Salve-se Quem Puder (A Vida)

Sauve Qui Peut loosely translates as "every man for himself" and as such I guess is Godard's acknowledgment that 1968's dream of a new society is gone and everyone has to get on with the daily grind. The three protagonists try and save themselves in different ways, Natalie Baye through getting back to nature, Huppert through selling herself and the director Paul Godard through his work. Everyone however is ground down by the social relations they must operate within.

As ever Godard leverages as much of his library as he can into the film, with huge chunks of Duras, Bukowski and sundry other writers cut & pasted in. And he plays the usual games with sound and image, juxtaposing them sometimes to beautiful effect, sometimes dissonant, quite often very funny.

A lot of people find Godard's later work somewhat depressing and it's true it mostly lacks the fizz of his early 60's stuff, however there are compensations; he seems to be putting more of his heart as well as his head into the work in later years. There is more than enough here to draw you in and keep you watching for several viewings.

Somewhere about thirty minutes into the movie it struck me how much Godard loves something about movie-making. That's a rare feeling -- to watch a movie and feel the director's love, passion, or fascination for/with the medium. There's a character named Godard in the movie. He's a director. At one point, he says, "The only reason I make movies is because I haven't the strength to do nothing at all." One thinks that the Real Godard would have us believe the words were coming from him. BUT seeing his frames, his cuts, the way he sets the light -- the inventiveness of all of it -- you just feel his joy in the enterprise.

I never did quite 'get' Dali. All those contortions. Grotesque shapes. Stunted creatures. Then one day I saw clues. His 'melting pocket-watch' (The Persistence Of Memory) was not just a silly timepiece, bent out of shape like wax melting off a table. It was the fluidity of time, how we perceive time in different ways. When we have fun (for instance) and time seems to speed up. When we're bored, and it slows.

Our inner experience of time is affected by our perception. Our focus, our mental state, it makes a big difference. We are similarly affected by how things are presented externally. Trees flashing past so quickly they are almost a blur. Have you ever been on a train as it traverses a wooded hill? But see the same trees from the hilltop and their majesty and poetry become evident. In both cases, perhaps there is no absolute 'reality' – only different ways of perceiving it. At any one second, our senses are overloaded with more data than our consciousness allows. It is less a case of 'seeing what is really there' - but of exerting control over our selection process, our filtering, and deciding what data to take time to consciously process; and what our conscious mind ignores.

Perception is, for Godard, an enduring theme. Speed it up, slow it down. The camera mimics the process of visual perception. It chooses what to observe, and how. It 'tells' us what to think. Can cinema, by its careful control of simulated perception, increase our understanding of 'how' we perceive things? Or alert us to the possibility that there is 'more' in front of our eyes than we might have assumed on that busy day? The nominal plot revolves around a three characters. A filmmaker called Godard. Denise, a writer/editor trying to make a career change. And Isabelle, a prostitute (Isabelle Huppert) trying to better herself. Godard and Denise are in the painful process of ending a relationship. He is also going through a tough time with his ex-wife and daughter. Denise sees Isabelle being abused in the street. Isabelle sleeps with Godard after going to a movie with him. She wants to get a new place to live – even phoning about a flat during a bizarre sex scene - and she wants to work for herself instead of the pimp. Not knowing Godard is the landlord, she visits their cottage up for rent as Godard throws himself across the table at Denise.

Three wildly different life trajectories. Intersecting in ways that allow the film to challenge accepted notions. Toying with the nature of perception. And even asking how we get to where we want to be in life – or not. Separate chapters - after the intro sequences - for each character. Then 'Music' brings all three together. (Look out for unusual sound tropes as well.) Slow Motion – by whatever name we call it – is almost as conventional as Godard gets. While the narrative is far from mainstream, it is a more recognisable cinema experience than much of his most challenging (or didactic, uncommercial) work. And it provides material to sustain many repeated viewings.

The film includes about 15 'stop-action' shots, where the image is stopped completely, slowed down, replayed, and/or speeded up. We don't just analyse images outside of their diegetic function: we are able to invent a parallel diegesis. It is almost like the break-up of a relationship where a man and woman see 'reality' from totally different perspectives. Godard deconstructs his own maxim of 'truth 24 times per second' by varying the speeds. Outwardly hollow moments contain more than might otherwise meet the eye. It is not the subject matter and characters that demand Brechtian analysis, to become aware of our spectator involvement, so much as the process of perception itself. In a scene where an executive orchestrates a scenario with two prostitutes and another man, we are again confronted with complex metaphor, ("Okay," he says, "we've got the image, now we'll take care of the sound.") But here, the symbol of prostitution is not playing into the Marxist-bourgeois analogy so commonly used by Godard in films such as 2 Or 3 Things I Know About Her. In the debauchery, we can see the construction processes and their perception, the images, the sound, used to no specific purpose other than gratification – thus mimicking the production of mindless entertainment in Hollywood consumerist cinema.

Compounding such stop-motion tropes is the use of interior dialogue. Isabelle plays out another life in her head while having sex with clients. What do we choose to 'see'? To hear? Comparison of the prostitution scenes and the scenes where natural, spontaneous sexuality is apparent or implied, coupled with the 'selection' process we make when determining how we 'see' things, might reflect not only on how men and women (or any two people) can be 'in tune' – but also, with different emphases affecting the data-perception process, the very gender difference apparent when we look at how men and women might typically view things differently. There might be life apart from the diegetic one. We might choose what we perceive to be 'real' – but ultimately we make our own reality.

Dehumanization occurs when a person is not able to order their life according to their will. At that point, the individual has become a slave to the senses rather than their master. One might not be able to change the territory in which one finds oneself – but, by standing back far enough to discern the wood from the trees, one might at least find new perceptions that can be converted to reality.

Godard's splendid return to more "mainstream" cinema is a powerful meditation on love and (mostly) sex. It is often disturbing and profound, as well as silly and darkly comic. Some of the humor seems juvenile, but it is hilarious nonetheless, and beyond the dirty jokes is a masterful avant garde film that is philosophical, sadistic, sexy, and deeply emotional.

Godard has always been a highly ambitious filmmaker, and to this day his works proceed to increase in experimentation, and "Every Man for Himself" certainly displays his ability to have fun with film. Behind the unique synthesized soundtrack running throughout this film, various experimental visuals are utilized, particularly the effect of Godard randomly pausing on certain frames, creating a slow motion-esque look.

Complex issues and characters populate this dense, yet brief masterwork of French cinema. The ending is one of simultaneous happiness and tragedy, as it the situation ends a slightly ambiguous, yet hugely fitting note as the main "lovers" walk away from the viewers, and the film.

I really don´t know what David Hammer means by "joy for the enterprise". The only thing i know is that there´s a moment in our evolution in which we realize that life is just life. "Live your life as life lives itself" (Chinese proverb). Everything else is our invention, the invention of our minds. The product of a great fear of our degradation; degradation that naturally affects each of the living creatures of the earth. I understand what Godard means and share his feeling. Life is not only "joy", David. Life is much more than pleasure and excitement. Paul Godard (the character) reflects a deep feeling of the great French director. "I am not strong enough to accept life is just life. I need to believe we are here just here in order to DO something. The simplicity of life is difficult to accept in communities like ours. We are used to "produce", to have a product as a consequence of our time spent. A very strong and wise man can accept this fact. The "ouvre" of Jean Luc Godard show us that he moves, produces among elements that are not the ordinary ones. Godard has reached the moment of awareness in his "jeneusse". We can realize that by watching his films. The only thing that remains for me to do is just thank Jean Luc for his truth and for helping me to create mine.