RIP Jean-Luc Godard

Only watched Weekend a couple of weeks ago.

RIP Jean-Luc

Hi,

And he knew that book better than most, when we all should remember that he was also a film critic and student and knew more about film than most of us can even conceive.

The cinematic "conventions" need to be turned over ... everywhere. The Hollywood thing about shot/crosshot is the stupidest thing ever, but we always ended up being enamored with how the kiss looked and we couldn't do that in our own lives! From a literary/artistic standpoint alone, it makes no sense at all and takes the story telling out from the person telling it, into a voyeur level that has a tendency to really destroy the completeness of the story, that has no point of view in the Hollywood case.

The star thing is another "convention" that he had fun with, and the far-out thing, is that even Brigitte Bardot did not mind and thought it was funny. And the fact that many other big names in the industry wanted to work with him, was an interesting thought, although I don't think that he liked many of the major names that much.

The best parts in his films, are the bizarre ones that we have to look at very differently ... the famous shot in the bar of the camera wondering (everything else was more interesting!!!), makes a wonderful point ... how we tend to think that what is front of the camera is the only thing that happens in this world, or at least those character's world. The truth is that Jean-Luc will make sure that we know the difference and how we take the illusion of "entertainment" to the point of a virtual/sensory deception with the majority of films out there for the "public" to see that get massive advertising to make you think you are seeing a piece of art ... I doubt it, and I have this phobia about Hitlerian tactics, and the advertising world is too much a part of that for me, and rarely will I review a famous top ten film ... why do you need another opinion? You don't.

This is the hard part about Jean-Luc Godard ... and many times, how to define it and what is this all about ... I often thought that it was designed to subvert your ideas about film ... there was no story, and it was just a flying idea that came and went. It will throw you off quite fast.

In many ways, both him, Truffaut and Rivette were the ones that showed us that film was not an entertainment idea ... they all were excellent about allowing a lot of improvisation at a time, when theater was already playing with the concept ... and his ability to fly with the improvisation really made a lot of his films important and valuable, although for an American audience that is seduced by "entertainment" films like this tend to just fall off the pier into the ocean like so many other foreign films, that Americans have no taste for whatsoever.

But if you can suspend judgement and simply just watch something with no expectations, you will find a film full of wonderful stuff and few can match and do. You might then realize how bad one particular film is when you have seen the 3 or 4 Godard films that so much of its stuff was taken from ... and of course, we didn't know French and the subtitles stunk and left many asides and jokes slide, which made things worse for an American audience.

A great one, and probably another one I will shed a tear for after Luis Bunuel. These films, in the end, become so memorable and valuable that you can't even decide which one you like best! If you don't, then go watch Gop Tun yet again, and maybe you can appreciate how someone thinks about a camera in his "hand" and "mind" as opposed to something that makes no sense from a story/film perspective, unless all the literature over many centuries was total sh*t since its inception!

Hi,

And what courage to actually do something that had some improvised material done by both Grace and Marty, although Marty's is not very good compared to what Grace did.

...

And back on topic ... I'm not sure that I can put into words, a feeling about JLG. As I get older, I have come to be clear on amount of time that many of us have, and the amount of time that many did not have. As such, we all become a part of "nothing", and up in the sky, not a single star or anything, cares about your ideas or mine ... and what does this leave us? A sort of freedom to find things that (either) were not there before, or that we just found. JLG was a lot about that and the finding of the craziest things that you would never think would be a part of any film, specially one from Hollywood.

The moments I like? The odd ones. The moving camera in the bar, I think it was given the "pendulum" name at one time. The change of the event in the film, by going backwards and taking a different direction. The reading of a book while walking around in the nude. An insane reading of various something or other, with Woody Allen and Norman Mailer, and Molly Ringwald? If you come out of that film with any idea about what it is about ... let us all know ... !!! The film with the house open on one side, so you could see all the bs and whatever taking place the whole time. Oh, don't forget the cup of coffee with the visible milk swirling in and JLG giving us some kind of galactical thought or philosophy! Or the one where, he had the actors redo the scene, because the music wasn't the right one!

See what I mean? How can you not appreciate that kind of fun and insanity. Go ahead and watch Animal House and Friends over and over again ... and then not realize that some things are beyond the norm, and impossible to categorize, and above all ... fun, because you will never see it again, and in time, you will find that those moments are neat and stand out!

And one more thought about this ... watching his films, for me is just like listening to a Carl Stalling CD of music, from the many Bugs and Daffy cartoons. Not only can you not make sense of anything, it is insane and crazy at the same time, and defies description. You can't even tell which cartoon it belongs to if you are not told the title ahead of time!

I better stop, before I start bleeding from gushing so much!!!