Recommended reading

4 Comments

• edo says:

  January 8, 2012 at 1:48 pm

  “But from an archi­tec­tur­al stand­point, Godard’s films are phantom struc­tures with miss­ing door­ways and unfin­ished walls, moss-covered stair­ways and half-assembled plumb­ing. To a great extent, this is delib­er­ate, of course. In his later films, Godard takes strands of nar­rat­ive and builds over and under them, extends or atom­izes cer­tain motifs to the point where they become unre­cog­niz­able as ele­ments of one single nar­rat­ive.” – razor sharp cri­ti­cism right there.

  Reply
• Daniel says:

  January 8, 2012 at 9:51 pm

  I’ll second that. This is really great stuff, and a nice remind­er of the free­dom that the inter­net offers. With unlim­ited space, why aren’t more sites offer­ing con­ver­sa­tions like this? Also nice to hear from Kent again, as he’s seemed largely absent from the vari­ous sites he used to post at. Thanks for this heads up Glenn.

  Reply
• James Keepnews says:

  January 9, 2012 at 11:57 am

  Such a pleas­ure to read such an informed dis­cus­sion between such thought­ful writers on film – thanks indeed, Glenn. The “phantom struc­tures with miss­ing door­ways and unfin­ished walls” obser­va­tion struck me as well, edo. I’m not at all sure how much I agree with it: G. does cer­tainly make a great show of shat­ter­ing con­ven­tion­al nar­rat­ive approaches/expectations, an approach that, for all its evid­ent gaps/jumps/elisions/you-name-it, seem far too con­sidered, to say noth­ing of (to con­tin­ue Kent’s meta­phor) sharp and real, to feel like res­ult­ing from a “phantom” form. But it def­in­itely con­veys – quite beau­ti­fully – the exper­i­ence of watch­ing Godard, where the ulti­mate “com­ple­tion” of the work must come from a rig­or­ously engaged view­er will­ing to do the heavy lift­ing of recon­cil­ing those apor­ia into some­thing resem­bling a con­sist­ent whole.
  Oh, for a uni­verse where these gen­tle­men could have a reg­u­lar show on the teevee and be the Siskel & Ebert for the 21^st…

  Reply
• Zach says:

  January 9, 2012 at 3:37 pm

  A hearty thanks for this link. It really is a rare treat – there’s quite a bit of good film writ­ing out there on the inter­webs, but stuff like this is a cut above, and a rare treat. It’s too bad, as Daniel says, that Kent has­n’t been writ­ing and com­ment­ing as act­ively, so this felt over­due, if any­thing. It’s such a great concept – why can­’t there be more stuff like this? Maybe, Glenn, you could get some­thing like this going on at least a semi-regular basis? Eh?

  Reply