2 or 3 things

Last night I rewatched 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her. I hadn't remembered much about it except some of the city images. For whatever reason, I had expected to connect with it much more strongly this time around -- being immersed in later-Godard and reading about his career, the film seemed representative of his shift into critical political filmmaking, along the lines of La Chinoise. Having read about the film before going into it -- talk of coffee cups and capitalist alienation -- I was prepared for some serious and awesome JLG.

How strange Godard's early films appear to me now! JLG's relentless inquiries into the nature of language, of society -- in particular capitalism, the media, and Vietnam -- and of cinema are gateways into reconciling the human spirit. JLG is not searching for answers to the questions he raises, he is searching for the emotions necessary to deal with those answers. He already knows the answers; he has yet to learn to accept them.

It is in his later work that he discovers the necessary emotions. Coming back to 2 or 3 Things after exploring his 80s work, even films as supposedly minor as Detective and Keep Your Right Up, I find that JLG's concerns in 2 or 3 Things are... trivial? consumed? His later work consumes his early work. Everything he muses about in 2 or 3 Things is no longer important. He has answered his questions. He has moved on. He has moved me on.

This I did not expect; I am falling in love with his later work, and his early work is slowly disappearing in its shadow. 2 or 3 Things left as little impact on me this viewing as it did the first. The first time I did not understand it; this time I understand it all too well.

A few more early rewatches to come. I am looking forward to them. Whatever I say, 2 or 3 Things is still a great viewing, and has given me some perspective, both on JLG and myself. I will try to limit my personal ramblings when I get to those other rewatches.



And I am now inspired to make a film about the sky.

[JLG Carnival]

je vous salue, sarajevo

Godard of the day. I think this is his strongest narration.

In a sense, fear is the daughter of God, redeemed on Good Friday night. She's not beautiful, mocked, cursed and disowned by all. But don't get it wrong, she watches over all mortal agony, she intercedes for mankind.

For there's a rule and an exception. Culture is the rule and art is the exception.

Everybody speaks the rule: cigarette, computer, T-shirt, TV, tourism, war.

Nobody speaks the exception. It isn't spoken. It's written: Flaubert, Dostoevsky. It's composed: Gershwin, Mozart. It's painted: Cezanne, Vermeer. It's filmed: Antonioni, Vigo. Or it's lived, and then it's the art of living: Srebrenica, Mostar, Sarajevo.

The rule is to want the death of the exception. So the rule for Cultural Europe is to organize the death of the art of living, which still flourishes.

When it's time to close the book, I'll have no regrets. I have seen so many people live so badly, and so many die so well.

Sarajevo.
JLG continues his theme of art as revolution. The rule will always be there to destroy the exception.

godard and the final image

Godard is this month's MoM. I have lots planned. I come back to him time and again, and however large a portion I have seen of his filmography, the man's work is still a mystery to me, nearly impenetrable. As it should be. If I keep coming back to him, it is because I find that some new aesthetic/political/philosophical idea to me is one thoroughly explored by Godard. These are ideas that can only be approximated by poetry. An intellectual cinema. An inadequate viewer.

I'll be posting stuff here on my viewings and musings. I promise, they won't be worthwhile, but they are my contribution to the Godard mania that is about to take place.

I begin with thoughts on my viewing today -- Godard's part of Ten Minutes Older, "Dans le noir de temps." It's here on YouTube.

I don't have much to say in interpretation, which is evidence of how little I understand of what he is actually doing. One of Godard's primary concerns is in deconstructing cultural norms (myths) -- his video essays of the past 20 years, of which this is one, have been consistent in their method of taking images of culture and radically repositioning their contexts. The method is violent, as well as many of its images (how can one deconstruct society without referring to death?). Godard is the voice so many thinkers wish to be. Society is a myth, and Godard is out to expose it.

If there is anything I can add, it is a quotation that has struck me recently. From the ancient Greeks -- it is put (constructed) in the mouth of Prometheus, and goes: "I hate the gods, who do not recognize human consciousness as the highest divinity." What is art -- what is beauty -- but the awe of human consciousness, human spirit? Nothing is more profound than our existence. In his film, Godard takes aspects of human spirit -- courage, fear, etc. -- and posits their end through his material (a lot of it taken from his own past work). The end of human consciousness; the end of divinity. It is painfully poetic. The final image is the end of the human spirit.