Hacker Cinema
Goodbye to Language
Adieu au langage
2014 · Film · 69 min
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
"The idea is simple / A married woman and a single man meet / They love, they argue, fists fly / A dog strays between town and country / The seasons pass / The man and woman meet again / The dog finds itself between them / The other is in one, / the one is in the other / and they are three / The former husband shatters everything / A second film begins: / the same as the first, / and yet not / From the human race we pass to metaphor / This ends in barking / and a baby's cries / In the meantime, we will have seen people talking of the demise of the dollar, of truth in mathematics and of the death of a robin." -JLG
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2 comments on Hacker News
That makes sense for early career Godard, mostly because at that point he was working in the similar milieu as the other New Wavers, and playing with the Hollywood form. At that point, American films were flooding into France following WWII and you could go to the Cinematheque Francaise and watch an entire director's ouvre in a day or two. Godard, Truffaut, and the other cinephiles used to spend hours watching movie after movie and began to notice the Hollywood styles and trends. When they went to make movies they brought that knowledge of Hollywood style, along with a punk sensibility revolting against the "ancien regime" of French film style.
Later Godard was far more intense and a difficult watch as he played with the form of filmmaking, digital video, and even his role as a director itself. His later stuff, like Goodbye to Language is fascinating but also, at times, difficult to get through and quite different than the direction that most New Wavers went, notably Truffaut who, if anything, got more and more accessible as his career progressed (and still made brilliant movies).
His history of film, Histoire(s) du cinema is probably must-watch viewing for any big-time cinephile / film buff. It is commentary on the entire 20th century by way of cinema.
I also collect data, from the very high-brow critics in Cannes, and recently also Sundance for comparison.
https://cannes-rurban.rhcloud.com/
What is evident is that very often critics gather to champion objectively awful movies. Even for professional movie critics standards awful movies. Looks for example at the surprising success of this years "Carol" and "The Assassin" in Cannes and their disappointing acceptance in the real world. Well, "Carol" is one of those special needs cases, which still has some champions left over. And compare it to the exceptional Cannes movies this year: Dheepan, Umimachi Diary and Embrace of the Serpent. The critics didn't appreciate them and didn't see it coming. However the professional festival programmers and jury in the followup festivals saw it.
But the same happens almost every year. "ADIEU AU LANGAGE" (Godard) highest rated movie 2014, "HOLY MOTORS" (Leos Carax) 2012, "Le Havre" (Aki Kaurismaki) 2011, "FILM SOCIALISME" (Jean-Luc Godard) 2010. The jury votes are usually much better than the critics votes.
Comparing quality to quantity (advertising budget, imdb ratings) makes no sense at all.