Written by Ren Jender.
When I told people I was going to see Goodbye To Language-–the latest film (in 3-D) from 84-year-old, legendary writer-director Jean-Luc Godard (it won him the Jury Prize at Cannes as well the US National Society of Film Critics award for Best Film)–the first question they asked me was, “What’s it about?” I had to confess that most of his films I’ve seen I remember well, but still really couldn’t say what they’re “about”. Godard’s films, except for his first, Breathless, a crime drama, don’t have clear cut plots but are instead a collection of original ideas and scenarios. All of the subsequent Godard films I’ve watched: Weekend, Masculine Feminine, Alphaville, and Contempt from the ’60s (which I saw in the ’80s and ’90s) and Passion from the ’80s (which I also saw in the ’90s) contain indelible images and sequences I think of often, even now, decades later.
Although Godard has continued to make films throughout his life (a glance at his IMDb page shows that he has directed an average of about two films a year since his first feature 55 years ago) many of them have received mixed notices, have failed to get real distribution in the US or both. In the ’60s, ’70s, and early ’80s, subtitled “art” films were much more a part of cultural currency. Instead of treatises on Mad Men, US critics then wrote about the latest from Bergman, Truffaut, Buñuel–or Agnès Varda. But in more recent decades the assumption from film distributors has been that hardly anyone wants to read subtitles–even though lots of us like to read–and the best foreign language films continue to be more interesting than their American counterparts as well as more likely to focus on women and queer characters. Subtitled films’ reputation as “uncommercial” became a self-fulfilling prophecy at theaters and in the home video market.
Godard himself seems aware of this turn of events when toward the beginning of Goodbye To Language he poses the question: what happens to art that becomes “outdated”? He shows two people looking at used paperbacks, discussing Solzhenitsyn, a Soviet dissident whose novels were on American bestseller lists and won awards in the ’60s and ’70s, who has since been eclipsed by the likes of Jonathan Franzen. No matter how much I hate Franzen, I’m not nostalgic for bygone days (no woman or queer person can afford to be) and Godard doesn’t seem to be either. Language’s later scenes, where he shows Mary Shelley, may be his only cinematic foray (out of his 118 stints as director) into the past–and Shelley’s scenes are just a small part of this compact (70 minute) feature.
I never believed the big film executives who, just six years ago, seemed to have unshakeable faith that 3-D technology would save blockbuster films from piracy and audience indifference. It didn’t, the same way 3-D in the 1950s didn’t save big films from losing a lot of their audience to television. But Goodbye To Language is the third 3-D art film made by a master I’ve seen (the others are Werner Herzog’s exploration of prehistoric cave paintings, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, and Wim Wenders’ magnificent tribute to the work of modern dance choreographer Pina Bausch in Pina). The jury’s still out on whether this technology will “save” the art film, but great directors are doing creative and unexpected things with it.
I haven’t sat through a film in which 3-D knives and guns and spurts of blood seem to invade the audience and I probably never will. But at one point during Goodbye To Language I wondered why a chair was suddenly blocking the screen in the theater–I was trying to look around it–until I realized the chair was part of the film, much like the empty onscreen red theater seats of Pina dissolved into the real seats in front of the screen.
In Language Godard seems to be reflecting life as most of us, who rarely if ever indulge in gun or knife play, know it. We see simple moments: a hand grasping a railing or a boat moving through the water and they overlap our own memories, more real and more evocative to us than gore and weapons. I roused myself from nodding off several times (something I hadn’t had to do during previous Godard films) and my subconscious thoughts began to blend with the film, the way in those first few seconds of waking in bed one believes one’s dreams actually happened.
Five days before, I watched a preview screening of a good, funny, feminist action-adventure film (Spy starring Melissa McCarthy, which I’ll review in June, when it’s released), and I was very aware of the difference between the two viewing experiences. As much as I enjoyed Spy, it, like other films of its genre, was too cluttered and noisy to give me the time or space for any thoughts of my own.
Godard plays with our expectations. He seems to be saying, “You want action? I’ll give you action!” We hear a gunshot, dramatic music (his use of music here reminds me a little of how music was used in Under The Skin) and some yelling. We see some blood as well as nudity and sex. He, along with his expert cinematographer, Fabrice Aragno, recognize some of the foibles of 3-D technology, like the airplane in the distant sky in Forgotten Dreams that through 3-D glasses seemed like an insect in front of our faces and corrects them–and overcorrects for faded color (especially noticeable in Herzog’s film). In some of Language’s scenes they gradually dial up the brightness and saturation to make the sky, grass and leaves into abstractions.
A woman (played by Zoé Bruneau) is at the center of a number of the scenes. Women are the focus in many of Godard’s other films and as in those films we see Bruneau’s nude body from every angle–except perhaps the soles of her feet. We see her naked in mundane situations, the way one sees the nude body of a romantic partner. Meanwhile, her naked male partner usually has his crotch out of camera range or in “tasteful” shadow. The woman, “Ivitch,” is often the one talking, but she’s not the protagonist, any more than the dog (Godard’s own dog, Roxie) at the center of many other scenes is.
Because of middling reviews I avoided other recent Godard releases–when a critic who is easier on films than I am describes a movie as “frustrating” I know to stay away. Other critics complained of the “sour” outlook in those films, which seems absent in Language, perhaps in part because of the calming, clear-eyed presence of Roxie in front of the camera. Whenever people talk about or share photos of their dogs, cats, and babies, they risk being bores (I am also a bore when I talk about my cat–she’s so cute and her fur is so soft!), but they are also trying to show us their best selves, the ones that have tender feelings for beings smaller and more vulnerable than they are, beings who also rely on them for their survival. Godard doesn’t ridicule us–or himself–for our obsession with animals, but shows us why we love them. If Roxie trusts Godard, we feel like we should too.
[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mB5Grs_neA”]
Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing. besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender
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