Remembering Filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, Mon Amour

A pleasant chill hung in the wee hours of morning, yet I felt cold inside out. This is not how it feels generally though. Birthdays are meant to be buoyant in my humble experience. Besides I am turning closer and closer to 30. Burrr… that is a strange sensation though. 

I pick myself up from the sad excuse of a bed and rush to the mirror inside the restroom. Splashing my face with water, a pair of strangely dull-bright eyes look back at me. My skin is slowly changing, and I can feel it at times. It just does not feel like before. Goodness, I wish I had the reckless abandon of the French women. Ah, the French. Oh, the French. I just remember Anna Karina’s beautifully done eyes, lazily looking through the window in Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville (1965). Her sleeves have a generic lace attachment, and she holds a much-used copy of the French surrealist poet Paul Éluard’s 1926 Capitale de la douleur (Capital of Pain). Like a child forced to rote some lesson. Honestly speaking, there is nothing to that image, yet I am strongly attracted to it. It is one of the very few images in cinema where a woman is not reduced to an object of fantasy. Except Karina’s hands and face, one can barely make anything out. How intriguing. 

“Everything has been said, provided words do not change their meanings, and meanings their words.”

Godard, mon amour. 

Only that old devil could do things this way.

At the risk of sounding pretentious, I must admit there are many, many times in the day that I think about Godard. I can also assure you that it does not stem either from my inclination for all things cinematic or my reverence for Godard’s audacity with the artform. Rather it is only a manner of philosophical bent that I tend to use every now and then when I find myself facing something mundane at the first look, and intriguing in the second. 

It is quite similar to an errant child hanging their head in between her legs just to look at the sky upside-down. Well, no judgements will be entertained in that direction. Thank you very much. 

Since it was a happy exception to all the birthdays I have had before, I decided to spend it in the happy company of my own self doing irrelevant things that bring me great joy. Exempli gratia, reading random excerpts from Lawrence Durrell, but never quite reading him fully. Or abruptly coming across visuals from an interesting film that I might not have watched earlier. Then I tend to read extensively on it, and finally end up watching it by the end of the day. Or the week, depending on my sorry engagements. Aim, and attempt not to miss. 

Godard, mon amour. 

Again, Anna Karina comes to me as Marianne Renoir peeking through the eye of a rifle (if that is what it is called, forgive my ignorance) in the 1965 Pierrot le Fou (“Pierrot the Fool”). There are yellow daisies around her as her hair is tied up in a ponytail. Her face, a picture of an adolescent certainly not up to something good, is intriguing as she leans on a ragged tree trunk. There is nothing murderous about this woman without a context. 

Godard’s obsession with disjointed storytelling could only be rivalled by his unorthodox handling of the camera. I quite love how his actions, believed to be experiments by some, were perhaps consciously and unconsciously devoted to the subtle practice of tearing the cinematic rulebook. In seeing cinema as an “instrument of knowledge”, Godard the critic, was drawn to its usage as both a “microscope” and a “telescope” with which he could yield the katana of his words to unreasonable standards. In his early twenties, Godard is said to have already started preparing the ground for his nonlinear storytelling. With every improvisation, his tendency to befuddle his audience kept on escalating. That is an audacity I deeply admire. Why bother with the non-essential grammar of things? Break glasses when you must, to create art when there is no need.

Where I was staying at that point of time, a section of the old brick boundary wall fell as I made my way to receive flowers from an unknown well-wisher. Some men had surrounded that section, seriously contemplating on what course of action was to be undertaken when there only seemed to be one. Re-erect the godforsaken wall. Which reminds me of Juliet Berto as Yvonne in the 1967 La Chinoise (“The Chinese”). Her face artistically bloodied, she whips out a submachine gun in a rampart made from an array of the Little Red Book and goes, “Taka tak, taka tak, taka tak…” The make-believe handling is still so fresh. Let us for a moment forget all of Godard’s politics. Let us only dwell into his aesthetics. Even in his political forthrightness, Godard was undertaking a lush play with bold colours. I guess he made it cool to be detached, and have that air of reckless abandon about oneself. 

Godard, mon amour.

If it is not already evident, my passion for Godard is inescapable if one were to initiate the slightest bit of conversation with me. In my conversations, in a selfish pursuit to comfort my own self, I have to bring forth cinema. Sometimes scheming my way through it. That is all I understand. That is all I can comment upon. Everything else I see around is too dangerous, divided and opinionated to be discussed. Best to avoid. So, once I bring cinema in, I drag Godard into that conversational ground, almost like a sack. A large fraction of people do not know who he is, which allows me the distinct privilege to explain. Or the other fraction is either happy to discuss or criticize him. It works either way for me, since the ball is in my court. 

With this spirit of devotion, yours truly decided to learn French in order to watch the devil’s cinema with full immersion. That is without the use of subtitles, if you will. Puritanically. The dawn of the coronavirus pandemic was married to this promise and it was, indeed, delivered to the best of one’s abilities. It took a lot of effort, if I may add, when the world simply did not know where it was headed, with information about death becoming as usual as the rates of consumables. Yet, this pursuit gave me a purpose, and a meaning, for which I shall ever be grateful. The things people do for love. 

Godard, mon amour. 

There was something very intimate and youthful about his cinema that allows his acolytes to see cinema differently from others. It offers us all an attempt to intellectualise discourses even when we have little understanding of the narrative. An opinion is an opinion. It does not matter where it is sourced from. In his provocatory cinematic exploits, Godard was always generous to add an eclectic concoction of allusions, poetry, and wisdom. The events and issues he pondered on decades ago, on second thoughts, are still quite relevant. The way the youth in his cinema appeared to think, is still very similar to how we think about issues at present, or used to think about earlier. How many filmmakers can claim that? This is perhaps the reason why his defiance and insolence make him our poster-boy. The man who proved that even in the make-believe charade of cinematic poetry, you can choose to express and understand your own truth. And it may change every single time you lay your eyes upon it, and that is quite all right. Since that is how reality has been sculpted. Circumstantial, faithless, and distant, but accessible if only you would demand. 

He taught us that appreciation for cinema need not only be limited to its criticism. It can, and must lead to a defiance where one makes the films that they wish to appreciate. That the possibilities are endless if only one would attempt. The attempt to make cinema that can function as living documents of cinematic criticism is a triumph that only Godard can be credited with. And when it all gets too overwhelming, it is completely fine to let it all go, and sink in a corner. 

Godard, mon amour.

All these are few of the elements that I deeply admire about the man and the myth. My issue with him is only in his timing. Though he had grown exhausted of simply being, could the man not have chosen another godforsaken date in the year? Of all the dates, he had to settle for my special day when I worship him so? A kook to the core, he did just that. 

Ruined the day, and the killed the already diminishing elation. What a way to grow old…

Earlier, I did wish to write about him ardently, but could not. A seething rage was burning inside. Juvenile, yes. Sentimental, indeed. Now that seems to have subsided a bit. I guess. 

Just like he had foretold in his first cinematic handiwork Breathless (1960), I believe his pursuit was unwillingly “To be immortal, and then die.” Good for him.

Hate to admit, but will declare nonetheless, Godard, mon amour. Every Man for Himself (1980).