Many people thought Godard's previous film, "Goodbye to Language" would be his last, and maybe in some sense it was. It might have marked the last time Godard would go out into the world to make a movie. This work consists of an astonishing array of found footage taken from a vast array of sources from film history with Godard ruminating over his home-made montage.
Most of Godard's films from the last twenty or so years have been works of philosophy as much or more than narrative, but this is a pure essay film, one might say as pure a work of philosophy as one is likely to see projected in a cinema. It is concerned, as the title suggests, with words and images, a binary Godard has long questioned. Both mediums are attempts at representation and, as Godard narrates directly at one point, every representation does violence to that which it seeks to represent. Representations are utopias, and they seek to foster onto reality a comforting totality. Artworks do so to the world in much the same way that totalitarian governments (or any state?) attempt to do to populations.
As the film progresses, the narrator begins to narrate a narrative. He imagines an oil-poor country in the "middle east" that is so deprived of resources that even US imperialism is indifferent to its fate. Precisely because of this isolation, a Marxist front, speaking a political language from the previous century, is able to launch a successful, and legitimately proletarian, revolution without interference from the capitalist world. Yet this survival is exactly what makes the insurgency irrelevant to "world revolution". This is the representation, the utopia, that Godard leaves us with.
The artist repeatedly reprimands himself (all of us?) for reengaging in oppressive utopias, and in particular for the outdated nature of his last story. But to attempt to posit a future, one must always turn to the past, and perhaps this is just why all representation is oppressive. Godard is clearly also still in wonder at the beauty of the cinematic images in his collection. Perhaps no representation, no projection, would be the least oppressive thing, but it also seems lifeless. The last image he shows us is one of celebration, laughter, death and horror.
Godard has, arguably, been as influential as a critic as he has been as a filmmaker. And there is perhaps no major autuer whose work is as self-consciously meta-cinematic as that of Godard. This last work, if it will be the director's last, strips the self-reflective nature of his oeuvre to its core: just the man and the movies.
Most of Godard's films from the last twenty or so years have been works of philosophy as much or more than narrative, but this is a pure essay film, one might say as pure a work of philosophy as one is likely to see projected in a cinema. It is concerned, as the title suggests, with words and images, a binary Godard has long questioned. Both mediums are attempts at representation and, as Godard narrates directly at one point, every representation does violence to that which it seeks to represent. Representations are utopias, and they seek to foster onto reality a comforting totality. Artworks do so to the world in much the same way that totalitarian governments (or any state?) attempt to do to populations.
As the film progresses, the narrator begins to narrate a narrative. He imagines an oil-poor country in the "middle east" that is so deprived of resources that even US imperialism is indifferent to its fate. Precisely because of this isolation, a Marxist front, speaking a political language from the previous century, is able to launch a successful, and legitimately proletarian, revolution without interference from the capitalist world. Yet this survival is exactly what makes the insurgency irrelevant to "world revolution". This is the representation, the utopia, that Godard leaves us with.
The artist repeatedly reprimands himself (all of us?) for reengaging in oppressive utopias, and in particular for the outdated nature of his last story. But to attempt to posit a future, one must always turn to the past, and perhaps this is just why all representation is oppressive. Godard is clearly also still in wonder at the beauty of the cinematic images in his collection. Perhaps no representation, no projection, would be the least oppressive thing, but it also seems lifeless. The last image he shows us is one of celebration, laughter, death and horror.
Godard has, arguably, been as influential as a critic as he has been as a filmmaker. And there is perhaps no major autuer whose work is as self-consciously meta-cinematic as that of Godard. This last work, if it will be the director's last, strips the self-reflective nature of his oeuvre to its core: just the man and the movies.