Passion

Passion was the kind of Jean-Luc Godard picture I would watch rather late at night, ironically enough, thinking of it and other works of his like digging into a good book as something fulfilling before conking out. There are things that make this effort quite reccomendable, albeit I'm not sure how I would react to it overall if seen again in the context of a sunny day and some more concentration going on. What remains striking, even when Godard was at his most slumming-it points in the 80s (and he had quite a few) are the images as done by a master of the camera. The opening shot is one of these, with the airplane far off in the sky letting out its white line of smoke, photographed to a classical composition playing in the background. It has a feel of the documentary, but the push of something more operatic in the meaning behind the image. This could go for what is most significant about the rest of the film, where- per usual as one of Godard's most love-hate subjects- cinema itself is dissected though what could be more like abstract documentary figures as characters.

The one asset to a film like Passion, at least in comparison to other works at this period for the filmmaker, is that there is at least something of a story going on, something that doesn't shut out a viewer entirely by the banality of overused semantics and images that end up evoking a disinterest in the distance of subject to viewer. There's even a couple of conversations one sees from time to time with the characters that go towards at least coherent and at best with a good edge at the struggles of film-making and the hassles of love, or half-hearted lust. The only problem then comes with some of this just being so experimental that it ends up closing off some viewers. I remember one segment that had the inklings of being a compelling scene, where Godard shows the filming within the filming (if it is that, maybe it isn't) of a period piece being filmed. There's many faces and narration going over each face and image, but one's attention (at least mine anyway) waxed and waned. This may or may not be Godard's fault; in fact, one of the points that Godard has in his main filmmaker character having to make a film on TV is how mixed forms of media can be sort of antithetical. But to say that there are more than a couple of scenes and moments that foreshadow Godard's decent into pure (un-captivating) self-indulgence in his later years is present, even amid the nudity and classical music.

In narrative painting, a story is told by the image, either through the composition or devices such as registers or continuous narrative. In a film, the story and image are separate and the image is usually a reenactment of the story.

Jean-Luc Godard would say (and has said, more or less) that all art forms have an interrelationship and interchangeability. With this philosophy in mind he used his work to try to break down film from its conceptual boundaries of the narrative. In a sense this is a beautiful gesture, and I'm not denying this, but this manifesto-based approach to art- making leads to a lot more of explaining yourself than creating original work. The Godard film I want to put in question is called Passion (1982). It scandalizes the film vernacular of that postmodern trope, the film within the film. It goes behind the scenes of film-making, but the mock-film, which is also titled Passion, has no plot. It simply recreates a few painting "masterpieces" on film with real characters, on a real scale. The seminal painting- reenactment is Eugene Delacroix's The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople.

Delacroix truly wanted to revolutionize narrative painting of the Romantic period in France. He was fed up with the conservatism introduced by painters like David. So rather than painting simple, yet psychological moments in a narrative like The Death of Marat, he tried to expand the modes of depicting narrative. The result of this effort is evident in The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople, completed in 1838, at the height of his career. His mode for this painting is somewhere between narrative registers and a theatrical moment (such as the moment Géricault chose for Raft of the Medusa). Elements of story are scattered around the chaos of the historical event: a woman kneels over her fallen friend, an old man tries to protect a young woman from the crusaders on horseback, another man fights a soldier on the steps of a temple, etc. At face value, it looks a bit like an epic painting, but it isn't. Epic paintings always have a shining moment; in Delacroix's, every moment shines in its own way. So while Delacroix's practice wasn't necessarily interdisciplinary, it most certainly zigzagged across painting genres. This aspect of the work is probably one of the Godard's interests in Delacroix, being that Godard was a seminal figure in the development of the shiftiest art movement to date, postmodernism.

The understanding that there are separate shining moments in both Godard's Passion and Delacroix's The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople is very important to the interpretation of these works. As Jerzy, the director of Godard's film within the film said, "An image is not beautiful because it is brutal and eerie it is because the solidarity between ideas is distant and just." This line is incredibly profound, because it lays out the truth of art and life in general before the work; that truth is that all ideas are conceived disparate from one another because ideas come out of experience, which coincidentally is a paraphrasing of another one of Jerzy's lines. This idea becomes more important as the movie progresses. The other painting-reenactments, which appear closer to the beginning of the movie, are simply still images transferred to three dimensions and then recorded on film; but when he gets to the Delacroix scene (which was the most modern of the paintings and also stretched the concept of narrative the most), he is true to his philosophy. The characters begin the scene by reenacting the sacking of Constantinople, so as to have the experience, each one on an individual level, to be able to depict it. The action, which was being filmed, didn't even seem important to the filmmakers, in fact some of the production assistants were yelling at the actors (especially the women who were pretending rather convincingly to be raped and harassed) to get back into their places, as if they were supposed to be standing still. The action became a way for the still image to fall into place on a more real level than could be composed (a testament to Godard's philosophies).

So there you have it, another piece of writing about ambitious men who wanted to make their mark on civilization (and if you pay attention to the gender relations in this movie, this is appropriate to mention). There's a lot of pressure out their for the ambitious man, and he is extremely sensitive. It's a tiring job for people who are more interested in theory than something more tangible (medium over message). And so they deal in epics and ambiguity. Godard, intent on advancing the medium of film is torn between writing stories and making abstractions that somehow incorporate characters. His answer, make a film about a filmmaker, making a film with master paintings in it. In the end, he creates a crypt filled so much with briefly explored theories (which may be too much to really comprehend) that it essentially becomes meaningless. Let's face it, Godard's Passion is a puzzle, and Delacroix's The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople is a puzzle with historical information behind it. I'd have to say that watching Godard's Passion was like being spoon-fed personal beliefs; not a work, but his philosophy. But, I liked it. As an artist, it is liberating to think of what Godard proposed with his reenactment of the invasion of Constantinople. Maybe if I get into the right groove, my work will somehow form out of a rehashing of my experiences, and I can make my experiences as exciting as a reenactment of The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople.

Godard scholarship, lined along the axes of variants of French post-structuralism, would appear to have gotten it all wrong: a Godard movie can't be assimilated into a coherent and non-self-contradictory statement about work, gender, representation, or whatever academically approved topic you might name; it can't even be assimilated into a coherent process. What has to be confronted is that the work is essentially diaristic and subjective; these films are the more or less uncensored insides of Godard's head, not a white paper on a topic (no matter how "challenging" or "frustrating to expectations").

It also must be acknowledged that for Godard, even ideation is essentially sensuous, aestheticisable; ideas, like a piece of irruptive slapstick staging, a stale aphorism, a blast of the Mozart Requiem, are objects of delectation and desire, and finally repositories of aesthetic emotion--handwrapped presents. To say that the ideology of Godard's Maoist period was finally another aesthetic object for him is not to condescend to him as a radical-chicster. Very simply, Godard is an artist for whom the gland that produces aesthetic feeling works ten times more overtime than anyone else.

This produces the jarring and sometimes tonic feeling that we are overhearing the disordered and associative thoughts of God as He falls asleep. In a late, lyric work like HELAS POUR MOI, this quality becomes transcendent: the film is like a communication from a higher alien intelligence. In PASSION, that desire to aestheticize everything in sight, to wave a wand marked "excruciating beauty," in essence to make like a cinematic Goldfinger, is tripped up by the story Godard was required to tell in order to receive funding.

The necessity of telling a story is one of the (many) subjects that flit by in this production, which followed Godard's minorly popular comeback, EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF. And the story Godard tells is so halfheartedly offered it disrupts the all-pervasive atmosphere of heightened lyricism he generates elsewhere. In essence, it's the same old movie about the making of a movie: the director (Jerzy Radzilowicz) is an idiot caught between a virginal proletarian (Isabelle Huppert!) and a slatternly hanger-on (Hanna Schygulla). The director pontificates, the producer (Michel Piccoli) avoids paying checks, and the inevitable phone calls for completion funds are delivered in dirty rooms.

If this reminds you of everything from BEWARE OF A HOLY WHORE to LIVING IN OBLIVION you're right; but nothing in those movies compared to Godard's strategy of contempt-uously making his stars Huppert and Piccoli stutter and cough, respectively. Or to the moment when a grip tells a child extra out of nowhere, "O those who will come after us--do not harden your hearts against us."

PASSION reminded me of John Simon's review of LE GAI SAVOIR, which began in the manner of, "I have seen no movie more illucid, arbitrary, and, yes, insane as..." PASSION genuinely is insane--it raises every line, every gesture, every landscape to a plane of unbearable intensity, and refuses to draw any lines between them. The cumulative effect suggests the personality of a slightly depressed but highly stimulated schizophrenic. Godard's late work is so beyond the prison of our narrative and identificational expectations that we may have to wait several lifetimes for its voice to be genuinely, not just indulgingly, heard.

This is a good introduction to late-period Godard: all (ideological) passion spent, Oncle Jean is just going to show us a good time. Pretty girls lolling around the pool naked, glamourous stars like Hanna Schygulla with little to do, Isabelle Huppert when she could still play dewy-eyed ingenues, a ridiculous peplum being filmed by greedy, unscrupulous types (the director should have been played by Jacques Dutronc instead of that dour Polish actor).

It's 1982,these are the Thatcher-Reagan years, nobody thinks about Vietnam or the Palestinians or civil wars in Africa--people only want to make money. Godard gives us hip product-placement, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Mozart instead of Coke or Pepsi.

After 13 years spent in the wilderness of Marxist cine-verite' political commentary, the infant terrible of the French New Wave movement Jean-Luc Godard made a much-touted return to mainstream film-making with SAUVE QUI PEUT (LA VIE) aka EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF (in the U.S.) and SLOW MOTION (in the U.K.) and, for this occasion, the director chose to collaborate with eminent screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere. The result is one of Godard's better latter-day works but, having now caught up with his successive work (apparently also featuring the uncredited hand of Carriere) PASSION, I find myself once again bewildered; while his next few films – FIRST NAME: CARMEN (1983), DETECTIVE (1985) and HAIL, MARY (1986) – once again show a marginal improvement, by all accounts he would again alienate much of his audiences with the remainder of his filmography, of which I am only familiar with the equally frustrating NOUVELLE VAGUE (1990).

Apart from the aforementioned Carriere, PASSION also reunited Godard with Raoul Coutard (although Vittorio Storaro had actually been his first choice) – director and cinematographer had not worked together since their 1960s heyday (more precisely on Godard's surreal road movie masterpiece WEEK-END {1967}) – as well as actors Isabelle Huppert (from SLOW MOTION, where she had played a prostitute) and Michel Piccoli (from CONTEMPT, where he had been a cuckolded screenwriter). The latter film would make a telling comparison with PASSION since they both deal with the world of international movie-making but, while the earlier example did not sacrifice entertainment value when expressing its intellectual integrity, the same cannot be said of the film under review! In fact, the film-within-a-film being shot here seeks, for no particular reason, to recreate some famous tableaux on celluloid underscored by an operatic soundtrack...but, never having been too much of a fan of paintings or opera, regarding them as highbrow artistic mediums, PASSION becomes a pretentious ride to nowhere (Poland notwithstanding)! Indeed, exiled Polish film-maker Jerzy Radziwilowicz decides to head back home at the very end and both Hanna Schygulla and Isabelle Huppert decide to join him on a whim.

The film's Polish director seems more interested in (and distracted by) the two stars (Schygulla plays a hotel owner who is factory owner Piccoli's mistress and Huppert a rebellious factory worker) than in getting anything shot; in a way, I can relate to his inertia since these past two weeks I have not gotten much 'work' done because of a trio of female friends I have been in contact with! Besides, Jerzy is forever complaining of the inadequacy of "Mr. Coutard"'s lighting; amusingly, everybody appearing in the film plays a character with a similar first name as the actor playing him! Ultimately, however, for all the film's intermittent (and frankly slight) amusements (Piccoli has an annoyingly consistent cough, a penchant for roses, and is made to dodge one persistent creditor throughout the film), the sheer fact that female 'actresses' on the set do nothing but pose and shed their clothing for gratuitous full-frontal nudity at times makes the film seem uncomfortably like a highbrow Tinto Brass effort or a lowbrow Peter Greenaway one!

The film was included in Lionsgate 3-Disc Set of Godard films along with FIRST NAME: CARMEN, DETECTIVE and OH, WOE IS ME (1993); like its predecessor, Godard shot a featurette on the making of his current film but, unfortunately, it has not been included in the enclosed supplements and this is one of the reasons why I opted to obtain the film from ulterior sources. Despite my reservations, PASSION was up for the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival (where it competed against eventual co-winner Costa-Gavras' MISSING, Lindsay Anderson's BRITANNIA HOSPITAL, Werner Herzog's FITZCARRALDO, Wim Wenders' HAMMETT, Michelangelo Antonioni's IDENTIFICATION OF A WOMAN, Jerzy Skolimowski's MOONLIGHTING, The Taviani Brothers' THE NIGHT OF THE SHOOTING STARS {1981} and Ettore Scola's LA NUIT DE VARENNES and, ironically, won a prize for Coutard!) and nominated for a couple of Cesar awards (where it competed against the Carriere-scripted DANTON and THE RETURN OF MARTIN GUERRE!).