Goodbye to Language

Jean-Luc Godard – 2014 – France

I never know what to make of Godard.  He is equally and eternally distressed about the nature of cinema and the failure of most of the planet to warm up to Marxism.  His films are symposiums, not stories.  Almost always, I find the issues in them valid but the execution almost intolerably pretentious, condescending and misanthropic.  In something like Goodbye to Language, Godard seems to be far more ensconced in the alternating film formats and cameras he was experimenting with than in making much of an effort to have anything compelling going on in front of the cameras.  It is interesting to see the different qualities the cameras have and the effects they produce, but this style doesn’t seem to connect with the content, meager as it is.  The human figures in Godard’s films – I can’t even call them ‘characters’ – are almost always symbolic; there’s little point in trying to empathize with them, nor in even trying to differentiate them from each other.  In this case, two couples endlessly argue about existential issues and about how life is essentially pointless since one can ever be sure he comprehends another’s – or even his own – thoughts and perceptions.  Lo and behold, a stray dog comes into their lives, symbolizing nature, innocence, love or whatever.  I can’t say the film is bad because I watched it all the way through, and Godard is obviously someone who knows what he’s doing, but I couldn’t help wondering if I would be as interested and patient if this was the work of a second-year film student.  Probably not.  That’s the auteur theory for you.