The 2010 New York Film Festival | FILM SOCIALISME
I don’t think anyone can credibly pinpoint the moment when it happened, but based on the evidence presented in Film Socialisme, it appears that Jean-Luc Godard has given up on humanity. I don’t mean just the unfeeling European capitalists or the American filmmakers and studio executives who impose Hollywood’s vision upon the world (Steven Spielberg being an example upon which Godard has fixated in the past) or the Israeli politicians who impose martial law on Gaza or the imperialist bastards among us Americans who buy into all of it without exposing our thinking to a reasonable critique; no, I mean humanity, everyone, the whole. Having sat through Film Socialisme with an open heart and mind, I was left with a profound sadness for Godard, and while I am sure the last thing on earth he cares about is my pity, still, I couldn’t help but feel his contempt, the creeping realization that the director has abandoned those for whom his revolution once stood, instead favoring a cloistered life where the world can be reduced into a simplistic, metaphoric Tower of Babel, and where real political concern, that is, a belief in the possibility of human action, has been replaced by a reduction of Godard’s humanism into incoherent disengagement.
Divided into three sections, Film Socialisme focuses its attention on the juxtaposition between empires and revolutions, between art and commerce, between language and understanding*. The first section takes place aboard a cruise ship, which seems to be the preferred mode of transportation for smug Europeans (as well as the American singer Patti Smith and guitarist Lenny Kaye, who I am sure jumped at the chance to work with Godard); the ship operates as a floating metaphor for a fragmented Europe, a multi-lingual petri dish full of characters whose lives are built around the unnamed, conspiratorial intrigue of collective identity. If only they could understand one another; as the ship docks in various cities (again, each serving as a representation of the European legacy of empire, colonialism and state-sponsored oppression), Godard hints at the almost viral spread of a bankrupt social order, built upon gluttony and luxury (the pigs at the trough of a cruise ship buffet, the dumb "sincere bastards" unwilling to show up for a lecture on geometry, presented to an empty theater) and fueled by what Godard implies is a secret Jewish conspiracy. Once the film leaves the ship, we’re with a family, owners of a gas station and, surprisingly, a llama, as they confront the grand themes of freedom, brotherhood and equality (the tenants of the French social contract). The mother is running for local office, which brings politics (and a TV crew) directly into family life; through a series of conversations, the children taking their parents to task for their abandonment of their shared social ideals. The film’s final sequence, and the most meaningful for me personally, is a brief cinematic essay that re-examines revolutionary mythology and classical culture, juxtaposing them with images of state violence and cruelty, from Hellas (Greece, cradle of democracy and civilization and home of the collapsing European economy) to Egypt, another ancient civilization now fueled by political upheaval, to Basque Barcelona (represented, in part, by a hard tackle-or is it a dive?-- on Andrés Iniesta: even the thought of beautiful, honest soccer is exposed as being problematic which, to be fair, it most certainly is) to the Odessa uprising of Eisentstein’s Battleship Potemkin to Napoli, the crossroads of Western civilization and the city that was the most frequently bombed in World War II to Palestine/Gaza, an ancient place that remains torn apart by politics and history. Godard seems to be fascinated by the story of civilization without seeming that interested in human beings themselves.
Film Socialisme
Nowhere does the problem of the director's approach to history express itself more profoundly than in Godard’s casual antisemitism, which points to everything from an unnamed Jewish conspiracy (embodied by the shadowy figure of Goldberg, a passenger on the cruise ship who oozes menace and sexual perversity) to the inclusion of a sequence in the final segment that articulates once again how it is that the film business was founded and run by Jews, down to a reductive reading of the situation on Israel/ Palestine that should make a reasonable person blush with outrage. Yes, Godard does include some finger wagging at the German state and the Nazi war machine that it spawned (what of Germany today?), but the director’s politics have become conspiratorial and empty, without hope or a dramatic articulation of real human struggle or political action. Godard’s descent into antisemitism is at once heartbreaking and unforgivably lazy (never mind racist); looking at Godard’s indefensible opinion of Judaism, one can hardly examine his other ideas without a strong sense of distrust and a hearty skepticism.
Not that an analysis of his antisemitism is required to find much of Film Socialisme problematic; to kick off the middle third of the film, Godard throws up a title card that reads Quo Vadis?, followed by another that adds the word Europe, and while the question is certainly meaningful, set against the specifics of Godard’s vision, it also seems hypocritical; where is Godard going? The framework of his examination is strong (a polyglot continent with a history of ripping itself apart must understand its own past,) his essay format, so powerful in Histoire(s) du cinéma remains compelling, but where is the humanism? Actors stare at the floor while muttering loaded snippets of dialogue that only make reference to other meanings, other texts, external ideas are folded into the film like a stream of consciousness (once again, Godard’s fascination with text and books is translated to the fabric of his filmmaking); it all has the feeling of someone alone with their thoughts. Ultimately, the film is, well, something private; a notebook filled with impressions, a personal monologue into a lonely tape recorder. Instead of human situations, we get the filmic equivalent of sculpture, with actors not much more than the embodiment of their words, with title cards and archival images in place of visual storytelling. The film seems to carry the weight of an historical interpretation that forgoes concern for actual people.
So how can this dense film, rich with complex ideas, possibly be seen as an act of disengagement? There are many beautiful images, quotations, and juxtapositions that speak to Godard's personal understanding of history, but they are never made explicit enough to be powerful. Certainly, there is no doubting the man's deep commitment to the world of ideas, but in a film about ideas, the value of the work is tied irrevocably to the ability of the ideas to interact, to tell a story, to grow in power by being placed in a dialectical relationship with one another. Ideas abound in Film Socialisme, but how powerful can they be when they are merely a string of references which, once (and if) recognized seem isolated in the film, unable to be connected to other ideas? Godard's work here resembles that of an older jazz musician playing the early show in a small town on a weeknight; he has his bag of tricks, he trots them out again, he quotes familiar themes, patterns, refrains, but seems to have long ago given up on pushing any boundaries and asking any real questions of himself. The work feels exhausted, with Godard having spent the better part of three decades now railing against the politics (and thus, the cinema) of his age. There is no question that the man is a true giant of an artist, one of the great thinkers of our time, but I think that his best moments are reserved for those instances when he found a true intimacy and empathy with his subjects; the dancing Anna Karina in Vivre Sa Vie or the closeups of Myriem Roussel in Hail Mary. But to build upon those films or continue to forge a responsible role in politics and art would require Godard to engage with the world, to remove himself from his self-imposed isolation and dive back into life among others, to stop railing against everyone else and begin to ask questions of himself again. One gets the sense watching Film Socialisme that Godard sees himself as removed from all of it, as someone living outside and above the society he critiques, making abstract pronouncements about the state of a world he neither understands nor cares to.
Godard has earned the right to be cantankerous, to stand above the fray; his career has been one that has essentially defined cinema for generations of filmgoers. I do think that Film Socialisme has some moments of real interest, but I couldn't help but wonder if a 25 year old unknown filmmaker from Switzerland submitted this exact film, frame for frame, to the New York Film Festival, would it ever have been screened? Not a chance. The reason it is being seen and being talked about is because of the legacy of its maker and not the ideas and images presented in the film itself. And while the right has been earned, and while there will always be interest in a film by Godard (which certainly legitimizes its inclusion in any festival), still, you can't help but chuckle at all of the pieces being written about the film that talk about the use of color and the mastery of video as a texture but who scratch their heads in wonder as to what the fuck the movie is actually saying. Beauty without meaning is fashion; add meaning, you have art. Film Socialisme ends with another text, a title card, in English, which allows the director to have the final say by refusing to even engage in a dialogue about his own work; after an hour-and-a-half of bombast and beauty, of political ranting and complex historical analysis, up pops the last image in Godard’s film. White letters against a black background. It reads, simply, “No Comment.” Which says it all, really.
Film Socialisme
*Because the film was not subtitled with literal translations of the dialogue (it instead featured a sly, pun-filled text that carries only pieces of what is being said), I feel a little uneasy offering too strong of an interpretation of the film’s dialogue (my French is, um, not good), but still, it is the text with which I was presented and the purposeful exclusion of full English subtitles actually enhances the attention that I was able to pay the film; because of Godard’s constant use of title cards and multiple languages, the subtitles simply became an added layer of text with which to engage on Godard’s terms. So, fair enough, I have put my reservations aside and feel as though I should be able to fairly comment upon the film I was presented.
7 Comments
twhalliii | November 3, 2010 6:20 AM
Just a quick note to others who are not seeing their comments below;
If you come here and launch anonymous personal attacks against me, your comments will not be included here. If you comment about the text as it is presented above (and in the comments) without making personal attacks, I'm happy to have your comments. Sorry, but no one is entitled to bully or attack here. Won't be tolerated.
Thanks.
Gabe Klinger | October 21, 2010 9:57 AM
from Michael Sicinski's FILM SOCIALISME review:
"[...] almost every discussion of Jewishness or the Israeli state in Film Socialism is doubled with a comment about Palestine. (This harks back to his diagram in JLG/JLG, in which he shows Israel and Palestine to be locked in a relation of mutual projection or "stereo.") So, while some have cited as anti-Semitic Godard's passage in the film about Hollywood being "invented by Jews," it cannot be separated from what comes immediately before it, when Hollywood's dominance and the arrangement of movie theatres, with all eyes facing in the same direction, is compared to Mecca. Godard is suggesting that a group of American Jews ironically helped give rise to an industry whose impact has resulted in a "Muslim" sense of uniformity, although in the end it is capitalism that actually explains this unidirectional dominance. (It would require the argumentative precision of a Theodor Adorno to make this point with adequate subtlety. I won't suggest that Godard does not botch it through inadequate elaboration.) What's more, it is "Goldberg" who reiterates this Jewish stereotype. Given the characterization of him throughout the film (he even says "Heil Hitler"), his discourse cannot simply be equated with Godard's own views. And, as with the Hebrew and Arab script superimposed upon one another, Godard's major point seems to be, continually, that Arab and Jewish fates are inextricably connected. Only the acceptance of this basic linkage (and the refutation of Zionism and/or Jihadism) can "unlock" Palestine, as a history and as a living entity. Until then, there is one thing on top of another, a closed set of possibilities: ACCESS DENIED. And, within the realm of communication, the results are the same: NO COMMENT.
Gabe Klinger | October 21, 2010 9:43 AM
It's quite dangerous to call an artist an anti-Semite when you have no grounds for such claims. Sorry for the condescension, but it was responding to what I perceived as hysteria on your part.
Let's examine the facts closely.
Out of context, here's the French voiceover in the film related to Jews in Hollywood:
"This is why Hollywood was
called the Mecca of cinema.
"The tomb of the prophet
"All eyes in the same direction
"The cinema hall
"Yes, but... a strange thing is that
Hollywood was invented by the Jews.
"Adolf Zucker, William Fox,
David Selznick
"Samuel Goldwyn, Marcus Loew,
Karl Laemmle, etcetera
Putting this voiceover into context, everything that comes before and after are halted sentences and cryptic ideas. So one can come to any number of conclusions.
You have no idea if Godard is referring to, for example, Jewish studio heads acting benevolently with relation to anti-Semitic political parties in Europe. (The reference to the "disunited" United Nations that comes before this could perhaps be Godard [or another offscreen narrator] saying that the Hollywood studio bosses never bothered to address their own attitudes before and directly after the war.) As I'm sure you know, MGM and several other studios supported and even lent their production resources to films produced by the Vichy government, the Third Reich, and the Mussollini regime. Could it be this is a historical reference to that? Or any number of other references to the important history of Jews in Hollywood? What about this voiceover is suspicious to you or suggests a conspiracy? (As for the claim of origin -- that Hollywood's founding moguls were mostly Jews -- that's hardly nonsensical depending on your historical entry point.)
Tom, perhaps you're not familiar with the fact that Godard WORSHIPS the ground that a lot of the producers he mentions walks on. The Zuckers, William Foxs, etc. etc. These are producers who Godard routinely praised in the Cahiers yellow period, and, later, in his video essays.
We have already discarded the idea that the Goldberg character neither represents a Jewish conspiracy nor is necessarily Jewish, so moving on from that...
What equation is Godard making between the Israeli government and Jews in Hollywood? By the way, let's make something clear: the film never says the film industry is run by Jews (you make-up a quote from the film that simply does not exist). To do this is erroneous and malicious... and lazy, if you want to keep repeating it without bothering to fact check. The film says "Hollywood was invented by Jews". What you say is quite a leap from that.
From your review: "looking at Godard’s indefensible opinion of Judaism" -- PLEASE SUPPORT! What is Godard's indefensible opinion of Judaism? Wow, I had no idea Godard had an opinion about the entire foundation of Judaism.
Bill Krohn has broken down, in minute detail, how any claims about Godard being involved in anti-Semitic activity or of being anti-Semitic are distortions typical in a certain strand of cultural journalism. In case you haven't read it, here's the piece: http://www.cinema-scope.com/cs38/feat_krohn_brody.html
I'll leave your problems with Godard's humanism aside for the moment. I don't wish to get into a debate about that... I'm only a little bit surprised that someone is able to file an almost purely evaluative review of a film which begs for a discussion on entirely different terms. But this speaks to your critical approach, which is different from mine. No disrespect here. But I do believe you are very wrong to say Godard is an anti-Semite or that this film is anti-Semitic in any way.
Best,
Gabe
twhalliii | October 12, 2010 10:54 AM
Part II of II:
The middle section, which for me was indeed one of the best parts of the film (despite its problems), does not qualify the whole film; this section's one or two fine moments, which were trumped for me by the presentation of ideas in the final third, did not seem to me a gesture toward a humanistic point of view, but more a critique of politics among the people; the adults are clueless in this section and presented as such.
As for the sculpture statement, let me quote Godard:
"The scenes stop before the people become characters. They are more like statues. Statues that speak."
If humans are their words, cinema is action and words and image and sound (for me anyway). I certainly understand that Godard's characters often read from books and make quotations and I understand it as a rhetorical device and a poetic gesture, but they also SAY SOMETHING, both as texts and as representations of Godard's conception of human beings. I am well aware of Godard's relationship to text, on camera "book reading" and "movie dialogue" and did not expect a simple "movie dialogue" approach; however, there is a difference between the use of texts as a tool in his films and the primacy of text in this film specifically, where it is used to create an ironic relationship between the people and the images on screen. For me, that choice works amazingly well in a film like HISTOIRE(S) DU CINEMA and fails here; in the former, Godard is dealing with image and sound and the artifice of cinema, in the latter, he applies the same idea to political identity and, for me, that is a mistake, as the real struggles of real people do not warrant this approach and the execution feels dismissive of the non-cinematic reality of the lives of the people he seems to, frankly, not like very much.
I believe in poetry and politics, in images and life, in texts and words. I think this film only honors half of them. But, to each his own cinema, I guess.
twhalliii | October 12, 2010 10:54 AM
Part I of II:
Thanks for the reprimand, both of you. What I find most distressing about your points is not what you say but the condescending way in which both of you say it. This blog post was not a direct insult to either of you, and yet here you are calling me "unqualified" to discuss the film and in need of "a wake up call". I think that it is a sign of a need for the film to be loved on your terms and your terms alone that you would come here and write like that.
First, as for Basque Barcelona-- yes, the city is not in Basque country, but FC Barcelona, as the blood rival of the Real Madrid, is historically known as the club that represents the anti-Franco, anti-fascist sentiments of the nation, and the club has been adopted by many revolutionaries and many Basques, especially since many of the players themselves fought alongside players from Bilbao against the fascists. This goes back to the 1930's and you can learn more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona_fc#Rivera.2C_Republic_and_Civil_War_.281923.E2.80.931957.29
Obviously, Bilbao is the club of the Basque people, but I was referring to the historic, revolutionary role of the football club in Barcelona (just as it is presented in the film itself), albeit not clearly in this sentence. My mistake for not being more clear in the sporting shorthand and I certainly understand that Barcelona itself is not a Basque city.
Steven- I am not a stupid person and I think everyone is "qualified" to offer their opinions on Godard's geopolitics. Whether you value that right is another matter and if a simple poorly written sentence in a 1000 word piece is all you have to hang your negativity upon, I think I did okay.
Gabe-- you've offered no real evidence to suggest that Godard's statements about Judaism are not anti-semitic; his argument, or "poetic" associations, come from a long tradition of post-1948 European intellectual anti-semitism. Putting Goldberg aside (as it seems neither of us is sure what he means), the fact that Godard draws an equation of Jewish identity that is framed by the idea that "Jews run Hollywood" and the right wing nationalist policies of the Israeli government seems reductive at best; why bother including this at all if it is all you have to say on the topic? Certainly anyone has the right to comment on the politics of Israel and Palestine, but what idea is Goddard offering here and, given the problematic intellectual tradition from which these ideas arise, why bother presenting something so easily understood as bigoted? I am not saying that he is guilty until proven innocent, more that, in my experience of this film and knowing what we both know of Godard's past statements on the issue, this reductive take on Jewish identity seems par for the course for him, an extension of what we already have heard from Godard. I haven't read Richard Bordy's book yet; it's on my desk to be read and I look forward to it, but I can't comment on how my opinion might be related to his book.
As for the disconnect, I don't think the production process, which is irrelevant to the meaning of the images on the screen, qualifies as an example of the Godard's embrace of humanism; giving the camera to crew members is inside baseball information that calls into question Godard's process, but does not change the film. The same could be said of the film images he inserts in the movie; they are not "quotations", they are simply images from other films, but the fact that the images are there and are juxtaposed with the other images in the film makes them a part of Godard's film, his story.
Gabe Klinger | October 8, 2010 5:47 AM
Um, sorry, Barcelona is not in the Basque country.
Tom, your dissent is certainly more productive than the Todd McCarthy hatchet job from Cannes that can also be read on this web site, but it is also profoundly misguided to say Godard is an anti-Semite based on the evidence you've presented. Especially considering how cryptic and unassertive the film is on this front (Arabic words superimposed over Hebrew characters: this is about as assertive as the film gets). (If you're referring to Godard's remarks on Jews from many moons ago, that's about as useful an analysis of this film as McCarthy's dumb referencing of Godard's quote about the Apollo astronauts). Unless, of course, you think it's actually far out there for a European intellectual to critique Israel's brutality against Palestine. Sheesh. But, as a friend has remarked, I guess this is Godard-think in the post-Brody world.
And, sorry, Goldberg, as "Jewy"-sounding as it is, is not necessarily a Jewish name (German surnames are common in the Jewish community). In fact, I was under the impression, from the fact that he says "Heil Hitler" in one scene, that the character Otto Goldberg is explicitly some kind of ex-Nazi. But maybe you missed that detail?
Also, you're claiming solipsism and disconnect from an artist who employs in FILM SOCIALISME (1) the participatory gesture of giving his camera away to crew members and (2) includes an entire middle section which you barely refer to but which lovingly depicts the relationship between a mother and her son really kind of neatly disqualifies the claim.
"Instead of human situations, we get the filmic equivalent of sculpture, with actors not much more than the embodiment of their words" ... Here's a wake-up call (you can ask Nietzsche or Noam Chomsky if you don't believe me): humans *are* the embodiment of their words. The core value of "human situations" is language.
This statement also proves that you understand little of Godard's cinema, where characters are often espousing quotes from literature and "movie dialogue" is rarely present. It's called a rhetorical device. It's also a poetic gesture. And it's extremely sophisticated in Godard... But why should we have to defend this film? The merits are quite clear.
Whatever. Your opinion is your opinion. But at least get your facts right, man.
Steven Marsh | October 8, 2010 5:06 AM
So you think Barcelona is in the Basque Country, do you? That speaks eloquently to your qualifications to speak on Godard's geopolitics.