Goodbye to Language (15.)
Directed by Jean Luc Godard.
Starring Heloise Godet, Kamel Ahbeli, Richard Chevallier and Jessica Erickson. French with Subtitles. 70 mins.
The Sixties may not actually be the greatest decade in human history, but it was the best one to make your mark in. Do something remarkable then and the aura of the achievement will be enough to keep you bobbing along for the rest of your life. If the present Rolling Stones line up were a Rolling Stones tribute band they'd probably be bottled off after three songs but because of what they did back then they are protected for life.
Godard opened up the sixties with A Bout Du Souffle and blazed a bright, idiosyncratic, frustrating trail through it. His talent for film making was so natural and instinctive that even his contrariness, his intellectualism, his pretentiousness, his pomposity and his overriding Frenchness couldn't quite stifle it, though it came mighty close.
That was all a long time ago and despite a little revival around the turn of the eighties, that talent has long gone. In Adieu Au Language (that title must surely be ironic – language is casually, carelessly and rather maliciously spouted out throughout) Godard isn't painting anything black, more bright and garish. Using a variety of cameras he shoots a selection of pretty flowers, dull Swiss lakes, hairy naked people, driving scenes, a dog (his own apparently) wandering about and some very nice cloud filled skies. The film was made in 3D but I can't imagine how some of the cheaper, blurrier shots must have looked through the shades.
Around the internet you can find things that claim to be a synopsis of the film but I'd feel a fraud replicating them because at no point during its mercifully brief 70 minutes did I have any idea what was happening, what was being communicated or why I should be interested. It's quite rare to entirely fail to grasp a film. My favourite bit of the film was one of those shots of a cloud – because I've always liked the moments when Godard pointed his camera at the sky but also because I thought I could see a face in it.
It is the worse kind of avant garde art toss and without his name in the credits nobody would give it any attention. Of course there are always those people who can't see past a name and the film parody magazines Sight and Sound and Yippee Cahier Du Cinema listed it as No 2 in their best films of the year list. I'm all for film makers challenging the conventions of narrative cinema but why does this always translate as rigidly adhering to the norms of avant garde? This is not the future of cinema, just another genre piece.
Directed by Jean Luc Godard.
Starring Heloise Godet, Kamel Ahbeli, Richard Chevallier and Jessica Erickson. French with Subtitles. 70 mins.
The Sixties may not actually be the greatest decade in human history, but it was the best one to make your mark in. Do something remarkable then and the aura of the achievement will be enough to keep you bobbing along for the rest of your life. If the present Rolling Stones line up were a Rolling Stones tribute band they'd probably be bottled off after three songs but because of what they did back then they are protected for life.
Godard opened up the sixties with A Bout Du Souffle and blazed a bright, idiosyncratic, frustrating trail through it. His talent for film making was so natural and instinctive that even his contrariness, his intellectualism, his pretentiousness, his pomposity and his overriding Frenchness couldn't quite stifle it, though it came mighty close.
That was all a long time ago and despite a little revival around the turn of the eighties, that talent has long gone. In Adieu Au Language (that title must surely be ironic – language is casually, carelessly and rather maliciously spouted out throughout) Godard isn't painting anything black, more bright and garish. Using a variety of cameras he shoots a selection of pretty flowers, dull Swiss lakes, hairy naked people, driving scenes, a dog (his own apparently) wandering about and some very nice cloud filled skies. The film was made in 3D but I can't imagine how some of the cheaper, blurrier shots must have looked through the shades.
Around the internet you can find things that claim to be a synopsis of the film but I'd feel a fraud replicating them because at no point during its mercifully brief 70 minutes did I have any idea what was happening, what was being communicated or why I should be interested. It's quite rare to entirely fail to grasp a film. My favourite bit of the film was one of those shots of a cloud – because I've always liked the moments when Godard pointed his camera at the sky but also because I thought I could see a face in it.
It is the worse kind of avant garde art toss and without his name in the credits nobody would give it any attention. Of course there are always those people who can't see past a name and the film parody magazines Sight and Sound and Yippee Cahier Du Cinema listed it as No 2 in their best films of the year list. I'm all for film makers challenging the conventions of narrative cinema but why does this always translate as rigidly adhering to the norms of avant garde? This is not the future of cinema, just another genre piece.
