Streaming Quick Picks: Jean-Luc Godard
This week’s Director of the Week is presented in anticipation of the sole Madison screening of Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye to Language, a benefit for the UW Cinematheque at Marcus Point Cinemas, Thursday, November 13 at 7pm. So first things first: Get your tickets to Goodbye to Language now. Okay, now that you have them, what better way to spend your time between now and Thursday than catching up on, or perhaps even introducing yourself to the works of one of the most important living filmmakers, Jean-Luc Godard.
If you’ve ever taken even one film history or appreciation class, you’ve likely seen Godard’s influential debut feature film, Breathless (1959), which along with Truffaut’s The 400 Blows and others helped launch the French New Wave. But while several New Wave filmmakers like Truffaut were absorbed into the mainstream film industry, to this day Godard remains an iconoclast. Many people point to Weekend (1967) as his shift from fun, playful modernism to more obtuse, political modernism (thus more than a few cite it as the last Godard film that they genuinely like). It might be a mistake, therefore, to begin with the later films, and indeed I wonder how Goodbye to Language will play to first-timers (perhaps Lou Lumenick’s New York Post review might give us a clue). But as with any works of art, anyone who is open to the possibilities of the medium will learn how to watch Godard’s films by simply watching more than one of them.
For those who would like a bit of assistance, here are some interesting recent articles about Godard in relation to Goodbye to Language. Michael Atkinson’s great salvo of metacriticism, “Mr. Known Unknown: Godard and His Discontents,” first skewers his fellow stateside film critics for their general laziness when engaging with Godard’s newest film. But the article moves on to a concise and very helpful introduction to Godard’s work for the uninitiated:
Let’s put it this way, once and for all. It’s not that hard, really. Right at the beginning, Godard saw movies for what they were—a visionary apparatus for transforming and reexamining reality that had been coopted by corporations and turned into a commodified system of signs, a drug, a soma made up of glamour, narrative tension and placating resolutions. That’s what a mainstream movie functionally was: a formulaic emotional machine built toward a reassuring end. So like any good Brechtian, he began, in Breathless (1960), by adopting a rote genre plot-line and then for all orthodox intents and purposes ruining it, disrupting the diegesis and creating a self-conscious “movie-movie” world that was as charmingly realistic as it was obviously fake. Godard knew right away that the capitalistic form of movies—the shape of their narratives, always resolving and satisfying—was a lie. This transcendent lantern-light was being defined, by profit, as being an enveloping cataract of reassuring answers, like a bullshit religion. So, he decided his movies would not be answers, but questions. Experiments.
Atkinson also observes that Goodbye to Language is not that much of a leap for those who have been following Godard through recent features like In Praise of Love (2001), Notre Musique (2004), and Film Socialisme (2010). Below I’ve provided links to local DVD resources for the first two, and a streaming link for the Film Socialisme (which, until very recently, was also on Netflix).
Another interesting digital resource that has emerged recently is Film Comment Magazine‘s Digital Anthology—Jean-Luc Godard, which for $4.99 will provide you with every single thing Film Comment has every published about Godard from 1962 through 2010. While there are more than a few books published on Godard to look at as well, there is some value to going back and looking at first-responder reactions and reviews.
UW Madison’s own David Bordwell has also contributed to the discourse on Goodbye to Language. He has written two entries about the film at his Observations on Film Art blog: “Adieu au Langage: 2 + 2 x 3D”; and “Say Hello to Goodbye to Language.” Bordwell was also interviewed for the nationally broadcast National Public Radio coverage of Goodbye to Language. If that is not enough for you (and it shouldn’t be) you’re in luck: Bordwell will also introduce the Madison screening of Goodbye to Language on November 13.
One last note about this entry and our goals for the Quick Picks posts: Nothing here is available on Netflix View Instantly, which is another reason why we try our best to look beyond Netflix when determining the Artists of the Week. When starting the entry, I was under the impression that Film Socialisme was on Netflix, but it must have been removed very recently. Your best bet for streaming Godard currently is, of course, Hulu Plus, due to their relationship with the Criterion Collection (note that several links below will require a Hulu Plus membership). Most of the other titles are available on Amazon Instant Video, but not on Amazon Prime so there will be rental fees. If you are willing to get off the couch and get some good ol’ fashioned DVDs, we’ve provided links to Four Star Video Heaven and the Madison Public Library.
