Film Socialisme by Jean-Luc Godard

Seeing a new Godard today, 50 years after his first groundbreaking films that were the engine of the nouvelle vague, feels like going to a new Dali exhibition. What to expect? Anything at all?

Few directors (Spielberg, to name one) have grown into the hearts of cinephiles during the middle or even at the end of their careers. Many more are favourably remembered for their early works, and this often corresponds to the days before they chose video over film.

Godard, however, has always made films with cinematic propositions - whether on reel or hard disk - covering experimental and philosophical ground. Not many of his admirers have followed, though. Critics and aficionados haven’t held their tongues on his recent works, calling them nonsense, boring, or simply bad. These unconstructive criticisms resemble furious and outrageous reviews of a Neil LaBute interpretation of Swan Lake. In the times of Alphaville, a 20-second colour-inverted image was highly acclaimed. Godard wasn’t ahead of his time, but rather, as Varese said: "most people are far behind theirs". Don’t give them food but teach them how to fish - beware though; they might not be thankful for long.

Don’t bother watching Film Socialisme then if you belong to this category, but don’t miss it if you’re not afraid of twisted randomness. With no pretension but the one of travelling, in space and in the mind, Godard and his six co-directors have put together a show filled with visual beauty. A collection of ephemeral reflections and cultural treasures in different forms, Film Socialisme is the type of film that could be used just like 3D, as an industrial strategy to fill cinemas. The comparison is purely theoretical: I don’t see this happening any time soon. But the magic of seeing radical cinema in a theatre, without glasses, goes beyond the “petit coup au coeur quand la lumière s’éteint et que le film commence”.

By Maximilien Van Aertryck