Godard, Mon Amour, the new movie by Oscar winning
writer/director Michel Hazanavicius (The
Artist [2011]), is about a remarkable period in the life of a remarkable
man – Jean-Luc Godard.
You don’t have to be a cineaste to be interested in a film about a
great film director, just as you don’t need to be an art enthusiast to enjoy
movies about famous painters (such as the Oscar winning Pollack [2000]) or last year’s Loving
Vincent); and you don’t have to know much about classical music to
appreciate bio-pics about talented composers like Beethoven (1994’s Immortal Beloved) or Mozart (1984’s Amadeus). Jean-Luc Godard, of course, is the fabled auteur-director who came
to prominence as one of the leading lights of the French New Wave with Breathless, his groundbreaking (still
fabulous) first feature film in 1960. This
was followed by films like Contempt
(1963), Alphaville (1965), Masculin, féminin (1966), and Weekend (1967). Many of these movies
were critical of bourgeois values and politics, but by the late 1960s, Godard
became really radicalized and everything changed.
1968, when much of Godard, Mon Amour is set, was a year
of worldwide cultural and political tumult, not least in France. The Vietnam war
was raging out of control (the Tet offensive began in January); citing the war,
Lyndon Johnson declined to run for re-election; Martin Luther King was assassinated,
followed by rioting in more than 100 cities; Bobby Kennedy was assassinated; the
tempestuous Democratic convention in Chicago turned into a police riot; the
Black Panther party was formed in Oakland, CA; and “the silent majority” elected
Richard Nixonas the 37th U.S. president. In China, meanwhile, Mao’s Cultural
Revolution was in full swing, with Red Guards running amok; the guerilla war
known as The Troubles began in
Northern Ireland; and Czechoslovakia’s hopeful Prague Spring, which began in
January, was crushed when the USSR invaded the country in August. Not coincidentally, the Rolling Stones released
both Street Fighting Man and Sympathy for the Devil in 1968.
In May of that year, France exploded with revolutionary fervor. It
started with university students in Paris. Soon most universities were shut
down, and students took to the streets, manning barricades a lá Les Misérables, clashing with the police
and the army, and calling forth the sympathies of the union workers, left-leaning
musicians, celebrities, and many others. Well over a million people marched
through Paris in support of, among other things, free speech, higher wages, and
an end to class discrimination, and the ouster of the government of President
Charles De Gaulle and Prime Minister Georges Pompidou. Work stoppages spread
throughout the country and within a couple weeks two thirds of French workers
were on strike, paralyzing transportation, most industry, and for a while, the
government. At one point, de Gaulle reportedly left the country. The National
Assembly was dissolved, and new elections were called.
In 1968, Godard was a thirty-eight-year-old international celebrity
and national icon, seemingly on top of the world. But he felt dead inside - increasingly
dissatisfied with the status quo, politically, professionally and personally. He
left his wife (and frequent lead actress) Anna Karina, began a torrid love
affair with the budding 19-year-old actress Anne Wiazemsky, renounced his
previous movies as bourgeois trash, and set out to, as he put it, “make
political films politically”.
When informed of the plans to make a film about this period of his
life, Godard reportedly said that it was “a stupid, stupid idea.” But I don’t
know, it seems like a great story and an exciting setting for a movie, don’t
you think? It is just too bad Hazanavicius has delivered such a disappointing mish-mash.
Early in the film, Godard and Anne listen to a radio play,
during which life on a submarine is described as highly constrained, full of
contradictions and yet of great importance, concluding that “Such is life
aboard the Redoutable.” Godard somewhat charmingly adopts this line as a domestic
catchphrase encapsulating Anne’s relationship with him. Hazanavicius likes it
too, so much so that the French title of the movie is Le Redoutable. The US title
translates to “Godard, My Love,” which should be fitting, as the story is based
on Anne’s autobiographical “novel” Un An
Apres (One Year Later), about her experience with Godard over the two years
of their relationship and their involvement in the radical events of that time.
Yet one of my main complaints about the movie is how little it
concerns itself with Anne’s inner life. Her voice is ignored, or more
accurately lost, in translation. Instead, she’s just there - representing the
great man’s dream girl, always beautiful, mostly quiet, pulled along by his sense
of self-importance and his passionate embrace of the revolutionary fervor of
the moment, with little regard for her needs and desires – until she finally
decides to leave him. The story of a love affair disintegrating in the face of political
or professional commitment might have been interesting, if the primary narrator
were seen more as a person and less as an ideal or, in Hazanavicius’ rendition,
a sex object. In other words, what we get is largely a male-gaze throwback – featuring
the lovely face and youthful, frequently nude body of actress Stacy Martin (Nymphomaniac Vols I and II [2013]) as
Anne, with scant attention paid to Anne’s feelings or thoughts. We learn little
about her except that she’s very pretty and watchable.
Hazanavicius pays tribute to Godard’s filmmaking in this movie by incorporating
various stylistic features associated with his classic movies: voiceover
narration, chapter headings, extreme close-ups, handheld cameras, and so forth.
Yet Godard does not come off well in Hazanavicius’ hands. He is at a crucial point
in his life and career - hoping to become relevant again by reinventing himself
- or as he sees it, reinventing cinema itself. Godard talks about his thoughts (if not his
feelings) endlessly. He agonizes over the possibility that he may have to
choose between politics and making
movies. The politics comes across as just ridiculous (as perhaps it was) and
Godard as ridiculously out of touch, parroting the gospel according to Mao. In
her introductory voiceover, Anne had described her lover Godard as “indefinable,
wild, fascinating, funny, unpredictable, disconcerting, political, charming,
impertinent, young, free.” What we get is an unhappy, argumentative, unrelentingly
obnoxious, self-absorbed ideologue, who seems to enjoy insulting and driving
away many of his friends and colleagues, and Anne as well.
I must add that within the constraints imposed by Hazanavicius’
screenplay, French actor Louis Garrel (Bertolucci’s The Dreamers [2003]) does a wonderful, convincing job in the role
of Godard. He even looks like him.
Another plus is how Godard, Mon Amour gives us an
interesting, way-back-machine glimpse of the crazy days of quasi-revolutionary Paris
in May 1968. Also, the picture takes on a satirical, humorous tone for the most
part, which yields some funny bits. For example, in one running gag, Godard’s hallmark
dark-framed spectacles repeatedly get knocked off his face and broken seemingly
every time he gets involved in a political action. Another example: when Anne
is considering a role in another director’s picture, which would involve
multiple nude scenes, she and Jean-Luc have a lengthy discussion on the topic
of when movie nudity is integral and appropriate and when it’s simply
exploitive – the joke being that all the while both are walking around buck-naked
on our movie screen.
Still, Godard, Mon Amour is not funny enough to overcome its many weaknesses,
and indeed, the jokiness undercuts whatever serious purpose Hazanavicius may
have had in making this movie. For me, the takeaway is that this is a rather
shallow film that doesn’t take any of its topics seriously enough:
the politics, issues concerning the purposes of cinema, the parties’ romance or
Anne’s point of view. Such is life aboard the Redoutable.
107
minutes - In French, with some English – subtitled as
necessary
Grade: C+
In
limited release in select theaters. Opens April 27 in the SF Bay Area at
Landmark’s Embarcadero, Shattuck Theater, and Rafael Film Center.
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