Jean-Luc Godard (France, 1930-2022)

Goodbye to Language (2014)

(Originally written as part of The BBC’s 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century).

Well, that was abstract.

It really was. It was hands-down one of the most abstract movies I’ve ever seen.

If you look at the reviews for this film, some critics loved it- I mean, of course they did, its presence on this list is automatic indication of that. Nevertheless, another theme emerges, one in which the film has been actively and consciously conceived as an intrusive and uncomfortable sensory experience. Phrases describing it as ‘painful’ (Alex Casey, Flicks.co.nz), ‘anguish-inducing’ (Jonathan Romney, Film Comment), ‘intent on being as abrasive as possible’ (Ben Nicholson, CineVue), and ‘akin to forcing your brain to experience a violent re-birth’ (Scout Tafoya, rogerebert.com) are intermingled with the lavish praise.

‘It is there to jolt, to challenge, to disrupt’, writes Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian. And lo, the soundtrack drops in and out like a radio being haphazardly tuned from one station to another. ‘Scenes’, often only lasting a couple of seconds, begin and end, begin and end, stop-and-start, crashing into each other, crackling and popping, edited by an elephant. Multiple passages are shown where the actors’ heads- their actual heads, while they are actuallytalking- are out of frame. And all the dialogue- all of it- is outré philosophical investigation and metaphysical theory. At one point someone makes an onscreen visit to the toilet, accompanied by squelching and farty noises.

It's exactly the kind of thing people who hate art films would parody and laugh at. There were times when I wanted to eject the disc and throw it out of the window. Let some other mug try to make head or tail of it. The thought of someone picking it up off the street, taking it home, putting it on out of curiosity, and seeing a spellbinding masterpiece from one of the most towering and celebrated figures in world cinema seems desperately unlikely. Far more feasible is the image of them watching ten minutes or so and putting it politely in the dustbin, thinking it was a blooper reel of outtakes, mistakes and cutting-room scraps from a real movie.

There’s an argument that I simply don’t possess the requisite reference points to tackle a film that is as densely allusive as this one. I can appreciate that, up to a point. But who does, really? Its Wikipedia article lists 69 different literary and cinematic works that the film supposedly nods to, which works out at a rate of about one a minute, and I am loath to believe that there is a single critic out there who was able to recognise and satisfactorily process all of them. To this end, I don’t have the intellectual range for Finnegans Wake either, but I know whether I like it or not (I don’t).

If I was to compare the film to music, as I have done with some previous films, then first port of call, considering its aesthetic and ADHD vibe, would be Guided by Voices’ 1994 album Bee Thousand, which sounds like it was recorded in a garage with an everyday tape recorder because it was. Bee Thousand contains melodies, though, and a recognisable flow, untidy and tumultuous as it may be, attributes that I don’t feel are reflected in Goodbye to Language. Similarly, I don’t know exactly what the lyrics to ‘Smothered in Hugs’ or ‘Echos Myron’ are about, but I know enough to feel an emotional response to their effects. Rather, then, I could look at critics’ comments on how ‘free’ this film is- not least a quote from Jane Campion, who presided over its Jury Prize award at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival- and instead compare the movie more aptly to free jazz, and the objectively horrible stylings of a John Zorn or a Peter Brötzmann. Or I could follow the ‘punk rock’ comparison made by Sean Burns (The ARTery) and posit that Goodbye to Language might be the filmic equivalent of The Fucking Cunts Treat Us Like Pricks by Flux of Pink Indians. Look it up. Have a listen. Treat yourself.

Anyway, Tim Brayton of Antagony & Ecstasy opines that the movie ‘actively tries to find a new language for filmmakers to inhabit’, and if that’s the case, I strongly advocate the retainment of the old one. This, for me, was a scruffy, scratchy, nonsense little movie that I look forward to never watching again. Goodbye to language, indeed. Au revoir.

À Bout de Souffle (aka Breathless) (1959)

In Breathless, Jean-Paul Belmondo plays Michel, a criminal who, in the early stages of the picture, shoots a policeman dead. Seems pretty serious, but you wouldn’t think so from the tone, which is one of knockabout frolic and caper.

I didn’t like Breathless. I didn’t ‘get’ it, and I didn’t like it. I have to ask whether that is my fault, the film’s fault, or neither. Maybe I wasn’t in the right mood to watch it, though considering that my viewing was in ten-to-twenty minute chunks over several nights, that seems unlikely (though suggests that my overarching personality in general is the wrong ‘mood’ in which to watch it).    

I don’t know what it was about, and in my view, it wasn’t really about anything. This might not be so much of a problem if its male protagonist were not a profoundly irritating, overbearing wastrel who smokes and talks, smokes and talks, talks and smokes, smokes and talks. He is thoroughly addicted to the sound of his own voice. Throughout the picture, he just never shuts up. He never, ever shuts up. What does he talk about? I don’t know, really. Nothing. Himself. Whatever comes into his head. Bits and bobs of fluff and whiffle. This endless prattle does not even really touch on philosophical rumination (though that probably wouldn’t have made it any better). His pixie-like, tomboyish female companion is unfailingly patient, sweet and affable- that is, I suppose, until she (spoiler alert) ‘betrays’ him, or something, at the film’s end.

I just didn’t have the patience for any of this shite. Sorry. If this is a cornerstone of the New Wave, then maybe the New Wave isn’t for me. Another stumbling block was that I think I was meant to quite like the main character, or at least find him semi-charming in a roguish sort of way. This might have been possible if his relentless, ridiculous personality- more of a cartoon than a human- had been toned down in any way, or if I was able to relate to him in the slightest.

One gets the sense that Godard wanted to make a film that purposefully flouted every convention, narrative included, and would present us with a protagonist who is so brash and brazen that he is not recognisable in any of our proverbial friends and neighbours and instead represents another element of a wider-ranging, conceptual, mould-breaking dynamic. The movie, therefore, might have made more sense as an iconoclastic piece in 1959 than it does now. Its long rambles and scenes full of nothing, edited in a way that we might today associate with TV commercials, may have come across as more innovative.

The viewing experience was not too dissimilar from Leos Carax’s The Night is Young (or Mouvais Sang), another French piece that featured an undefined criminality in the background of the film’s narrative, an unlikable, arrogant, chain-smoking protagonist, and scene after scene of frustrating quasi-nonsense (though that picture is both more sombre and more surreal than this one).

Jean Seberg, playing the female lead, is said to have commented at the time that she was ‘making films in France about people I’m not really interested in’, uncannily mirroring my own strong sense of withering apathy. Meanwhile, the film’s Wikipedia article alleges that Godard ‘wrote the script as he want along’ and that ‘the film was virtually improvised on the spot,’ underlining my suspicions that Breathless was merely playing facetious, cavalier games with my time. There may never have been such a discrepancy between a film’s reputation and how I received it in my entire viewing history.

The good news? The fleeting background glimpses that I got of 1950s Paris looked lovely. What a shame that Godard was far more interested in the interiors of hotel rooms.