Todd McCarthy's Deep Focus

If one of the elusive subjects of Jean-Luc Godard's new "Film Socialisme," is the problem of communication, then the director himself, who was similarly elusive in Cannes yesterday, is part of the problem. This is a film to which I had absolutely no reaction--it didn't provoke, amuse, stimulate, intrigue, infuriate or challenge me. What we have here is failure to communicate. Had this three-part video essay taken the form of a newspaper or magazine article, I would have tossed it aside and quickly moved on to other things. But because it's Godard, we have to attempt to come to terms with it and try to explain it even when the director himself declined to attend Cannes for a press conference, at which he would have rebuffed every attempt to probe its meanings anyway; as the final title card at the end of the film proclaims, "No Comment." When I pressed some die-hard Godardians to defend the film or explicate its potential meanings, no one could do a very good job of it, and the most common and ominous remark I heard among them was, "I really need to see it again." I don't. There are absolutely many difficult and dense works that require repeated viewings or readings to reveal their true and full meanings, but even the most daunting of them at least suggest their stature at first exposure and should presumably inspire, rather than intimidate, one to make return visits.