – the acrobats – for peace to come about. I would­n’t have deigned to pet­tily cri­tique your par­tic­u­lar words, but now I will: I believe you’re look­ing for some­thing oth­er than excess­ively hyphen­ated non-terms every oth­er para­graph. You might try to find it.

• edo says:

  June 7, 2011 at 4:13 am

  “I don’t see any­thing sexu­al (“trite little cock teases”[!]) about Godard’s anti-Semitism or (more appro­pri­ately) Semitism.”
  Talk about tak­ing me lit­er­ally. It’s a fig­ure of speech.
  And, jesus, do you like to talk down to folks here. What did Kent do to deserve being clubbed over the head with Daniele Huillet? What did Mme Huillet do to be so used?

• edo says:

  June 7, 2011 at 5:05 am

  I know I should just let this go, but this has really become an itch I need to scratch…
  Basically, I think we really need to get past this all-or-nothing atti­tude when it comes to Godard. There are plenty of folks out there who don’t have the time or patience for FILM SOCIALISME. Can I blame them? I’ll get to that in a second. Right now, the point is Glenn cer­tainly ain’t one of these people. He likes the film! Kent Jones likes the film! I like the film! But often it seems like the rhet­or­ic reaches such a pitch around Godard that if someone raises any objec­tion no mat­ter how slight they get placed in the bas­ket of a lar­ger, anonym­ous mass of crit­ics, most of whom prob­ably haven’t even bothered to watch the film closely enough to even raise a coher­ent objec­tion. I know for a fact that Kent has seen it numer­ous times. And I assume that Glenn has too. I have seen it twice, and plan to watch the DVD I recently acquired of it at the next avail­able moment. Todd McCarthy, not exactly a Jeffrey Wells type, got fuck­ing pil­lor­ied when he wrote up the film in his blog dur­ing Cannes. I don’t agree with most of what Todd wrote, but he was­n’t exactly rais­ing neg­li­gible com­plaints (re: the film’s seem­ingly delib­er­ately off-putting form­al stratagems, such as the Navajo sub­titles), and his frus­tra­tions were as much dir­ec­ted toward zealots for whom any neg­at­ive reac­tion to Godard’s films has always seemed to trans­late into a lack of the prop­er ideo­lo­gic­al credentials.
  Those crit­ics who reject Godard whole­sale, rep­res­en­ted most spec­tac­u­larly by Christy LeMire this past week, and who openly ridicule any attempt to view the film as any­thing besides a mon­strously pre­ten­tious work of anti-populist dec­ad­ence, are to my mind really not worth arguing with. They reflect the indif­fer­ence of cor­por­ate journ­al­ism at its most will­fully pop­u­list and asin­ine. Most of these people don’t even take the Hollywood films they review ser­i­ously. They don’t take movies ser­i­ously. Period. They’re basic­ally wage laborers, put­ting in their hours and par­lay­ing a shock­ingly con­ven­tion­al­ized con­cep­tion of aver­age American movie-goer com­mon sense into a crit­ic­al meth­od­o­logy. To be hon­est, I can­’t have any­thing against these folks for doing so, because so far as they’re con­cerned, they’re mostly just doing their jobs…
  Right now, the more dis­turb­ing issue to me is how we treat each oth­er, we being those of us for whom the cinema is more than a pre­text for a paycheck and who con­sequently do have time for someone like Godard. There are only a few earn­est hard-working gum­shoes (like Glenn or Todd) of the old-school journ­al­ist­ic stripe left in this world, and they’ve really had to carve out spaces for them­selves in an increas­ingly unac­com­mod­at­ing job mar­ket. A guy like Todd McCarthy has man­aged to sur­vive lay­off and the clos­ing of a stor­ied film depart­ment at a trade magazine that has been cov­er­ing the art form since the earli­est years of its exist­ence. Why are we group­ing someone like that in with the face­less lackeys?

• Glenn Kenny says:

  June 7, 2011 at 7:00 am

  Thanks for the defense, edo, much appre­ci­ated. I’m sure if Mr. Rector could find a way to troll Christy Lemire, he’d do that too, maybe (hint: she’s on Twitter!). As it is I’d say this thread is pretty much dead without me hav­ing to close it.

• David Ehrenstein says:

  June 7, 2011 at 9:40 am

  Todd has morph­ed into David Mamet of late. He’s part of the Ruling Conservatariat now.

• ted says:

  June 7, 2011 at 10:13 am

  Edo: The prob­lem is not American crit­ics dis­lik­ing the film. The prob­lem is American crit­ics writ­ing weird back­hand com­pli­ments of reviews and mak­ing an issue out of a non-issue.
  Every review of the film I’ve read by an American crit­ic has felt the need to address the film’s sup­posed anti-Semitic qual­it­ies. If you look at the con­ver­sa­tion around the film in France – a coun­try where the crit­ics actu­ally under­stood what was being said in the film, which as I’ve poin­ted out none of the American crit­ics seem to have been able to do since they don’t speak French – you will not see a dis­cus­sion about the film’s anti-Semitic qual­it­ies. There are not any. It is some­thing that has been con­fab­u­lated by American journ­al­ists tak­ing Brody’s lead.
  Case in point: as I poin­ted out else­where, this sen­tence has been cited by sev­er­al reviews I’ve read: “Hollywood was inven­ted by Jews.” Since this isn’t the line as it appears in the film and the only per­son to attempt to quote the line in full (albeit by mis­trans­lat­ing it and giv­ing it no con­text) was Brody (from whom, I don’t doubt people snagged the line, fur­ther mak­ing it some­thing that was­n’t really said in the film).
  In fact, what the off-screen char­ac­ter actu­ally says is, “Yes…but the strange this is that Hollywood was inven­ted by Jews.” The line is a response to anoth­er off-screen voice com­par­ing Hollywood cinema with Islam by call­ing it the Mecca of the West, “All eyes in the same dir­ec­tion, the movie theat­er.” So, first of all, the line does­n’t just bring Jews up out of the blue. And it isn’t a jab or slur. Given the rela­tion­ship between Jews and Muslims dur­ing the 20^th cen­tury (i.e. that whole Palestine/Israel thing that Godard and many oth­er film­makers have made films about), it might per­haps be viewed as strange that an Islamic-like insti­tu­tion was inven­ted by those pro­fess­ing the Jewish faith.
  At the very least, from this I think it becomes clear that what could have been a com­plex scene to dis­cuss (and there are plenty in the film, like the acro­bat­ic scene which I find to be one of the most mov­ing scenes in the film, along­side Major Kamenskaia’s declam­a­tion that she wants to see “bon­heur” and “Russie” togeth­er once again), was over­sim­pli­fied to serve some strange oblig­a­tion American crit­ics felt about dis­cuss­ing the film as con­tain­ing anti-Semitic elements.
  I think Andy’s chal­lenge to Glenn to address the very beau­ti­ful sequence in the film of the acrobats and the recited texts as some­thing oth­er than simple abstrac­tions is legit­im­ate. I would­n’t be sur­prised if the con­tent of the off-screen voices was poten­tially news to Glenn.
  Here is a much bet­ter English-language review (though writ­ten by someone not liv­ing in the US) that addresses issues in the film that we should have expec­ted the New York crit­ics to have done: http://mayrevue.com/KWest-ENG

• Glenn Kenny says:

  June 7, 2011 at 11:22 am

  Boy, I really suck, don’t I? Remind me not to try to ever review anoth­er Godard movie for MSN again. And you have a great day too, Ted!
  More ser­i­ously, and try­ing very hard to restrain myself from telling Ted to just go fuck him­self: what Ted sees as “the very beau­ti­ful sequence in the film of the acrobats” (oh, stop, I’m gonna cry) I see as pretty much a sop, and a half-hearted one at that. It does NOTHING in my per­spect­ive to ameli­or­ate the sheer shit­ti­ness of tone in which the “Goldberg” = “moun­tain of gold” point is pro­nounced. Do I make myself suf­fi­ciently clear?
  Also, let it be noted that when mak­ing my pusil­lan­im­ous pul­ing plaints about this “non-issue,” I nev­er brought up the line about “the Jews invent­ing Hollywood.” I’ve read Gabler’s book and everything. No. That line, dumb and ques­tion­able as it might be, isn’t part of the “non-issue” per se.

• ted says:

  June 7, 2011 at 11:35 am

  Someone put the movie on you­tube with full sub­titles in the “inter­act­ive tran­script” box under the video:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5tWwNmw8xk

• Kent Jones says:

  June 7, 2011 at 11:42 am

  Ironically, Tony Scott’s and Richard Brody’s mus­ings and quer­ies aside, the only per­son I know who raised the anti-semitism issue around FILM SOCIALISME is French. He was so pro­foundly offen­ded by the film that he swore off Godard forever – in his case, a major shift. Pretty mystifying.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  June 7, 2011 at 12:15 pm

  I do like that “someone” in the above com­ment from Ted. As in “someone who does­n’t care about the artist’s desires or inten­tions and wants to provide a help­ful crib for would-be Godard com­ment thread trolls,” maybe?
  It does raise an inter­est­ing ques­tion out­side the realm of my mount­ing desire to sock Ted in the jaw, which is, just what is the respons­ib­il­ity of the review­er, so to speak? I was asked to sub­mit a review of the film as it was con­figured for United States the­at­ric­al view­ing as part of my con­trib­ut­or’s agree­ment with MSN; that’s what I did. Now it’s not incon­ceiv­able that I might have availed myself of the YouTube ver­sion with full sub­titles; I also know of some review­ers who have DVD screen­ers with the full subs. Jonathan Rosenbaum has argued elo­quently, in the case of Godard’s “Histoire(s),” that full sub­titles con­sti­tute a kind of betray­al of the work. But that aside, in the con­text of the kind of review I’m doing for MSN, do I need to do the kind of schol­ar­ship that would a) give me spe­cial know­ledge that would­n’t neces­sar­ily be read­ily access­ible (yeah, I know, ANYBODY can access YouTube, but let’s leave that aside for the moment) to oth­er would-be view­ers and b) more likely be required for the pur­poses of an essay much longer than the one I’d be able to write for an out­let such as MSN. These are inter­est­ing ques­tions, although jagoffs such as Ted make me rather dis­in­clined to address them, I have to admit.

• ted says:

  June 7, 2011 at 12:55 pm

  I think that if, not know­ing what is being said in the film, a review­er is still going to attempt to address the film’s con­tent, the review­er should prob­ably seek out the book of the film’s dia­logue that was pub­lished or pir­ated sub­titles at the very least for some kind of fact check­ing so as not to wildly mis­lead mono­lin­gual view­ers into think­ing that Godard is an anti-Semite. If you could­n’t under­stand what the film was about because of the film’s Navajo sub­titles, why not just admit that to read­ers and admit yours and their pos­sible inca­pa­city to know what the film is about if view­ing it the way it is being released?
  Here’s a quote from Le Monde’s review of the film address­ing the Varda/acrobats scene:
  “He comes back to this idea that he con­siders Europe’s ori­gin­al mor­al fail­ing: hav­ing aban­doned Palestine. Godard bor­rows from Agnes Varda the image of two trapeze artists (a sym­bol of a pos­sible har­mony between two people), put­ting it on top of two pieces of audio: a girl’s voice recit­ing the Talmud and a girl’s voice recit­ing the Qu’ran. “Ideas sep­ar­ate us, dreams bring us closer.””
  Gold and power have led to war and viol­ence for thou­sands of years. Godard laments this and the way that ideo­lo­gies sep­ar­ate people and cause great suf­fer­ing (like that seen in Palestine/Israel or Sarajevo or Africa (“on a lais­sé tombé l’Afrique”) – see Notre Musique for more on that).

• Kino Slang says:

  June 7, 2011 at 1:02 pm

  Lemire’s rejec­tion was in a way more inter­est­ing than some of the embraces (“it’s these shots of noth­ing, of, like, overfed people on a cruise ship.”)
  When the very act of try­ing to talk about a shot in FS, or ques­tion­ing a pre­ju­dice built-in to a review, or someone post­ing the entire film with more thor­ough sub­titles allow­ing the view­er to judge for them­selves is cen­sori­ously called an act of “trolling”, then we’re at an impasse where responses are point­less. You might as well go all the way Glenn: you have my per­mis­sion to delete my comments.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  June 7, 2011 at 1:12 pm

  @ Ted: OK, now I see how this works: I say “Goldberg,” you say “Agnes Varda.”
  Also: ” why not just admit that to read­ers and admit yours and their pos­sible inca­pa­city to know what the film is about if view­ing it the way it is being released?” Well, I figured that once the whole sub­title thing was explained, it would be impli­citly under­stood that some of the film’s con­tent would be poten­tially less than entirely access­ible. You get that, right? I mean, make up your mind, Ted; either myself and the MSN read­er­ship are total idi­ots, or they’re not. Also, why not…oh nev­er mind. I’m not gonna give you the satisfaction.
  @ KinoSlang: Aw, this is just like that part in “North by Northwest” where Cary Grant says “You have no feel­ings to hurt!” Really, that’s about the most hil­ari­ous passive-aggressive call for a pity party I’ve ever read. You must be quite a laugh in “real” life.
  You have MY per­mis­sion to do any num­ber of things. But I’m not delet­ing your com­ments, sorry.

• edo says:

  June 7, 2011 at 2:35 pm

  So I just skimmed (and also word-searched for “jew”, “semit­ism”, “semite”, “anti”, “hebrew”) all the art­icles that Rotten Tomatoes links to. There are two that men­tion the anti-semitism issue A.O. Scott and Glenn, and neither Glenn nor Scott men­tion it without some con­sid­er­a­tion and qualification.
  Most of those crit­ics who did­n’t like the film did­n’t like it on the basis that they felt it was impen­et­rable and off-putting, and even when crit­ics who liked the film expressed their qualms they ten­ded to do so for the same reasons.
  Where is this mass of irate American crit­ics of which you speak, ted?

• edo says:

  June 7, 2011 at 2:37 pm

  Oh, I should that Glenn and Scott are also the only crit­ics that quote the Hollywood-founded-by-Jews bit and, once again, neither of them present it without ques­tion­ing the attempt to make snap judg­ments about it.

• edo says:

  June 7, 2011 at 3:09 pm

  “When the very act of try­ing to talk about a shot in FS, or ques­tion­ing a pre­ju­dice built-in to a review, or someone post­ing the entire film with more thor­ough sub­titles allow­ing the view­er to judge for them­selves is cen­sori­ously called an act of “trolling”, then we’re at an impasse where responses are point­less. You might as well go all the way Glenn: you have my per­mis­sion to delete my comments.”
  Andy, it’s your com­bat­ive and defens­ive tone, and the fact that you basic­ally do the same to Glenn as you accuse Glenn of doing to Godard. You write that Glenn’s review is “insens­it­ive and idi­ot­ic” for not men­tion­ing a sequence you feel mer­its dis­cus­sion, and go on to impute inten­tion­al­ity to this fail­ure – which basic­ally means you’re say­ing Glenn’s review is disin­genu­ous on top of everything else. So which is it? Disingenuous or just plain stu­pid? I think you have to choose here.
  Did you ever stop think that maybe Glenn just did­n’t notice the moment of cor­res­pond­ence between sound and imagery that you go on to dis­cuss? Or maybe that Glenn sees that moment, or, for that mat­ter, the whole film dif­fer­ently? And, moreover, that this does­n’t have to mean Glenn is pre­ju­diced? That it could just as well sig­nal a mere dif­fer­ence of opin­ion about the film?
  You just don’t seem to want to allow this pos­sib­il­ity, and that’s what makes it so dif­fi­cult to dis­cuss this mat­ter with you.

• edo says:

  June 7, 2011 at 3:23 pm

  Correction: reread­ing Glenn’s piece I find he does­n’t even bring up the Hollywood-founded-by-Jews bit… so it’s JUST A.O. Scott.

• ted says:

  June 7, 2011 at 3:41 pm

  Edo, look at Brody’s review here: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2011/06/film-socialisme-humanism-and-paranoia.html
  Here’s Glenn Kenny: “The nar­rat­or, such as he is, informs us that his name is “Goldberg” and that this trans­lates into “Gold moun­tain.” Yeah, Jean-Luc, we get it. There’s anoth­er bit later on with a reflec­tion that Hollywood was “star­ted by Jews,” but this point, too, drifts off, as the focus turns more ostens­ibly anti-Zionist than anti-Semitic (I do believe there is a dif­fer­ence, and also, it should go without say­ing, that these are not two stances that work well togeth­er), but it does­n’t mat­ter because we’re all kind of irrit­ated now anyway.”
  Here’s Keith Uhlich in Time Out New York: “And save for some muddled swipes at Zionism—a miserly black hat called Goldberg has his name trans­lated to “Gold Mountain” (haw, haw)—he’s fully on his game.”
  Here’s Leo Goldsmith at Reverse Shot: “For example, one aside about a Jew”-ish” busi­ness­man named Goldberg (or “gold moun­tain”) stands out for some crit­ics as a pos­sible anti-Semitic dig against Hollywood Jews.”
  In regards to someone sub­titling the film, would someone like Godard who has said, “un auteur n’a aucun droit. Je n’ai aucun droit” (“an author has no rights. I have no rights.”) care if someone did that?

• edo says:

  June 7, 2011 at 3:52 pm

  I’m not dis­put­ing that crit­ics dis­cuss it. I’m dis­put­ing that American crit­ics are some­how obsess­ive over it. Five crit­ics does not a social psy­cho­lo­gic­al phe­nomen­on make, espe­cially when Keith men­tions it as a swipe against Zionism, not Jews in gen­er­al; when Goldsmith cites it as a view of “some crit­ics”, imply­ing that he does not share this view, or at least does not want to com­mit to it.
  Glenn, A.O. Scott, and Brody are the only ones to deal with the issue as such, and I really can­’t bring myself to see the way that the three engage with the ques­tion as being obsess­ive, pre­ju­diced, or disingenuous…

• Gabe Klinger says:

  June 7, 2011 at 4:19 pm

  “But I don’t like your tone much, so I’d rather not both­er with you at all.”
  Ha! You’re hil­ari­ous, Glenn. Fill up the place with your con­des­cend­ing bull­shit, and then weasel out of a real dis­cus­sion by call­ing someone out on the same.
  I do believe that you got served rather elo­quently by Mr. Rector. I did­n’t think someone could walk them­selves into a corner with the “Godard is not cap­able of a kum­baya moment” argu­ment, and then lo and behold… Andy countered some pretty per­suas­ive stuff, I have to admit, and YOU have to admit, Glenn. But… you seem incap­able of that.
  Ted and Andy have made a point, backed with con­sist­ent and sub­stan­tial evid­ence from the film itself, on how Glenn’s inter­pret­a­tion – that Godard is some­how “dar­ing” us to think he is an anti-Semite – is just.… some­what mis­guided. The point is not to pro­duce irrit­a­tion, or to sug­gest issues and then back out of them: no, Godard is a big boy, he can assert, and make a point. He’s not an mor­on pro­vocateur like Lars von Trier (now *that* was an empty pro­voca­tion)… Another thing would be for Glenn to say Godard attempts to make the point, and botches it (Michael Sicinski sug­ges­ted this is in a very thought­ful review). But Glenn seems to argue that Godard’s point is the actu­al dare, the pro­voca­tion (I mean, isn’t it clear that there is no evid­ence of anti-Semitism when everything in the film is put into con­text, ren­der­ing the idea of such a “dare” com­pletely null?).
  This idea of pro­voca­tion in Godard com­pletely mis­con­strues the inten­tion and dis­counts the film­maker­’s intel­li­gence (see Ted’s point about Africa); it’s almost as if Glenn were default­ing on a moot point – or a non-issue, as Ted said – for lack of any­thing else to say. Sorry, but this idea of Godard’s cinema as a dare is not inter­est­ing cri­ti­cism, Glenn. It implies that Godard does­n’t have a polit­ic­al bone in his body, does­n’t care about Israel-Palestine (except coldly from a dis­tance), and that he is simply pulling stuff out of his arse. (Andy’s obser­va­tions on the acrobats, Joan Baez song, and the Hebrew-Arabic super­im­pos­i­tion, on the oth­er hand, are rather inter­est­ing and con­trib­ute to a defense of Godard as a human­ist filmmaker.)
  I can see why Ted and Andy might be weary of hear­ing argu­ments like the one Glenn makes in his review. That at least explains (although does­n’t jus­ti­fy) the tone of con­des­cen­sion. NOW: Why you would want to punch them or tell them to f*ck off, Glenn, for scru­tin­iz­ing your thought pro­cess, or for chal­len­ging you in a man­ner sim­il­ar to the way you con­tinu­ally chal­lenge oth­ers, is com­pletely bey­ond my comprehension.

• Victor Morton says:

  June 7, 2011 at 4:21 pm

  Hey …
  Anyone notice that one of the crit­ics named is “Goldsmith,” which means … uh, gold­smith, but is Jewish. And that anoth­er of the crit­ics is named is “Uhlich,” a vari­ant of a German name mean­ing “power­ful and wealthy.” The Jew and the German, now locked in their joint desire to oppress St. Jean-Luc.
  And that all this drag­ging the name of St. Jean-Luc through the mud is the fault of “Brody,” a man whose name is the Gaelic for “muddy ditch.” And the ven­ue is the site of a man named Kenny, anoth­er Irish name, mean­ing “born of fire” like the fire that does the gold smith’s work in run­ning inter­fer­ence for the Ulrichkeit.
  #doesthat­make­meas­er­i­ous­deep­thinker
  #itreallyisnotdumberthantheGodardactuallycited

• Glenn Kenny says:

  June 7, 2011 at 4:41 pm

  Gee, Gabe, does this mean we’re not going to try to have cof­fee the next time you’re in town?
  You don’t like my con­des­cend­ing bull­shit, then don’t read my blog. I know that’s the weasel’s way out, but that’s the way it is. If all it is is bull­shit, then why are you and Rector and Ted and the rest of the very small squad­ron of the Godard police try­ing to turn my head around, or is it just Edo’s soul they’re try­ing to save? I won’t con­des­cend to cri­ti­cize your use “arse;” and as to why I would deign to express my irrit­a­tion with their tone, it’s because I was irrit­ated by their tone, first off, and yes, it’s because they’re tak­ing issue with me for describ­ing my exper­i­ence of the film in its release ver­sion as opposed to deci­pher­ing the hiero­glyph­ics that would allow me to dis­cov­er that not only does Godard REALLY LOVE the Jews, but that he also believes in Santa Claus. And the whole “Christy Lemire is more interesting/Godard does­n’t need admirers like YOU” sub­theme is not adoles­cent in the least. I’m not going to both­er to stick up for the heavy lift­ing I’ve done on more than one occa­sion with respect to Godard’s work; long­time read­ers of the blog know and remem­ber it. What I’m really inter­ested in know­ing Gabe, is just what Ted, and Rector, and now you want from me? To turn around and say, “I was wrong; Godard and anti-semitism IS a non-issue; his every pro­nounce­ment is pure and prin­cipled and true?” I don’t think that’s it. But indulge me; I’m curious.

• ted says:

  June 7, 2011 at 5:20 pm

  Well, to go back to my ori­gin­al ques­tion: “I’m also curi­ous Glenn why you fol­lowed suit with all the oth­er New York crit­ics in not dis­cuss­ing the lines to which the line “Yes…but the strange thing is that Hollywood was inven­ted by Jews,” is a response to.”
  I wanted to know why you felt that that should be left out, why you don’t feel that line needs con­tex­tu­al­iz­a­tion. Why you thought it should simply be dis­missed as unfocused anti-Zionism.
  I’m not ques­tion­ing your lik­ing of the film, I’m won­der­ing why you felt that anti-Semitism should be brought up in a review of this film. I went ahead and con­cluded that the non-subtitling of the film plus you not look­ing up real sub­titles res­ul­ted in a mis­un­der­stand­ing on your part. Since “Godard expert” Richard Brody played up the same point, it prob­ably seemed like it had some legit­im­acy. I may have over-generalized when I said “the American crit­ics” or “all the New York crit­ics” have expounded this claim, but I think enough people have done so to make it a talk­ing point and I feel that it diverts atten­tion away from things that are actu­al at stake in the film.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  June 7, 2011 at 5:35 pm

  Okay, Ted. Since you’ve gone to the trouble to frame your ques­tion in a dif­fer­ent way than it was first for­mu­lated, let me try and give it an answer:What I’m dis­cuss­ing in my review, which was based on notes I took and a blog post I wrote up when I saw it at the New York Film Festival, is my imme­di­ate response to the pic­ture and to cer­tain aspects of it. The issue or “non-issue” of Godard’s ostens­ible anti-semitism is not some­thing that formed in a vacu­um. There’s the Brasillach mater­i­al in “Eloge,” for instance, and regard­less of how you think it actu­ally sig­ni­fies, I would argue that, yes, there’s at the very least an ele­ment of pro­voca­tion to it. There’s also the relent­less ham­mer­ing of Spielberg in that same film. Yes, I know that one need­n’t be an anti-semite to hate Spielberg, but in the con­text of what’s going on in that film, cer­tain infer­ences can be made. I actu­ally don’t believe that the line I cited really bene­fits from the con­tex­tu­al­iz­a­tion you’re insist­ing it needs. Neil Gabler’s book and thes­is not­with­stand­ing, the notion that the Jews “inven­ted” Hollywood is argu­able at best and very, very murky at worst (it begs the ques­tion of what we mean when we say “Hollywood” and where the likes of non-Jews such as Griffith and DeMille and Edison fit into that formulation).
  I don’t think we’re ever going to agree here; I do believe there are at the very least some unpleas­ant biases under­ly­ing some of Godard’s think­ing; you seem to be arguing that everything he’s put­ting out there just makes good com­mon sense. I’m sorry if the tone of my responses to you seemed out of bal­ance to the tone you took. I don’t want to indulge in spe­cial plead­ing for my reviews, but this was a piece for a mass-market web­site, which I ima­gine you might argue makes it all the more egre­gious; that I’m selling Godard as an anti-Semite to a mass audi­ence. That was not my inten­tion, and I don’t think the unpleas­ant things in Godard’s work inval­id­ate it, or mean he ought to be shunned. Quite the oppos­ite. I believe he’s as import­ant and vital as Griffith and Welles, and have always thought that.

• Gabe Klinger says:

  June 7, 2011 at 6:12 pm

  Sorry, Glenn – it’s cer­tainly not per­son­al. It’s just been an uphill battle with Godard on this issue and I sup­pose we – the Godard police, as you have dubbed us (affec­tion­ately, no doubt) – are a bit tired of it. To bor­row a word that Noam Chomsky likes to use a lot, I would like for it to be *uncon­tro­ver­sially* known that Godard is not an anti-Semite (or pre­tend­ing to be one, or dar­ing to be one, whichever it is). But, hey, Godard is not mak­ing the argu­ment easi­er for us, and he does­n’t have a crafty P.R. agent to run his mus­ings by… That’s the battle.
  Anyway, cer­tainly you don’t have to remind me about the heavy-lifting you have done for Godard. Your PIERROT LE FOU break­down is amaz­ing, to cite one example… So no dis­respect. I wish all parties had entered into this thread dif­fer­ently. More con­struct­ive argu­ments await.
  As I men­tioned to you privately, I am spill­ing my guts on FILM SOCIALISME in the form of a 3000 word review for a cer­tain British magazine. I wel­come your (and oth­ers’) scru­tiny when that’s in news­stands this summer.

• David Ehrenstein says:

  June 7, 2011 at 7:26 pm

  Gleen, as far as I’m con­cerned you don’t have to so much as men­tion Jean-Luc Godard ever again. It’s far too tax­ing for you dear.

• Kino Slang says:

  June 8, 2011 at 3:32 am

  Look at the little cornered dog slug his tail between his legs and finally address his own bad faith (edo: disin­genu­ous) dis­tor­tions! Is this how I’m sup­posed to write in Kenny’s Komment Korner? All Godard aside, fuck you for that last com­ment “@” me. Gabe: you plan to have future cof­fees with this slob?

• Frank says:

  June 8, 2011 at 9:21 am

  I think we’re all miss­ing the most amus­ing part of this unusu­ally harsh bit of quar­rel­ing: Kino’s con­fla­tion of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. If you’re going to use an obnox­ious asser­tion of cul­tur­al cap­it­al in ser­vice of a lar­ger point, you’d bet­ter at least get your ref­er­ences straight. Other than that, I don’t really have a dog in this fight because I haven’t seen the film. Fun dis­cus­sion though!

• Kino Slang says:

  June 9, 2011 at 2:30 am

  Interesting stuff on “Goldberg” (et al, FILM SOCIALISME Annotated): http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/film-socialisme-annotated-20110607 -
  Nothing about the tone of voice in which name is pro­nounced though.
  Thanks Frank, and sorry. It is amus­ing, but not an erreur tragique.