This needs some kind of foregrounding. We have to acknowledge that Godard is a unique case, unique in the sense that there is always a lot of experimentation and improvisation in his work, and given that, he spans five decades of work, so, being now in his eighth decade, one expects some idiosyncratic responses.
What we have to have in mind also is that he is a french cultural phenomenon. By that I mean this: from his work in the sixties, one thing that keeps coming back is a tripartite approach to things. From his famous remark "I like films with beginning, middle and end, but not necessarily in that order" to his use of blue, red and white as elements commenting on both the French and the American flag/ideology, to his development in a late film like "Notre Musique" of tripartite loose structure, there is something telling. What it tells us I think meets the french tradition of Roland Barthes' text "Image-Music-Text" and Levi-Strauss "Look-Listen-Read", authors Godard has the knack of citing. And of course, there is Liberty-Equality-Fraternity, which is a good starting point.
A good starting point namely because these are the words shot in his "Made in USA", and Liberty first, written in blue, blue being its symbol. And look what happens: from his aforementioned use of the three colors, blue is the colorful word missing in this new feature. Liberty, I take him telling us, is absent from (a film called) socialism. This is not random. There are other similar hints right from the start to guide us in his signature mixture of images, sound and music; we just have to be in tune in order to savor the off-beat humor.
"Money is a common good," says a man's off-voice at the start and a woman's voice responds "Like water then" as we face the sea's skin of water and Mediterranean bright light - and like two shots next, there is a wave crashing close to us, as if suggesting "common good, you said?"
The first part of the film is brimming with suggestions and shows a supreme craftsmanship, equaled perhaps only by the late Alain Resnais' "Wild Grass" last year. From this we should not disregard a stubborn perhaps element of playfulness just for the heck of it.
Brimming with suggestions is also brimming with directions: the brilliant use of pixelized images early on at that take of the ship's disco with people thumping and with the distortion of sound arousing anxiety at least on this viewer, and the insistence of presenting the inanity of such mass cultural acting-out, has a visceral power that exposes the trivial effect of, say, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's "Syndromes and a Century" last shot of a cute mass aerobic demonstration (a theme that keeps coming back in his films).
Or that long take of a woman jogging on the deck joins Kubrick's circular jogging in "2001". Or the sublime jump-cut attack before the first part resumes, with that oppressive soundtrack of strings and two girls belly-dancing, has an eerie quality that reminds one of David Lynch.
The difference in all examples cited, or the larger in-joke to Fellini's "And the ship goes", is that the force or eeriness derives and is directed to cultural impact. In fact, "Film Socialisme" could be called an ominous elegy. At one point the screen asks us "Quo Vadis Europa?" This may seem to some obvious, but Godard never shied away from his cultural heritage. And even if Patti Smith's presence winks to Pina Bausch's presence in Fellini's film, the three rugged shots in which she appears show with anxiety that her subversive place is occupied by forces increasingly at odds with adult culture.
Perhaps this is why Godard trusts with unexpected tenderness the children's equivocal stature: early on the ship a kid punching the air tells the old man sunbathing, in a blatant historical quip, that he was a Nazi, and he with a gruff voice offers malediction. This tells more than a whole bag of cultural and historical alienation. And the generation gap Godard now seems to palpably feel.
In the middle section, to call it that, he offers us what I thought was his most tender confession, with that blond boy wearing a red USSR t-shirt and conducting in an endearing and ridiculous manner an invisible orchestra, then telling us that he would puff away the world if it was his caprice to act so: this exposes the vanity, the misgivings of a giant-child's ideological beliefs, be it socialism or younger Godard. He seems to say goodbye to all that, but what will come he does not hint after. But this section revisiting "Weekend"'s limbo and the youth of "La Chinoise" has an unparalleled appreciation of what a child's or a youth's face is. I wish I had more space to go into this in more detail.
Where unfortunately I thought the temperature of the film considerably lowered was the last part of the film. It gave me the impression Godard skimmed through the documentary medium, curiously disfavoring its form, as if impatient with it, and at the same time not challenging it, as if in for an uninspired tour. Something was missing, as if the energy to continue abandoned him. Was it in preparation of the "no comment" ending, an ending the way a DVD begins? For me, if this is the case, as if he mixed enraged laughter and placid smile, it left me wanting. I hope this is not the last we will see of Godard. I love him.
What we have to have in mind also is that he is a french cultural phenomenon. By that I mean this: from his work in the sixties, one thing that keeps coming back is a tripartite approach to things. From his famous remark "I like films with beginning, middle and end, but not necessarily in that order" to his use of blue, red and white as elements commenting on both the French and the American flag/ideology, to his development in a late film like "Notre Musique" of tripartite loose structure, there is something telling. What it tells us I think meets the french tradition of Roland Barthes' text "Image-Music-Text" and Levi-Strauss "Look-Listen-Read", authors Godard has the knack of citing. And of course, there is Liberty-Equality-Fraternity, which is a good starting point.
A good starting point namely because these are the words shot in his "Made in USA", and Liberty first, written in blue, blue being its symbol. And look what happens: from his aforementioned use of the three colors, blue is the colorful word missing in this new feature. Liberty, I take him telling us, is absent from (a film called) socialism. This is not random. There are other similar hints right from the start to guide us in his signature mixture of images, sound and music; we just have to be in tune in order to savor the off-beat humor.
"Money is a common good," says a man's off-voice at the start and a woman's voice responds "Like water then" as we face the sea's skin of water and Mediterranean bright light - and like two shots next, there is a wave crashing close to us, as if suggesting "common good, you said?"
The first part of the film is brimming with suggestions and shows a supreme craftsmanship, equaled perhaps only by the late Alain Resnais' "Wild Grass" last year. From this we should not disregard a stubborn perhaps element of playfulness just for the heck of it.
Brimming with suggestions is also brimming with directions: the brilliant use of pixelized images early on at that take of the ship's disco with people thumping and with the distortion of sound arousing anxiety at least on this viewer, and the insistence of presenting the inanity of such mass cultural acting-out, has a visceral power that exposes the trivial effect of, say, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's "Syndromes and a Century" last shot of a cute mass aerobic demonstration (a theme that keeps coming back in his films).
Or that long take of a woman jogging on the deck joins Kubrick's circular jogging in "2001". Or the sublime jump-cut attack before the first part resumes, with that oppressive soundtrack of strings and two girls belly-dancing, has an eerie quality that reminds one of David Lynch.
The difference in all examples cited, or the larger in-joke to Fellini's "And the ship goes", is that the force or eeriness derives and is directed to cultural impact. In fact, "Film Socialisme" could be called an ominous elegy. At one point the screen asks us "Quo Vadis Europa?" This may seem to some obvious, but Godard never shied away from his cultural heritage. And even if Patti Smith's presence winks to Pina Bausch's presence in Fellini's film, the three rugged shots in which she appears show with anxiety that her subversive place is occupied by forces increasingly at odds with adult culture.
Perhaps this is why Godard trusts with unexpected tenderness the children's equivocal stature: early on the ship a kid punching the air tells the old man sunbathing, in a blatant historical quip, that he was a Nazi, and he with a gruff voice offers malediction. This tells more than a whole bag of cultural and historical alienation. And the generation gap Godard now seems to palpably feel.
In the middle section, to call it that, he offers us what I thought was his most tender confession, with that blond boy wearing a red USSR t-shirt and conducting in an endearing and ridiculous manner an invisible orchestra, then telling us that he would puff away the world if it was his caprice to act so: this exposes the vanity, the misgivings of a giant-child's ideological beliefs, be it socialism or younger Godard. He seems to say goodbye to all that, but what will come he does not hint after. But this section revisiting "Weekend"'s limbo and the youth of "La Chinoise" has an unparalleled appreciation of what a child's or a youth's face is. I wish I had more space to go into this in more detail.
Where unfortunately I thought the temperature of the film considerably lowered was the last part of the film. It gave me the impression Godard skimmed through the documentary medium, curiously disfavoring its form, as if impatient with it, and at the same time not challenging it, as if in for an uninspired tour. Something was missing, as if the energy to continue abandoned him. Was it in preparation of the "no comment" ending, an ending the way a DVD begins? For me, if this is the case, as if he mixed enraged laughter and placid smile, it left me wanting. I hope this is not the last we will see of Godard. I love him.