Jean-Luc Godard allegedly once stated all that was needed for a film was a girl and a gun. However, once one strips his films of the pretty girl (Bardot, Karina, Seberg), along with the Raoul Coutard images and Michel Legrand (or George Delerue) music, all that is left is the director's gun trying to force the viewer to accept his political position.
Structured as a letter written on a trip to a woman named Rosa, Godard's travelogue visits a sick country, the former Czechoslovakia a year or two after the Russian invasion of 1968. Who is responsible for Czechoslovakia's sickness? Godard rails against the "Revisionists," those who have betrayed the Marxist-Leninist ideal. In the case of Czechoslovakia, Godard blames the former Soviet Union for invading but also Czechoslovakia for not staying true to the ideal and instead allowing Western business interests into their country.
Along the way, Godard attacks filmmaker Milos Forman for leaving to make a film for Paramount (actually, it was Universal that released Forman's Taking off, a much more entertaining movie than Pravda). Then, there are the Czech factory workers making parts for weapons for the North Vietnamese. The factory workers are normal guys just doing their jobs and trying to enjoy their lives. Yet, Godard has to take them to task for preferring to spend their time off watching entertaining movies instead of films that educate, like presumably the one that Godard is making. At this point, I became particularly annoyed. The idea of the workers all singing enthusiastically and working together for the good of the whole community, images the film includes, is a myth.
I watched Pravda the same week I was re-reading Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which deals, in part, with the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. I was not favorably inclined to like Pravda that week. However, even had I watched the film at a different time, I still think I would have been irritated, and a little sad to see the director of Alphaville, Contempt, and Vivre Sa Vie (all films I admire) making, intentionally or unintentionally, an apology for despotism.
