Jean-Luc
Godard might be using the latest in 3D technology, but it is in the service of his
decades old ideological and aesthetic program. He will strip away bourgeoisie affectations,
like plot and characterization, in favor of wordplay and collage. However, all
viewers are left with is Godard’s dog MiĆ©ville (playing Roxy) in Goodbye to Language (trailer here), which opens
this Wednesday in New York.
A
single man and a married woman commence an affair. It is passionate at first,
but eventually turns violent. It is a familiar story, but still promising
dramatic grist in the right hands. Of course, Godard cannot be bothered to
develop it. Instead, he will simply dole out fragments of the mercurial
relationship, in between episodes of linguistic gamesmanship.
As
is usually the case with recent Godard films, viewers had better come prepared to
read, because the auteur will explicitly tell them just what and how they
should think. That might sound problematic in a 3D film like Language, but Godard uses the effect to
privilege certain words above others. It might be the only clever aspect of the
film.
Much
has been made of the superimposition of 3D images in one sequence, in which
different scenes can be seen out of either eye. Unfortunately, neither is
particularly interesting. Indeed, the film’s drably pedestrian visuals are arguably
its greatest sin. For all of its gamesmanship, it looks stylistically similar
to early 1980s experimental films, like Joan Jonas’s Volcano Saga or Double Lunar
Dogs, but without similar hooks for the audience to grab onto.
Arguably,
we are not supposed to luxuriate in lush imagery, because that too would be bourgeoisie.
Godard would rather goad us with dashed off would-be profundities, such as the
observation Hitler fulfilled all his promises (except, presumably that 1,000
year Reich thing), which only a Parisian Maoist could find provocative. There
is so little in Godard’s kit bag this time around, he frequently resorts to the
oldest, cheapest trick in the book: sudden deafening blasts of noise.
Frankly,
this film has no reason for being, because Godard and his fellow traveling poststructuralists
won the philosophic day decades ago. Language
represents the state of critical and aesthetic thinking in today’s
academia, chapter and verse. They just never had a plan for winning the peace,
so the old discredited forms still hold sway over the popular culture. As if on
cue, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and Mary Shelley (she wrote Frankenstein, get it?) pop up as
representatives of the old order to be swept away. Yet, each has more currency
to the lives of ordinary proletarians than any of Godard’s films have, since at
least the 1980s.
3D
aside, there is nothing in Language that
has not been done before and done better. It is possible to jettison narrative
and still produce something intriguing. Whether they speak to readers or not, the
novels of Alain Robbe-Grillet are impressive, because he removes narrative and
character, yet they still retain the form of mystery novels. In effect, he
pulls the tablecloth out from under the place settings, without upsetting a
glass. In contrast, with Language,
Godard simply kicks over the table and then takes an ostentatious bow.