Film Socialism (PG.)
Directed by Jean Luc Godard.
Starring Catherine Tanvier, Christine Sinniger, Jean-marc Stehle, Agatha Couture, Mathias Domahidy. In foreign with limited subtitles.
Godard occupies a position very similar to Woody Allen: you prefer his early funny films yet, no matter how many times he’s bored you comatose, you still feel inclined to give Jean-Luc one last chance. And there’s always somebody on hand to proclaim his latest film as a return to form.
This one is another formless, shapeless, pointless essay which says nothing about anything but does it enigmatically. The first part is set on a Mediterranean cruise where ordinary people, shot casually on cheap handheld cameras, try to have a bit of fun while important people, in beautifully shot and carefully composed images, talk weightily about serious things like Hitler and Palestine.
It is a tradition in Godard, dating all the way back to A Bout De Soufflé, that the middle part will be the dull talky bit and in Socialism this takes place in a garage. Then at the end, there's a bombardment of images and text. It's a kitchen sink job – you get snippets of Derrida, Satre, Heidegger, Beethoven, Patti Smith, Arvo Part, Eisenstein, John Ford. It's the world and his wife and her thesis on contextual deconstruction.
Any hope of understanding is hampered by the minimalist subtitling which reduces the various languages spoken on-screen to a few basic words, usually no more than three. So instead of translation, you get a series of avant-garde Christmas crackers such as "money inverted," "Back to Zero" or "Arabs don'tget [sic] royalties." Of all the film's provocations, this is both the boldest and the most infuriating. It's as if we the little people are not deemed worthy of the master's thoughts; it's a fine turn of events when even a Godard film is dumbing down its content.
Of course, all this challenges your tired old preconception of filmmaking and though my tired old preconception could have done with a quick kicking they were quickly able to rebuff its weak challenge and comfortably hold their own.
I of course readily admit that I have absolutely no idea what the film was about so I criticise from a position of ignorance, but it is not the incomprehension that infuriates, it that the film provokes no interest in its mystery. The way the dialogue throws out lofty concerns is like following a man through the British library, picking out a book, reading out an eye-catching line and then discarding the book before moving on to the next. The film makes the noise of being engaged and relevant but this is just a toilet flush to cover the sounds of a more self-indulgent pursuit.
No story, no concern for characterisation, restless editing and lacking anything in the way of humanity: this is just Transformers for gullible intellectuals.
Directed by Jean Luc Godard.
Starring Catherine Tanvier, Christine Sinniger, Jean-marc Stehle, Agatha Couture, Mathias Domahidy. In foreign with limited subtitles.
Godard occupies a position very similar to Woody Allen: you prefer his early funny films yet, no matter how many times he’s bored you comatose, you still feel inclined to give Jean-Luc one last chance. And there’s always somebody on hand to proclaim his latest film as a return to form.
This one is another formless, shapeless, pointless essay which says nothing about anything but does it enigmatically. The first part is set on a Mediterranean cruise where ordinary people, shot casually on cheap handheld cameras, try to have a bit of fun while important people, in beautifully shot and carefully composed images, talk weightily about serious things like Hitler and Palestine.
It is a tradition in Godard, dating all the way back to A Bout De Soufflé, that the middle part will be the dull talky bit and in Socialism this takes place in a garage. Then at the end, there's a bombardment of images and text. It's a kitchen sink job – you get snippets of Derrida, Satre, Heidegger, Beethoven, Patti Smith, Arvo Part, Eisenstein, John Ford. It's the world and his wife and her thesis on contextual deconstruction.
Any hope of understanding is hampered by the minimalist subtitling which reduces the various languages spoken on-screen to a few basic words, usually no more than three. So instead of translation, you get a series of avant-garde Christmas crackers such as "money inverted," "Back to Zero" or "Arabs don'tget [sic] royalties." Of all the film's provocations, this is both the boldest and the most infuriating. It's as if we the little people are not deemed worthy of the master's thoughts; it's a fine turn of events when even a Godard film is dumbing down its content.
Of course, all this challenges your tired old preconception of filmmaking and though my tired old preconception could have done with a quick kicking they were quickly able to rebuff its weak challenge and comfortably hold their own.
I of course readily admit that I have absolutely no idea what the film was about so I criticise from a position of ignorance, but it is not the incomprehension that infuriates, it that the film provokes no interest in its mystery. The way the dialogue throws out lofty concerns is like following a man through the British library, picking out a book, reading out an eye-catching line and then discarding the book before moving on to the next. The film makes the noise of being engaged and relevant but this is just a toilet flush to cover the sounds of a more self-indulgent pursuit.
No story, no concern for characterisation, restless editing and lacking anything in the way of humanity: this is just Transformers for gullible intellectuals.
