I heard many good things about In Praise of Love- and a few very bad things- so I proceeded with the same caution with most of director Jean-Luc Godard's later films. I thought that, at best, it could call as the grand 21st century precursor to Notre Musique, his latest film, which is one of his best in many years. But watching In Praise of Love is, in some ways, even more frustrating than his bad films because it's one of his better films as a director of scenery and compositions, of attaining that "Paris" mood with his lens. He also has some points here and there that are worth listening too. Unfortunately, a lot of them are also full of hot air, and practically border on being the senile rantings of a man past his prime- ironically a film that is meant to be all about memory, what it means to remember one's country, one's personal history, one's culture, and, if luck should have it, one's possible love. There's also an underlying bitterness to the proceedings too, and even when I heard and saw the sparks of poetry that made me remember seeing the films of his prime in the 1960s, there's also a good deal here that had me raising eyebrows.
Maybe that was bound to be my reaction to it, anyway. After all, I'm not just another person walking this Earth, I'm a stupid American without a history who watched Hollywood movies that are, in reality, controlled by the government. At least, that's what Godard would say. And, as well, that because we're the United States of America, we don't really have a country anyway, unlike Mexico or Brazil or whatever. Why doesn't he just use his mouth-piece actors and call me "fatty fatty fat-fat" and get it over with? Ironically as well, this is a filmmaker who once said "there's no use having sharp images when you have fuzzy ideas." Well, a good deal of the ideas are fuzzy here. Though on the reverse side there are a few that are pretty sharp. Like when the character Edgar, the main link in the story who's in part one (the black and white filmed section) an auditioning filmmaker for his project and in part two (digital) doing research two years before, talks to a woman about thinking of something, but thinking of something else. It's much simpler an idea than a lot of the other semantics Godard floats around, and it's actually a good little speech. I also thought the old men (wait, is 'old' right according to Godard, or child, can't say) discussing their own pasts, and what it means for them, or what it doesn't mean. That it's still there for them, their own horrors and occasional joys, are enough.
But what becomes all the more frustrating are the ideas that don't hold any water, or seem a little patched together from scraps of notes from Godard's ramblings out on the streets of Paris and, of course, by his long-loved beach scenery. What am I to make of the whole concept of there being no adults, or there being adults? Or the blank pages in the books (nothingness I guess, that memory of what's written is no more, I had no idea really). Or the not-too-subtle attacks on Spielberg? How do we know what Godard is saying to is really true anyway, because of the veneer and sometimes appeal of the documentary form? And what confounds me more is how at times, when the usual tactic of Godard's to do the overlapping conversations- this time in different languages in spurts- didn't bother me as much, as I found that to be an interesting way for Edgar to go about hearing things and experiencing people's words and memories for his 'project'. Unlike past Godard entries, particularly King Lear and Nouvelle Vague (1990), the poetry, if it is as such, in Godard's essay-form of film-making holds some water here, and there are a few passages that come along that are striking, that do connect with the splendid street photography and other set-ups.
Nevertheless, it's still hard for me to recommend the picture, unless you're already a Godard fan and will check it out either way of what I say, because of the sense deep down of a cranky deconstructivism in Godard's messages, and unlike his best satires and experimental work doesn't have the balls to call on both sides (Week End had that best). So, France has a "real" memory and American doesn't? Why, because Shakespeare wrote half his plays there? I'm not against people who want to put some criticism to Americans *thoughtfully*, but when done in such a blunt, repetitive tactic, it becomes less like philosophy and socio-political discourse than it becomes more like name-calling and shallow, chronic dissatisfaction with any system outside of his own, albeit with some reservations there too. In Praise of Love is not one of Godard's worst, but it stops and goes in how it really connects, and at the end I wondered- aside from getting the shots of Paris and the countryside with his great DP, and the small bits of inspiration- why the hell Godard is still even making films anyway.
Maybe that was bound to be my reaction to it, anyway. After all, I'm not just another person walking this Earth, I'm a stupid American without a history who watched Hollywood movies that are, in reality, controlled by the government. At least, that's what Godard would say. And, as well, that because we're the United States of America, we don't really have a country anyway, unlike Mexico or Brazil or whatever. Why doesn't he just use his mouth-piece actors and call me "fatty fatty fat-fat" and get it over with? Ironically as well, this is a filmmaker who once said "there's no use having sharp images when you have fuzzy ideas." Well, a good deal of the ideas are fuzzy here. Though on the reverse side there are a few that are pretty sharp. Like when the character Edgar, the main link in the story who's in part one (the black and white filmed section) an auditioning filmmaker for his project and in part two (digital) doing research two years before, talks to a woman about thinking of something, but thinking of something else. It's much simpler an idea than a lot of the other semantics Godard floats around, and it's actually a good little speech. I also thought the old men (wait, is 'old' right according to Godard, or child, can't say) discussing their own pasts, and what it means for them, or what it doesn't mean. That it's still there for them, their own horrors and occasional joys, are enough.
But what becomes all the more frustrating are the ideas that don't hold any water, or seem a little patched together from scraps of notes from Godard's ramblings out on the streets of Paris and, of course, by his long-loved beach scenery. What am I to make of the whole concept of there being no adults, or there being adults? Or the blank pages in the books (nothingness I guess, that memory of what's written is no more, I had no idea really). Or the not-too-subtle attacks on Spielberg? How do we know what Godard is saying to is really true anyway, because of the veneer and sometimes appeal of the documentary form? And what confounds me more is how at times, when the usual tactic of Godard's to do the overlapping conversations- this time in different languages in spurts- didn't bother me as much, as I found that to be an interesting way for Edgar to go about hearing things and experiencing people's words and memories for his 'project'. Unlike past Godard entries, particularly King Lear and Nouvelle Vague (1990), the poetry, if it is as such, in Godard's essay-form of film-making holds some water here, and there are a few passages that come along that are striking, that do connect with the splendid street photography and other set-ups.
Nevertheless, it's still hard for me to recommend the picture, unless you're already a Godard fan and will check it out either way of what I say, because of the sense deep down of a cranky deconstructivism in Godard's messages, and unlike his best satires and experimental work doesn't have the balls to call on both sides (Week End had that best). So, France has a "real" memory and American doesn't? Why, because Shakespeare wrote half his plays there? I'm not against people who want to put some criticism to Americans *thoughtfully*, but when done in such a blunt, repetitive tactic, it becomes less like philosophy and socio-political discourse than it becomes more like name-calling and shallow, chronic dissatisfaction with any system outside of his own, albeit with some reservations there too. In Praise of Love is not one of Godard's worst, but it stops and goes in how it really connects, and at the end I wondered- aside from getting the shots of Paris and the countryside with his great DP, and the small bits of inspiration- why the hell Godard is still even making films anyway.