NYFF 2010: "Film Socialisme"

"Enjoy the the Navajo and the anti-semitism!" an impish friend commented on Facebook at my mention that I was seeing the new Jean-Luc Godard, Film Socialisme, this morning. Well, as one might have predicted, I enjoyed one but not the other. Let's deal with the "Navajo" first. For the English-language distribution versions of this film, Godard has put on the film subtitles that he's referred to as "Navajo" English. Instead of providing whole literal translations of entire patches of dialogue—and the dialogue is, in descending order of prevalence, in French, German, Russian, and English and maybe one or two other tongues I'm not remembering, and the soundtrack is layered in such a way that will not be unfamiliar to lovers of Nouvelle Vague and King Lear, which means in effect a very deliberate effect of artfully contrived Babel—he'll put up a series of key words, mostly nouns, sometimes invented compound words such as "nocrime" followed by "noblood" with, as seen here, nocaps. It doesn't take very long for the effect to stop feeling like subtitles at all and to play like a sort of running discrete text of its own, one made up in large part of what could be Twitter hashtags. In a sense this makes the film even more social-media-up-to-the-minute than the feature that preceded it at today's New York Film Festival press screenings, David Fincher's superb and engrossing comedic drama of the invention of Facebook, The Social Network. Not bad for a nearly 80-year-old crank largely sequestered in Switzerland, not exactly a finger-on-the-pulse of anything much spot these days. Certainly adds more than just a particular flavor to the experience, and made me feel a little proud that my overall grasp of spoken French is better than I thought it would be.

As for the anti-semitism, of course not so much. Although as usual with late Godard anti-semitism, the stuff is more by insinuation than anything else; what happens here, mostly, is that he cocks and eyebrow and you think he's gonna drop a definitively offensive and/or indefensible characterization, and then he veers off from it. It's almost as if he's toying with us, why would he want to do that. As in the film's first section, which is set on a cruise ship, which could here be some allegorical vessel representing late late capitalism, or not, and there's this old guy dressed kind of like a gangster hanging out on deck and the narrator, such as he is, informs us that his name is "Goldberg" which translates into "Gold mountain," yeah, Jean-Luc, we get it; did you know, in fact that the music industry bigwig Danny Goldberg once had a management company that he himself called "Gold Mountain?" Kind of outsmarted you, eh, little chum? There's another bit later with a reflection that Hollywood was "started by Jews" but this point too, drifts off, as the focus turns more anti-Zionist (I do believe there is a difference, and also, it should go without saying, that these are not two stances that work well together) and it doesn't matter because we're all kind of irritated now anyway. Helas. I'm beginning to think with late-period Godard it's not really a full experience without at least a little serious irritation. People talk admiringly sometimes of flies in the ointment, but a real fly in the ointment isn't particularly ingratiating. For all the moments of quicksilver wit and genuine playfulness in this picture, there's a certain pissy maliciousness as well. To consider this all morally, or even to make a moral judgment on it, even a negative moral judgment, does not oblige us to out-and-out condemn it. But before we cross that bridge—and we're not gonna do it here—first we have to make some sense of the piece.

Or do we? The more this film went on, the more I was reminded of Jaspar Johns' "target" paintings. Repetitions of the same thing—that is, an archery target. Always the same, only the dimensions, the colors, the thickness of the paint on the board, and so on, would vary. In Film Socialisme what's crucial is less the words—printed, spoken, sung—and the images themselves, but the way they're layered and delivered. The images that appear to be in ultra-bright 35 mm, and the images in smeary digital video, and the images in pixelated digital, or analog, video. The freezes, the glitches. The gorgeousness of the light and the light's inevitable technological distortion. There's the usual Godardian polemics and punning, the obsessive sifting through the ash heap of 20th century (and further back than that) history, the attitudinizing, the cameos by philosophers and artists (nice to see Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye pitching in), but then there are the various textures of conveyance, which go back to, and take in, imagery and grain from Eisenstein's Potemkin and Ford's Cheyenne Autumn, among others. (You know how Art Ensemble of Chicago had this tagline for its project, "Great Black Music: Ancient To The Future?" This film could well be subtitled Cinema: Ancient To The Future.) It is this quality, finally, for me, that makes the film remarkable and beautiful and challenging, rather than, in the classically funny Nabokovian formulation, "what [...] the guy [is] trying to say."

Comments

[bill]

I bet Nabokov really hated Godard. Did he ever make a pronouncement, one way or the other? If I'm correct, then that means I have precisely one thing in common with Nabokov. Well, two, if you count that we both think that Vladimir Nabokov is a great writer.

Anyway. I enjoyed reading this review, Glenn -- truly -- but the film I picture in my head, however vaguely, makes me restless and gloomy.

[Glenn Kenny]

@ bill: I can't find any Nabokov pronouncements on Godard, although he made no public objection to the almost half-dozen citations of Godard affinity in Alfred Appel's very great "Nabokov's Dark Cinema," in which it's revealed that Jean-Pierre Melville's Parvenescu character in "Breathless" was directly inspired by Nabokov, and that the answer to the ambition question ("To become immortal, and then die") was lifted from a Nabokov interview. In "Strong Opinions" Nabokov mentions more than once that he's tickled by the fact that an actress named Anna Karina is playing Margot in the film version of "Laughter in the Dark." That she was Godard's wife goes unremarked by the maestro. I suspect he was just not familiar with the guy's stuff.

As for "Film Socialisme," well, no, I wouldn't call it a puckish satire on contemporary mores or anything like that.

BTW, I'm kind of sleepy at the moment, so I'm gonna wait until tomorrow to put up some "Social Network" thoughts. But I like, I like, very much.

[bstrong]

@bill: You are right, I don't think Nabokov would have liked Godard. For one thing, can you imagine him approving of a film with Socialisme in the title?

But Glenn's description of the movie—I saw it today too—is pretty spot on. The movie is filled with lots of funny, silly, beautiful imagery—just Patti Smith, alone, wandering around this cruise ship at all hours with an acoustic guitar... so excellent. But that Jews created Hollywood comment was just weird. It was like, duh, and your point is?

For what it's worth, my wife, bless her heart, doesn't get Godard. She also doesn't like Mark E. Smith. Life is imperfect.

And as much as I was more excited about Film Socialisme than The Social Network at 7:45am, when I got on line, Fincher is the one who knocked my proverbial socks off. It was crazy good.

[Jaime]

Very strong review! Worthy of Rosenbaum. (That's intended as a compliment, I hope you take it as such.)

It seems like, more than any director, JLG requires an inventory not only of what's going on in the picture, but of artist intntionality, as well. The latter is much abused and usually inconsequential, but I think he permits it, which is why, I think, he gets in hot water with folks: his work is difficult and HE IS difficult, and so on. But this works in his favor when it comes to crix who have the stones to power through the cramp.

[Jaime]

That should be "intentionality," natch.

[Matthias Galvin]

This isn't going to turn into one of those Finnegans Wake type things where it's so dense that you have to look again, but not SO dense that to descend into minutiae would be more than partially rewarding, is it?

well, at least say how it compares to Histoire(s) du Cinema
(on a stylistic level--not on fundamental content)

[Oliver_C]

The phrase "late capitalism" has never convinced me any more than Fukuyama's similarly overconfident "end of history".

[Glenn Kenny]

@ Matthias: To break it down, I'd say the film's third part comes closest to approximating the style of "Histoire(s)," and that part is the most sustainedly "essayistic." The second part, mixing, among other things, the great Godard themes of gas stations and attractive young women, is a gentler, more pastoral play on themes from "Numero Deux" and "Weekend." And much of the first part plays like something relatively new under the Godardian sun.

@ Oliver C: Somehow I'm tempted to invoke Steve Martin's "Well excuuuuuuuse me," but instead I'll just say that I didn't write "late capitalism;" I wrote "late late capitalism," by which I was hoping to imply something that I obviously didn't, at least not to you.

[dm494]

Glenn, just a small correction to your balanced piece on this film: the target paintings are Kenneth Noland's work--unless Jasper Johns did some too that I'm not aware of.

By the way, it's disappointing that those subtitles aren't in real Navajo.

[Glenn Kenny]

@ dm494: No, I know Noland's stuff, but I did mean Johns; see here:

http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&source=imghp&biw=1113&bih=636&q=Jasper+Johns+target&gbv=2&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

[dm494]

Glenn, thanks for the link; I stand corrected myself. Funny thing is, I must have seen those paintings a million times before and completely forgotten--which is a little embarassing for someone who prides himself on knowing his painters. This is yet another reminder to myself not to operate too much on the basis of hair-trigger associations like Noland=target paintings, Johns=American flags and canvases of gray, etc.

[Glenn Kenny]

@dm494: Don't sweat it, I actually do pretty much the same thing ALL THE TIME, and am usually corrected—by My Lovely Wife at home, by Griff here, and so on—in good time. But while we're here, people should be able to get a load of Noland's work as well. One way it's different from Johns' is that he's not ever painting the same target, so to speak.

http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&safe=off&q=Noland%20Target%20Paintings&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1063&bih=551

[colinr0380]

I haven't had a chance to see the film except in sped up trailer form yet, but wonder if these 'compound word' subtitles could be kind of Orwellian, at least as much as social media influenced - the use of broader and broader definitions that end up being stretched so far that they lose all specific meaning. Like the idea of 'Socialism' itself.

A question I have following seeing the trailer and noting the comment about the punning of 'Goldberg' - does "de l'or" get used as a pun on Jacques Delor?

[Jaime]

"the use of broader and broader definitions that end up being stretched so far that they lose all specific meaning. Like the idea of 'Socialism' itself."

Or "film."

[Glenn Kenny]

@ Colin: If he did make a Delors pun, I didn't catch it. The political figures that get the lion's share of allusions are, not entirely surprisingly, Hitler and Stalin.

[Stephen]

Glenn,

I concur with a lot of what you say here. An excellent review. For me the film is a magnificent melange of the intellectual and the visceral, the abstract and the tender.

I wasn't able to follow the Navajo subtitles - I thought they distracted from the understanding rather than adding to it. On the DVD you can just remove them which is a blessing.

I think Godard does have his finger on the pulse because he talks about the root of problems that go in cycles - ownership of land, money, war, inheritances. "Ancient to the Future" as you say. I don't mind him being a fly in the ointment - you never really know if he means what he says anyway. Moreover there is a crucial difference between criticising the Jewish people and being anti-semitic which implies prejudice and hatred.

The pretentious musing threatens to grate at times but the beauty of the images, peculiar rhythms of the editing and flickers of inspired thinking are wonderful.

I wrote something myself on it here:

http://checkingonmysausages.blogspot.com/2010/10/film-socialisme-jean-luc-godard.html