Je vous salue, Marie

Hail Mary (1985)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

I guess it goes without saying but here's yet another religious film that sparked off controversy when originally released. There were mobs of protesters at theaters across the world and even the Catholic Church tried to get it banned even though God knows they should have been dealing with other issues and not a movie. With that said, I'm really not sure what any of the fuss was about as the film never once offends God, Mary, Joseph or Jesus. In the film, Mary (Myriem Roussel) is your typical teenager who enjoys playing basketball and working at her father's gas station. Her boyfriend Joseph (Thierry Rode), a taxi driver, is getting frustrated because Mary won't let him touch her after dating for two years but his fears and jealous grow worse when Mary turns up pregnant. Godard re-telling this story in modern times is a pretty interesting touch and I think the final message from the movie is that Mary was human like any other woman and not just a cartoon character. Pretty much the said thing Martin Scorsese did with The Last Temptation of Christ in terms of Jesus being a real human and we all know the controversy that film started. As for this film, I really don't see any need for any type of controversy. Mary is seem naked throughout the movie so perhaps this is what some got upset about but I'm pretty sure the real Mary was naked at some point in her life. I think Godard handles the film fairly well even though we get several scenes of Godard being Godard with some strange edits, rambling nonsense and some scenes that amount to nothing. I'm not sure what Godard's reasons where for making this film but I think the utter strangeness really helps the film and certainly makes it stand out among other religious movies. Roussel is terrific in the role of Mary and really captures the confused teenage nature of the role. I thought she was very good in the way she handles her character's thoughts, feelings and emotions. The support cast also turns in fine work. Back to the nudity, which seems to raise a lot of controversy. Mary is often challenged with the question that is the body a part of the soul or is the soul a part of the body. I think this wondering by Mary makes good use of the nudity and that the nude actress isn't just being shown to arouse male viewers or to be anywhere near pornographic. Godard's use of classical music is another nice bonus as are some great shots of the wilderness. I've read several reviews of this film, which range from four-stars to a BOMB but I'm somewhere in the middle.

There is something about Godard that I find hypnotic. Even when you know it's not right, it still seems like it is perfect for the cinema! The way he moves his characters about within a frame. The mannerisms and political diatribe he allows his actors to divulge in, and sometimes the crude visual beauty makes for some mind stimulating cinema. And for this one, he pushes it that little bit further, as he does with all his work. The older he gets, the more eccentric he has become, and the more fascinating he is. To me, this is his last real masterpiece before he became the mad professor of the Wacky Cinema According To Godard!

Hmmm...I don't know if anything that I say about this movie will be relevant to anyone else. This movie has been in my consciousness for over 20 years and has influenced me in one way or another.

Trivia: It was because of the moving and sublime use of Mahler's 9th and Bach's Partita in this movie that I sought out the works of these composers and they've since become important points in my musical foundation.

At the lake the professor speaks of signals from outer space, the sound in the background is an electronic bzzt bzzt...but in the next shot we see the sound is merely the professor's magic marker as he doodles.

Mary politely nodding to instructions given by her basketball coach while piano music (J.S.Bach's wtc book1 prelude 1) swells in and out overwhelming the coach and the noise on the basketball court. She is still smiling and nodding and acting according to the earthly matters at hand even though The Voice calls to her. It is a very beautiful piece of cinema.

Mary and Joseph talking on the pier. In order to see him, Mary has to block out the blinding sun with her hand: that's the whole meaning of Mary brilliantly focused into one image.

The "oui, non" strophe/antistrophe appears first as a monologue by the student guiding the rubik's cube manipulator's hand to the solution, and then later as a monologue by Mary guiding Joseph's hand.

The "oui, non" strophe/antistrophe also appears in Godard's short film "Armide", his part of "Aria".

The little girl angel instructing Mary to "be pure, be tough." (I only have the Japanese DVD, so I'm paraphrasing. The original French is more flowing.) This is the first New Wave film - the first Godard film - I ever saw.

I discovered Jean-Luc Godard by reading James Monaco's "The New Wave".

I only plucked the Monaco book off the library shelf because at the time I was obsessed with "New Wave" bands like The Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Smiths, New Order, etc.

The lipstick circles Myriem Roussel's open mouth, the end.

First of all, the supposed obscurity or the film. The first bit, 'The Book of Mary', is a short directed by Godard's partner and long-time collaborator, Anne-Marie Mieville. Its main connection with 'Hail Mary' is that the girl, Mary, is called Mary... Oh, and that the two films are always shown together.

Watching 'Hail Mary' while the religionists are fighting one of their wars, I find it embarrassing to admit I noticed, but: there's nothing obscure about the film; it's a dead straight retelling of all that bible stuff. A lot of the film's pleasure is recognition: oh, that was The Annunciation! Look, Jesus has run off to the Temple! Of course, Eve and her Czech emigre lover don't have anything to do with Mary and Joseph, but as soon as you realise that it's him, rather than her, who's important, it becomes clear: Oh, yeah, he's that 'voice crying in the wilderness', making ways straight, etc, John the Baptist! This is where the problems start. Visually, the film's amazing: nudes, lakescapes, sunrises, moons--transcendent images are rarely so alluring. But when religious ideas are 'updated'--the baptist as a prophet of computers and Rubik Cubes; Gabriel as air-travel--they just seem arbitrary, and the attempt to preserve their transcendent qualities plays itself out as farce. By the end, despite the technical accomplishment, I'm left thinking Godard's accidentally remade Life of Brian.

Worth seeing for the glimpse of Binoche, though, while she's still the sexiest hen about, and before The New Bridge Lovers turned her face into a bourgoise fetish.

Let's just get this out of the way: Either you "get" Jean-Luc Godard, or you don't. He's a little like some of the abstract expressionist painters: some find beauty within their works, others see nothing but washes of color. He also works in a very impressionistic manner, and for anyone looking for traditional storytelling, most of his films will be frustrating at best. It's not even so much a question of "intelligence" or not; more like some people relate to certain forms of poetry more than others.

The Review:

I saw Hail Mary when it came out in 1985 in the one indie theater in Wash. DC brave enough to show it despite threats and a line of protesters (none of whom had seen it, of course!) came away deeply affected, even if I didn't quite understand everything he was going for. It was like reading a poem by TS Elliot: lyrical, magical, circular, and certainly way "out there." But what "it" was I knew then as I do now: It never set out to be anti-Christian, blasphemous or disrespectful to the Biblical figure of Mary.

The movie starts from the place of the basics of the original nativity story but in the late 20th century: Average but chaste girl who is also strong-willed and independent being told that she will become pregnant via divine intervention. Disbelieving at first, she begins to feel that it is actually true, standing firm under the accusations of infidelity by her somewhat simpleton boyfriend Josef.

Almost everything from that point on is like a poetic and subjective meditation on womanhood, motherhood, and the transformation each goes through in order to bring us all into the world. There are some side plots and a few fairly comic storylines that thread through, but that to me is the central heart of what Godard is considering. Nudity when used is naturalistic and not of a sexualized nature. Mary as a character is depicted as one of the strongest of any of the characters even if there are moments of doubt and internal conflict. Much of the film is shown in short vignette style, often with voice-over of Mary's thoughts.

The one area I found distracting was how abrupt many of the transitions, especially the music and general sound design, but also visually from scene to scene. I understand that this was for the most part intentional, but personally feel like it might have been more effective to have overlapping sound edits or fade-off than such abrupt cuts. Either way, now as then, I came away feeling inspired and thoughtful both regarding her story but the more universal story of motherhood that the film so obviously celebrates.

So why the controversy anyway? Though in my opinion the movie does not seek to be disrespectful to the figure of Mary, it doesn't seek to venerate or worship her either. For the people who object to the movie therein will be the problem (again, assuming they even see it at all). But that's NOT really the problem of the movie, it's the problem with how the figure of Mary has been deified into something far beyond a mere mortal woman. That mythologizing, to me is completely at odds of what made the story original story compelling in the first place. If Mary was always something of a demi-god then how does anything she went through even matter?

NOTE: Most streaming platforms still won't show Hail Mary, but the public library streaming service Kanopy does, so that is one option if you want to watch it.

THE BOOK OF MARY (short film) I should also mention all original screenings in its initial theatrical release were accompanied by the 30 min. Short film The Book of Mary (French: Le livre de Marie) by Godard's longtime companion/collaborator Anne-Marie Miéville. This is still the case with many streaming platforms.

Despite both having "Mary" characters, there seems to be almost no relation from the one film to the other, which probably contributes to many viewers confusion. It's a great little short, but personally I can't see how they relate.