Blogging is a fine way to remember … or replace memory, with something else, almost as useful.
Bande à part , Godard, 1964. Love triangle, two men make the girl an accomplice to their robbery of a fortune which belongs to the girl’s aunt’s friend. Linear storytelling with a narrator’s voice, which probably is reciting lines from the pulp novel the film is based on. At least the lines are quite novelistic – ’as they watched the lake they were hit by light that shimmered like’ something that light shimmers like. And so on.
The film is not shot in the same narrow spaces as Alphaville, but in a way it might as well have been. That is, the city and its visual surroundings do not get mixed up with events in any way – it serves as an idle backdrop most of the time, breaking into a playfield every now and then: running through the whole Louvre museum in a record-breaking 9 minutes 43 seconds, or Franz practicing equilibrium on an empty wire roll … the only elements of the city that belong to the story or the plot are the villa where the money is kept, and the English school where the guys got to know the girl, Odile, in the first place. Plus the road or the streets – a large portion of the film happens through dialogue in a moving car.
With such limited visual dynamics, the film is, again just like Alphaville, largely dependent on language, breaking cinematic etiquette with endless talking heads.
How come, then, that this film is not boring? That it is actually good? Why does this work?
One thing, of course, that really matters, is what outsiders would easily label as snobbery, but from the inside, that is from the snobs’ point of view, seems like something more noble: trusting the author. The film critic Serge Daney wrote that the gesture of showing was in his view fundamental to cinema, showing in the most simple sense of: Look! See what I found! And see, here is this – oh and let me show you something else! The effectivity of such a gesture depends completely on an established trust – not trust in the sense of an unshakable belief that what will be shown must be exraordinary, but a more elementary trust: that indeed there is someone behind the words, a person who makes the gesture, makes the offer, and intends something with it.
Here, look at this.
Trust is a funny word in this context, because then there is another layer of trust which is somehow trusting the prankster – a trusting audience obeys like a child tricked into a game of illusion, and trusts that the author will deceive them well, or trick them well, trust that their trust will be exploited, perhaps just for fun.
There is this minimal level of trust that you need, in the author as well as in the equipment used to screen the film, when a film plays with its own formal categories, such as in the dancing scene in the café, when the music goes on and off – you must be able to fully assume that this is intentional, in order to enjoy it. That someone is saying ‘now see this’.
But what then, would the film not be fun or interesting or good if it wasn’t made by Godard? I just don’t know … the authorship is so fundamental to the reception of such films, that it is really hard to tell. Then again, the authorship is signalled by eccentricities from the very beginning of the film, its first message, delivered through the fast rhythmical cuts between the trio’s faces accompanied by a honkytonk piano, that even if you know of nothing of Godard you might sort of suspect, at least, that you are in the hands of a godard, that behind this film there is a man who ‘knows what he is doing’. You might and you might not. And you might or might not give into the offer, you may or may not like being in the hands of a man.
The relief of a Hollywood film, in the sense of a film where the film language itself is not threatened, but all novelties pacified by being subdued under Aristotelian coherence + a subplot, is the relief of alienation. Alienation has its good sides, definitely, even McDonalds shares that positive side – you can always go there without feeling threatened. It is not home to anybody, but open to everyone – it is anti-communal in that precise way, and all communities are as threatening to outsiders as they are cozy for those inside. The positive side of alienation is that everyone is equally alienated – that’s the egalitarianism of capitalism. If they happen to serve a nutritious and tasty burger as well, add a salad and mozarella, the McWorld definitely has its plus side. When you enter, you know that even if you are addressed, even if someone asks what you want, no one is really speaking to you.
In that precise way, also, Godard is as anti-modern as any celebrated, small niche restaurant where a whimsical cook intends to challenge you with his specialties. Anyone with anarchic self-esteem, a sense of autonomy and reluctance to give in to a foreign will, has a good reason not to enter.
Modernity is anti-meaning. Modernity, whether capitalist or communist, is about efficient systems and functionality. Meaning is premodern. As the supreme case of an author within the largely functionally-oriented field of film production, Godard’s motto could be deciphered as ‘il faut etre absolument premoderne’ – you must be completely premodern.
Obviously, this is not the message of his filmed content. It is not the message of the fact that he makes films, either. The fact however that he stubbornly insists on being a man, in the sense of a ghost within the machine, an author, can be interpreted in these terms. His films are haunted by humanity, a humanity that never fully finds its place within the narrative, in a modern world of modern cityscapes, but appears in the cracks in the filmic language itself. In its stubborn refusal to obey.
Note: A minor common element of Alphaville (1965) and BaP is North/South as a choice of direction the characters face, in both instances equally trivial, non-sensical, yet fundamental. Repeated often throughout Alphaville, the decision only occurs once in BaP. Decisions, as such, are ridiculous.
—
The title of this post is not related to its contents at all. I just realized that more people have now died in Haïti, after the earthquake, than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. The earthquake would not have had the catastrophic consequences it had in a wealthier society, where buildings are made to stand such tests. The 200 thousand dead are victims of poverty and debt. What images will we receive, what images will we create, from there? In 2010 Godard will premiere a film titled Socialisme. More about that later.
Haïti, mon amour
Blogging is a fine way to remember … or replace memory, with something else, almost as useful.
Bande à part , Godard, 1964. Love triangle, two men make the girl an accomplice to their robbery of a fortune which belongs to the girl’s aunt’s friend. Linear storytelling with a narrator’s voice, which probably is reciting lines from the pulp novel the film is based on. At least the lines are quite novelistic – ’as they watched the lake they were hit by light that shimmered like’ something that light shimmers like. And so on.
The film is not shot in the same narrow spaces as Alphaville, but in a way it might as well have been. That is, the city and its visual surroundings do not get mixed up with events in any way – it serves as an idle backdrop most of the time, breaking into a playfield every now and then: running through the whole Louvre museum in a record-breaking 9 minutes 43 seconds, or Franz practicing equilibrium on an empty wire roll … the only elements of the city that belong to the story or the plot are the villa where the money is kept, and the English school where the guys got to know the girl, Odile, in the first place. Plus the road or the streets – a large portion of the film happens through dialogue in a moving car.
With such limited visual dynamics, the film is, again just like Alphaville, largely dependent on language, breaking cinematic etiquette with endless talking heads.
How come, then, that this film is not boring? That it is actually good? Why does this work?
One thing, of course, that really matters, is what outsiders would easily label as snobbery, but from the inside, that is from the snobs’ point of view, seems like something more noble: trusting the author. The film critic Serge Daney wrote that the gesture of showing was in his view fundamental to cinema, showing in the most simple sense of: Look! See what I found! And see, here is this – oh and let me show you something else! The effectivity of such a gesture depends completely on an established trust – not trust in the sense of an unshakable belief that what will be shown must be exraordinary, but a more elementary trust: that indeed there is someone behind the words, a person who makes the gesture, makes the offer, and intends something with it.
Here, look at this.
Trust is a funny word in this context, because then there is another layer of trust which is somehow trusting the prankster – a trusting audience obeys like a child tricked into a game of illusion, and trusts that the author will deceive them well, or trick them well, trust that their trust will be exploited, perhaps just for fun.
There is this minimal level of trust that you need, in the author as well as in the equipment used to screen the film, when a film plays with its own formal categories, such as in the dancing scene in the café, when the music goes on and off – you must be able to fully assume that this is intentional, in order to enjoy it. That someone is saying ‘now see this’.
But what then, would the film not be fun or interesting or good if it wasn’t made by Godard? I just don’t know … the authorship is so fundamental to the reception of such films, that it is really hard to tell. Then again, the authorship is signalled by eccentricities from the very beginning of the film, its first message, delivered through the fast rhythmical cuts between the trio’s faces accompanied by a honkytonk piano, that even if you know of nothing of Godard you might sort of suspect, at least, that you are in the hands of a godard, that behind this film there is a man who ‘knows what he is doing’. You might and you might not. And you might or might not give into the offer, you may or may not like being in the hands of a man.
The relief of a Hollywood film, in the sense of a film where the film language itself is not threatened, but all novelties pacified by being subdued under Aristotelian coherence + a subplot, is the relief of alienation. Alienation has its good sides, definitely, even McDonalds shares that positive side – you can always go there without feeling threatened. It is not home to anybody, but open to everyone – it is anti-communal in that precise way, and all communities are as threatening to outsiders as they are cozy for those inside. The positive side of alienation is that everyone is equally alienated – that’s the egalitarianism of capitalism. If they happen to serve a nutritious and tasty burger as well, add a salad and mozarella, the McWorld definitely has its plus side. When you enter, you know that even if you are addressed, even if someone asks what you want, no one is really speaking to you.
In that precise way, also, Godard is as anti-modern as any celebrated, small niche restaurant where a whimsical cook intends to challenge you with his specialties. Anyone with anarchic self-esteem, a sense of autonomy and reluctance to give in to a foreign will, has a good reason not to enter.
Modernity is anti-meaning. Modernity, whether capitalist or communist, is about efficient systems and functionality. Meaning is premodern. As the supreme case of an author within the largely functionally-oriented field of film production, Godard’s motto could be deciphered as ‘il faut etre absolument premoderne’ – you must be completely premodern.
Obviously, this is not the message of his filmed content. It is not the message of the fact that he makes films, either. The fact however that he stubbornly insists on being a man, in the sense of a ghost within the machine, an author, can be interpreted in these terms. His films are haunted by humanity, a humanity that never fully finds its place within the narrative, in a modern world of modern cityscapes, but appears in the cracks in the filmic language itself. In its stubborn refusal to obey.
Note: A minor common element of Alphaville (1965) and BaP is North/South as a choice of direction the characters face, in both instances equally trivial, non-sensical, yet fundamental. Repeated often throughout Alphaville, the decision only occurs once in BaP. Decisions, as such, are ridiculous.
—
The title of this post is not related to its contents at all. I just realized that more people have now died in Haïti, after the earthquake, than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. The earthquake would not have had the catastrophic consequences it had in a wealthier society, where buildings are made to stand such tests. The 200 thousand dead are victims of poverty and debt. What images will we receive, what images will we create, from there? In 2010 Godard will premiere a film titled Socialisme. More about that later.