Movie #51: Released in 1965, directed by Jean-Luc Godard, 110 minutes. New to me!

LetterBoxd Score: 3 stars

Back-to-back Godard! We were off to a bad start on this one when I learned it is not streaming anywhere. Not on the Criterion channel. Not on the mysterious BFI Filmplayer (which I got a free trial of last time to watch Contempt). Not even as an illicit video on YouTube. Not for purchase on AppleTV or Amazon. This is just not a movie that any streaming platform thinks it’s worth paying the rights for I guess! I ended up getting a Criterion collection DVD from the library. It had an essay by Richard Brody that did not much change my view of this.

I didn’t feel as unmoored on this one as I did on Contempt, but I continue to feel pretty ambivalently about Godard’s movies. But let’s start with what I liked.

It did make me bark out laughs relatively often, mostly via some unexpected absurdist flourish: the women at the party suddenly topless; a dead body with bloody scissors coming out of the neck, in the living room; paintings with dialogue over them; catching fish with a trident; driving into the ocean. The ending is the most striking example of this, both for how over-the-top Ferdinand’s gesture is and for the punch line of deciding this is dumb when it’s too late.

We’re also pretty clearly doing something new in the movies here as well. We’re throwing out the pretense of constructing a reality that exists outside the filmstock full of imagined people whose world we mentally inhabit, and embracing the medium as the point, constantly being reminded this is a film we’re watching. And as visual mood board, it’s impressive; those bold colors.

And lastly, the movie is nominally about big ideas: the fantasy of simply opting out of a civilization that is not to your taste, who people really are, etc.

I think my trouble is that I just don’t share many of Godard’s interests. He’s a film critic; he apparently has a deep understanding of how film conventionally works. And I guess he’s bored by that convention. And I’m not. I guess I think of great movies as ultimately presenting themselves as a window onto an imagined reality that we become involved in. I want a movie to work on that level, and then if there are meta questions involved, that’s like the icing on the cake. But, for me at least, this is all icing.

Lastly – I feel like there is some kind of double-standard going on here where a movie by Godard gets to be elevated by the importance of the ideas it is referencing (see the above); but it doesn’t actually have to do the work of making me believe the characters are wrapped up in those ideas. This is a little unfair; I can buy that Belmondo and Karina have chemistry (the “something real” we imagine we are getting a window onto) which elevates their interpersonal stuff. But the fact that Belmondo wants to be an artist more than anything? I guess? But given the whole thing’s anarchic spirit, it sort of feels like an idea imposed on him from without. Or maybe I just don’t know the archetypes it’s referencing, as an Iowan living in 2025.

Why would someone think it’s one of the ten greatest movies ever made?

I guess see my thoughts on La Meprís, but up the ante.

Next: Black Girl