We sat next to
Professor Mason, who actually teaches this movie so she was able to explain a
little bit to us. This is a new restoration. It is a very difficult movie. It
allegedly takes several viewings. My takeaway is that Godard tells his story
(it arguably doesn't have much of a plot) in a non-linear fashion. There's a
bit of story here, a parallel story there, and a whole mess of a love
quadrangle. He really likes to linger on the misogyny and he makes no effort to
hide it. It is quite overt. And Professor Mason said this is somehow a movie
about birth control, which was illegal in France at the time and this was
supposed to educate young people. And yeah, it was in the movie a bit, but was
that the whole point of it? Cause there was a lot of seemingly unrelated
points.
I did appreciate the
acting. They all do facial expressions very well. And the viewer often reads
the characters' reactions in dialogue. By that I mean that in dialogue, the
camera often focuses on just one participant. We hear the other speaker off
camera, but we watch the one person react, and it really emphasizes physical
acting. And the retro music plays a big part too. There is apparently a big
emphasis on sound in this restoration. And the score comes in and out at
awkward moments and in snippets. I'm not sure if this is intentional or part of
the restoration. It sometimes even overpowers the dialogue in a weird
imbalance. And at times, it seems out of sync with the picture but again, that
may be intentional.
There are
intertitles that have some great one liners accompanied by gunshots that sort
of cue the viewer in to what the scene is supposed to evoke. But you really
have to think hard about it. And to be quite honest, I didn't get enough sleep
to think that hard at that time of day (12:30). I dozed off a bit and I was
sitting right next to the professor. She may or may not have noticed, but if
she reads this by any chance, then I guess she'll know. When I came to, I
surprisingly saw Brigitte Bardot make a brief cameo, but I'm not really sure
what that was about. I think somewhere there was a political message about
Communism, which would make sense because Godard was really into Marxism. I
kind of had some traumatic flashbacks to Kuhle Wampe. Brecht's distancing
effect is definitely present. Godard was trying to get me to think about my
condition, but I was not having it.
I'm trying to
appreciate Godard, but at the end of the day, I just didn't really follow.
Maybe it takes another viewing, but there's so much out there to see I don't
know if I'm going to get to another viewing.
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