King Lear

This isn't really an adaption of 'King Lear', it's King Lear as directed by the undisputed king of pretention himself...Jean-Luc Godard! In other words, aside from a few vague allusions and a scattering of lines from it, it has as much to do with Shakespeare's play as Cliff Richard has to do with grindcore metal, i.e. Nothing! Nothing at all! I actually can't be bothered to explain what its about but suffice to say, it is a true slice of patience-testing drivel that is up to Godard's lofty unwatchable standards. Burgess Meredith, Molly Ringwald and Woody Allen pitch up in it unbelievably. Even more incredibly, it was financed by Cannon Films, whose previous most highbrow production was that Sylvester Stallone movie about arm wrestling. It would have been funny at least to have seen their reaction when they finally sat down to check out the fruit of Godard's labours. But it is definitely less funny, when you remember you watched it yourself.

I don't know where to begin.

I cannot contain my contempt for this film (if I dare call it a film). In my opinion this is the worst Shakespeare adaptation committed to any art form anywhere in history. And one of the most egotistical pieces of rubbish in the annals of film.

It has NO USE. You couldn't even use this if you were doing a thesis of King Lear at college because this is faeces. Not to mention that it has hardly anything to do with the play King Lear. It has no plot, no interesting characters or character study and hardly anything in the way of decent direction.

And it is not just the fact that it lacks so much, it is the fact that what it does have is so goddamn terrible. Quotes and sayings repeated endlessly, terrible seagull sound effects that 1) happen in scenes where there are no seagulls and even scenes when we are indoors 2) happen in scenes when there is other dialogue going on and 3) are so loud that your ears begin to bleed (well, nearly).

I went to see this film because 1) I had only seen one other Godard movie Bande à Part (1964) and 2) I am a great Woody Allen fan. Now I mentioned earlier that this was egotistical and I will go further and say that this is sheer celluloid masturbation! Godard (in my opinion the most over rated director in cinema history) has almost become drunk with power, power gained from years of critics kissing his ass, and now believes he can do no wrong as long as he entertain and excites himself (i.e. masturbation). Another celluloid masturbator (for want of a better word) is Woody Allen, this shared hobby probably bringing the two together. But the one difference between these two is this, Woody Allen still has the gift to entertain and excited others as well as himself, whereas Godard lost this gift along long time before King Lear.

Now I have wasted enough time talking about this catastrophe.

I give it 0 out of 10.

P.S. If you want a really good Shakespeare adaptation try Throne of Blood (1957).

Radically obscurantist contemplation on Shakespeare's classic play presents itself as a wild associative stream of images and sound, in a for Godard typically brilliant montage, but presupposes an audience of polymaths; for everybody else it is of limited interest.

This must be a candidate for the most difficult film ever made. Great reviewers can't make head nor tail of it. It's Godard's own Finnegan's Wake-like dreamscape of the making of a film on the theme of King Lear, beginning with the contract, ending with the editing - a project that apparently turned into a nightmare. Hence the disjointed narrative, Alice in Wonderland elements, weird juxtapositions, elaborate pseudo-philosophies - all familiar components of delirious semi-consciousness. It's an anti-film, a film made deliberately to be disliked as much as it dislikes itself. Just as Godard's film about Lausanne, Lettre a Freddie Buache, consists of his refusal to make a film about Lausanne, so King Lear is his refusal to make the Lear required of him, while contract bound to make something.

It opens with an actual phonecall from the producer giving Godard a roasting for failing to deliver the film. The film that follows is Godard's response and is basically a middle finger to the Cannon Group and everyone else, focussing as it does, on the key word in the play: Nothing.

In the opening scenes, Norman Mailer and his daughter discuss the King Lear script he has just finished. It's unclear whether Mailer's actual script was ever going to be used, assuming he wrote one, or why Mailer himself would want to act the part, or why Godard would ever have agreed to make a film written and acted by Norman Mailer. Obscurities matched only by the resulting film itself. In any case it wasn't going to work. Perhaps to deliberately abort the project, Godard quickly succeeded in pissing off the Mailers who left in a huff. Godard blames the petulance of 'the great writer' and his daughter's inability to handle the pressure from various sides, including her father. That's one hell of an opening for a film, leaving us blinking and wondering what is going to happen, or not happen, next.

A kind of story pops up. A descendant of Shakespeare (Peter Sellars) is trying to recreate the Bard's works after all art has been lost in a nuclear catastrophe. In a Swiss hotel he finds Burgess Meredith and Molly Ringwald, vaguely recognised as Lear and Cordelia (power and virtue in contest), and from whom he gradually reconstructs the play. Mailer's idea of making Lear a mafia don resurfaces here. Meanwhile, Sellars is in pursuit of the mad Professor Pluggy (Godard, in a truly bizarre performance) who has crucial knowledge of how images should complement the words.

Pluggy's long and solemn thesis on words, images and reality is at the centre of the film. Life and images of life.Telling and showing. There is more than recreating a universe of words (says Pluggy). Images are purer. Images serve to connect two realities and meaning is created by reconciling these two realities. Their coming together in image form releases the emotive power. Contrary realities (Lear and Cordelia) don't come together. The strength of an image lies in the association of ideas it contains. Bringing them together is the function of the artist. This presumably also applies to sound - the use of sound in the film is astonishing - layered, atmospheric, and apparently insane - and presumably explains the seagulls that are heard at random intervals, even during interior scenes. This is all dream-theory. Barely understandable on a single viewing - perhaps complete gibberish - yet key to what the film is about: the struggle of the artist to create.

At the end, Woody Allen is splicing the film with safety pins while reciting an irrelevant Sonnet - a final swipe at the Americans who clearly should never have messed with Godard in the first place. His response was to deliver something that is probably Nothing with an artistic fiendishness ungraspable by mere mortals. According to your fondness for the director, it's either highly entertaining or unendurable punishment.

I can't say I've ever actually *liked* ANY film by Jean-Luc Godard (and I've actively hated several), but this late entry in his career is lighthearted and infectiously playful in its experimentation, especially early on, so that even when what it's trying to do doesn't come off, we still feel involved enough to roll along with it.

It was apparently first commissioned as a genuine, straightforward adaptation of Shakespeare's play, but the end result is a wild, free-associating modern creation of its own, much more to do with the process of adaptation than the play itself, and peopled almost entirely by famous faces such as Norman Mailer, Burgess Meredith, Julie Delphy, Molly Ringwald and even Woody Allen for a few seconds.

It's a very strange thing to exist, and many, I'm sure, would just find it insufferably pretentious (which it certainly is), but I still enjoyed it more than any of his efforts from the 60s and 70s, so take from that what you will.

P. S., you're definitely gonna need the subtitles on, particularly for Godard's own (English) scenes.