Le Redoutable

Non-admirers of Jean-Luc Godard probably won't be bothering to watch this film in the first place, but I'm sure they'd be reasonably satisfied with the hatchet job that author Anne Wiazemsky and director Michel Hazanavicius have done on Godard, since even most of his admirers as a filmmaker and political guru probably already had a pretty bleak estimation of him as a human being.

Being based on a 2015 memoir by Godard's long estranged ex-wife, the late Anne Wiazemsky (1947-2017), the film is inevitably going to be as much about her as him, and its depiction of him even more inevitably from her jaundiced viewpoint. This also unfortunately means that the film concentrates on their time together between their marriage in 1967 and their separation in 1970, when both his gifts as a filmmaker and passion for cinema had recently curdled; although there was still enough of the film nerd in him to claim with a straight face (in probably the film's best scene) the legacy of Jerry Lewis more worthwhile than that of Jean Renoir. (I wonder how Godard took the news - if it ever reached him - of Lewis's later enthusiasm for Reagan and Trump.)

During his previous marriage to Anna Karina he was probably just as difficult a husband but hadn't become the politically doctrinaire bore and boor that Wiazemsky had to deal with (she portrays him as self-centred and neglectful rather than abusive). Godard's admirers at the time and since have tended to excuse the calamitous decline in the quality of his films after 1965 as politically justified, since they saw the unwatchable screeds he was now churning out as the legitimate expression of his commitment to "make films politically" by no longer making them entertaining rather than because he'd simply lost it.

Louis Garrel gives an energetic performance in the lead, but is too tall and good looking (he actually looks more like Jean-Pierre Léaud), fails to capture the nasal voice familiar from Godard's own films, his perennial 5 o'clock shadow has become designer stubble and then a full beard by the time the film ends; and he just isn't as weird and inscrutable as the man himself remains to this day.

Hazanavicius throughout lovingly recreates the look of Godard's early 60's films when he was in his prime, but treats him more as a comical figure like Woody Allen, complete with the running joke lifted from 'Take the Money and Run' in which his glasses keep getting broken and the admirer who like those in 'Stardust Memories' wishes he'd make another "funny film". (Not that Godard's pre-1968 films were all light-hearted bon-bons by any stretch of the imagination. 'Le Petit Soldat' and 'Les Carabiniers', anyone?)

The French invented cinema and the Americans turned it into a big industry. If Hollywood loves making films about Hollywood, why should not make the French also films about the French cinema? Especially if we are talking about a director (Michel Hazanavicius) who already made a very successful film about Hollywood ("The Artist"). Here is his daring approach to a genre which is surprisingly new for the French cinema - movies about movies. "Redoubtable" is a daring endeavor because the subject is one year in the life of one of the most controversial film directors in the history - Jean-Luc Godard., a complex artist and personality who is also still with us, making films and even commenting on films made about him.

The year is also not any other year, but 1968, one of the milestones in the history of the 20th century, a crossroad also in the history of France. The revolts of the students that peaked in May of that year had several sources of inspiration - anarchist and Maoist ideloogies among them, but also works of philosophers like Jean Paul Sartre and, yes, movies, among which Jean-Luc Godard's "La Chinoise". The French director had gained fame in the decade before with some of the best known films of the French 'Nouvelle Vague'. Some had ideological content, some other 'just' revolutionized (together with films by François Truffaut and a few other) the language of cinema. "La Chinoise" had marked the final of that period and the start of another, a much more politically oriented stage in his creation. It also marked the beginning of the relationship soon to turn into marriage with Anne Wiazemsky. (the second for Godard, after he had married and divorced Anna Karina). The implication of Godard in politics and the rocky marriage with Anne are the principal topics of "Redoubtable". The Godard in the film does not come very clean from this historical re-evaluation on screen which is based on the novel-memoirs of his ex-wife. He appears as a 'gauchist' intellectual who sides with the revolt and hates police, but his behavior and way of life belong to the class he despises. His ideology seems more anarchist and quite remote from realities. He fails to understand the totalitarian ways of his idols Mao and Che and is stupefied when "La Chinoise" is rejected by the Chinese embassy as 'reactionary art' and he is refused a promotion trip to China. His joining of the May 1968 revolts leads to confusing speeches in the meeting halls at Sorbonne, including an outrageous rant paralleling Jews and Nazis. He is, as many other before him, a victim of a revolution in march that devours its idols. Eventually he makes the right choice understanding that an artist can better serve the revolution by means of art, and for a while he looks better holding a camera on the streets of Paris in 1968, or founding the Djiga Vertov collective of politically active filmmakers. This may lead to another impasse, an artistic one, but that will not be part of the story in this film.

I liked the film. Michel Hazanavicius uses a technique that he already successfully applied in "The Artist" - talking about a past period in the history of the cinema with the cinematographic tools specific to that era. He even added more nuances, as different episodes are filmed in different styles adapted to the content. We see the scenes with Paris on barricades filmed with 'Nouvelle Vague' hand-held camera. A trip by car in which a crowded mix of film-makers and actors get a speech from their driver about the simple taste in cinema of the masses, so remote from their experiences, is filmed in a static car, like in an American movie of the 30s or 40s. At the peak of the domestic crisis the unbearable soundtrack covers the voices of the disputing lovers. Louis Garrel created a Godard who oscillates between his (well deserved) ego and surprising moments of lack of confidence, who thinks in an ideological and doctrinaire manner but knows little about the people the ideology is supposed to serve, who models his life and art to politics and has little understanding or patience for his own adulating audiences. The relationship with Anne (Stacy Martin) is almost permanently one-directional, a crisis in building from the very first moments. Both actors do fine jobs, and they are placed in an environment that brings brilliantly to life the period for those spectators who lived it as well as for those who did not.

Focusing on politics and the stormy marriage between Jean-Luc and Anne, "Redoubtable" tells less about the cinema that he made - and 1968 was actually a very prolific year, as were the coming 3 or 4 years, although much of what he did was documentary of collective work within the Djiga Vertov group. The one scene that show him at work is filmed one year later, and hints to the fact that, at least for the coming period that was to last about another decade, Godard made a choice. Between art and revolution, he explicitly chose revolution. The final judgment about this period may have not been pronounced, and this film could be part of a re-opening of the discussions and more important - seeing again his films. Godard is Godard, and he never seems to accept to rest.

Godard may have been one of the French New Wave's main stars but, as a person, he could be repulsive without trying. Not that the film portrays him as overly selfish or self-centered, but he seems to live in his own mind, and have standards that he switches at his own convenience.

As the film opens, he is 37 and he has just started a romantic involvement with 19 year old exquisitely beautiful wife to be Anne (solidly played by Stacy Martin, who looks very much like Catherine Deneuve at the height of her splendor, only better) . Given that the film is mostly told from Anne's point of view, we get to see Godard's steady mental disintegration and growing loss of touch with reality, as told from her standpoint, while all along she keeps retiring into an observer's position. In light of the fact that the film is based on Anne Wiazemsky's autobiographical account of her relationship with Godard, she emerges from this film with her image apparently far more intact - but also as a bit of a tell-tale who thinks nothing of reducing her former husband's reputation to the lowest possible level.

Physically, Louis Garrel looks like Godard, imitates his famous lisp very well, and his performance is superb, even if the character does nothing to encourage anyone's sympathy, let alone liking. The way he joins the student demonstrations of May 1968, but flees police as soon as he feels that he is in danger; and the way he bends Maoist doctrine to his own take on life, says much about the pitfalls of this once and briefly great director.

Michel Hazanavicius' direction is first class, his screenplay not really. The submarine, Le Redoutable, and the repeatedly broken spectacles are jokes that have worn rather thin by film's end.

Soundtrack is generally vivid and brings back the day, including some lovely music, but there is also some jarring noise, typical of what made Godard so unique in films like MASCULINE FEMININE, A BOUT DE SOUFFLE, LE MÉPRIS.

Ultimately, it is a movie for lovers of the French cinema. I am one, and I am grateful for what I learned from it. That said, LE REDOUTABLE/GODARD MON AMOUR makes for some rather uncomfortable viewing because of Godard's disintegration. On the other hand, thank God Stacy Martin is so beautiful, with her around I can forgive any flaws in the movie.

This bizarre mélange of genres--documentary, comedy, tell-all from a former lover--views above all like a hit job. This is the second film I encountered this week which focuses on a disgruntled former girlfriend´s unhappiness that her extraordinary lover turned out not to be entirely normal. (The other one was Mad to be Normal, about Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing). I find this sort of depiction of Godard, on the one hand, and R. D. Laing, on the other, to be disagreeable in the extreme. I have no difficulty believing that men with big personalities and egos are difficult to have relationships with. But to make an entire film about what a cad ¨the cad¨ is alleged to be (by a former lover) strikes me as an unvarnished act of revenge. Nietzsche (and probably Godard, since he has always liked Nietzsche) would surely identify in this production a consummate expression of ¨ressentiment¨.

It seems to me that there is something rather puerile about falling in love with someone who is an artist (touted by many as a creative genius) and then expecting him to suddenly be the average-joe husband and dad (in the case of R.D. Laing). How could that possibly turn out to be the case? It´s a package deal. You get the extraordinarily wonderful with the extraordinarily difficult to live with. Needless to say, I do not think well of the female protagonist here, who seems to have wanted to profit from what she viewed as her victimhood. Ugh.

I also found confusing that the director tried to imitate Godard´s style--part of the time, but not all of the time--while also trashing him. A confusing and unsatisfying creation, in my opinion. The comedic elements pretty much disappeared by the end, when all that remains is the whiny girlfriend and what is depicted as Godard´s descent into Maoist Marxism.

Godard haters will love this thrashing.

At the beginning of 1968 Jean-Luc Godard is one of the most highly-respected directors working in French-language cinema. He is influential and admired. He has also just married Anne Wiazemsky, a teenage actress seventeen years his junior. He has the more arty end of the film world at his feet, yet he is feeling restless. Then erupt the Paris student protests which sweep Godard up in their revolutionary fervour. He becomes a supporter of the movement, and his opinions are in turn sought out by the young leaders (although, in the best tradition of ideologues everywhere, they also spend a large amount of their time arguing). As his marriage to Wiazemsky suffers, Godard heads further down what some might describe as a Maoist path, culminating - for this film's purposes - in the establishment of a sort of film-making collective without heirarchy - Godard may be the director, but his artistic vision is subordinate to the will of the workers. Hah! From the plot description this might seem like a terribly gloomy film; far from it. It is actually very playful: as Godard, Louis Garrel has to deliver directly to camera the line "I bet if you told an actor to say actors are dumb, he would do it"; and a scene where Godard and Wiazemsky (played by the frequently-undraped Stacy Martin) discuss film directors' enthusiasm for nude scenes is played with both actors naked. How accurate Garrel's portrayal is I am unable to say, but for an actor who has rarely before displayed any comedy chops he provides a fine, subtly comic turn here; I particularly like the hangdog look his Godard at times displays.

I am not massively familiar with either Godard or his work; I have little patience with pretention. But this film makes the famed auteur a more accessible - sometimes rather likeable - individual, without glossing over his faults (rudeness; arrogance; a controlling element in his relationship with Wiazemsky). Whether it is a fair representation of him I do not know, but it makes for a very interesting film.