FILM SOCIALISME
Switzerland/France
2010
101 minutes
An audiovisual essay in three movements on European history past, present and future.
Welcome to the good ship Europe, where the passengers are dazzled by the bargain basement bright lights instead of looking out the window into the sea. Jean-Luc Godard's latest abstract film essay may hold together less coherently than its predecessors Notre musique and Éloge de l'amour, but it's still a sucker gut punch from a curmudgeonly agent provocateur for whom form and function are interchangeable elements in an audiovisual construction.
Densely layered, in both sound and vision, with meaning and suggestion, throwing up more ideas per minute than most auteurs are able to pull of in entire careers, Film Socialisme is a subversive, flat-packed, some-assembly-required construction that deliberately leaves behind the instruction sheet, so the viewer can work it out (or not) at his leisure. Culture and history melt together in another virtuoso collage that may be closer to museum art than to conventional cinema. An acquired taste? Yes, definitely. So what? There's still nobody out there thinking, and making, film like JLG. That alone means something.
© 2011 Jorge Mourinha. all rights reserved by the author
Jean-Marc Stehlé, Mathias Domahidy, Quentin Grosset, Olga Riazanova, Maurice Sarfati, Patti Smith, Lenny Kaye, Bernard Maris, Marie-Christine Bergier, Nadège Beausson, Robert Malembier, Dominique Devals, Alain Badiou, Elias Sanbar (cast, first movement); Catherine Tanvier, Christian Sinniger, Marine Battaggia, Gulliver Hecq, Élisabeth Vitali, Eye Haidara (cast, second movement).
Jean-Luc Godard (director, writer, camera, editor), Ruth Waldburger, Alain Sarde (producers), Jean-Paul Battaggia, Fabrice Aragno, Paul Grivas (camera), François Musy, Renaud Musy, Gabriel Hafner (sound), Louma Sanbar, Yousri Nasrallah, Anne-Marie Miéville (collaborators).
Vega Film, Wild Bunch, Télévision Suisse Romande, Canal Plus, Suissimage, Fonds Régio Films, ECM Records, Office Fédéral de la Culture, George Foundation, Fondation Vaudoise, Ville de Genève (production companies). (French distributor and world sales, Wild Bunch.)
Screened on DVD, Lisbon, March 13th 2011.
2010
101 minutes
An audiovisual essay in three movements on European history past, present and future.
Welcome to the good ship Europe, where the passengers are dazzled by the bargain basement bright lights instead of looking out the window into the sea. Jean-Luc Godard's latest abstract film essay may hold together less coherently than its predecessors Notre musique and Éloge de l'amour, but it's still a sucker gut punch from a curmudgeonly agent provocateur for whom form and function are interchangeable elements in an audiovisual construction.
Densely layered, in both sound and vision, with meaning and suggestion, throwing up more ideas per minute than most auteurs are able to pull of in entire careers, Film Socialisme is a subversive, flat-packed, some-assembly-required construction that deliberately leaves behind the instruction sheet, so the viewer can work it out (or not) at his leisure. Culture and history melt together in another virtuoso collage that may be closer to museum art than to conventional cinema. An acquired taste? Yes, definitely. So what? There's still nobody out there thinking, and making, film like JLG. That alone means something.
© 2011 Jorge Mourinha. all rights reserved by the author
Jean-Marc Stehlé, Mathias Domahidy, Quentin Grosset, Olga Riazanova, Maurice Sarfati, Patti Smith, Lenny Kaye, Bernard Maris, Marie-Christine Bergier, Nadège Beausson, Robert Malembier, Dominique Devals, Alain Badiou, Elias Sanbar (cast, first movement); Catherine Tanvier, Christian Sinniger, Marine Battaggia, Gulliver Hecq, Élisabeth Vitali, Eye Haidara (cast, second movement).
Jean-Luc Godard (director, writer, camera, editor), Ruth Waldburger, Alain Sarde (producers), Jean-Paul Battaggia, Fabrice Aragno, Paul Grivas (camera), François Musy, Renaud Musy, Gabriel Hafner (sound), Louma Sanbar, Yousri Nasrallah, Anne-Marie Miéville (collaborators).
Vega Film, Wild Bunch, Télévision Suisse Romande, Canal Plus, Suissimage, Fonds Régio Films, ECM Records, Office Fédéral de la Culture, George Foundation, Fondation Vaudoise, Ville de Genève (production companies). (French distributor and world sales, Wild Bunch.)
Screened on DVD, Lisbon, March 13th 2011.
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