JLG JLG

A poet is a man who is a master of words. He uses them to express life in an artistic way, basically. A filmmaker is a man who seeks to express life artistically in a visual manner through certain techniques specific to film. There is a man, "A man, nothing but a man, no better than any other, but no other better than he" who is a double poet, a master of the words and a master of the moving images. His poetry is both literary and visual. His cinema is a double poetry. JLG/JLG Self-portrait of December made in 1995 is a work of double poetry. Jean Luc Godard is raising several questions about art, culture and life. He seeks his place in this world. It is not an autobiography but a self-portrait as he states. A new type of self-portrait which is like mixing a self-portrait by Van Gogh and a poem by Walt Whitman. I have the image of Van Gogh's blue tones peasant-like self -portraits with yellow straw-hat and Song of Myself by Walt Whitman. What is art after all? "Art is like fire: it lives from what it burns answers" Godard.

"Now, I have to sacrifice myself so that trough me the word "love" means something, so that love exists on earth."

In my ongoing quest to penetrate the mind of Godard, I figured few films would be more poignant than this self styled portrait. This is not merely about what he has or is willing to say on the subject because we can glean that from any number of the films he made during that period, JLG/JLG is no more a self portrait in that aspect than Nouvelle Vague or the Histoire(s) films, but how does he frame himself, literally?

In the finale of Children Play in Russia from the previous year he left us with an image of himself stubbornly cranking at a camera to make it work. What images here? Two stand out for me, patterns that recur: Godard the old crone, a sunken face in the dim light of his library, ruminating quotes from old dusty books. Then Godard the kid, excitedly a prankster, now preparing to edit a film or playing tennis with a wry smile. He feels comfortable in both roles, or we wouldn't be shown. Both pertain here.

He begins this with a childhood photo of himself. In the voice-over he's anxiously rehearsing for the occasion, will he be judged a success or a failure? JLG/JLG gives us a fascinating rare glimpse of how he shapes his thought, this should be a treasured artifact for the avid Godard fan. Usually we arrive at the process too late, when the thought has been reduced to a provocative slogan. For example, "the rule of Old Europe is to destroy the art of living". Here we can see the method by which we arrive at that admission, born schematically on a piece of paper.

The less said about the childishness with the star of David though, the better. An embarrassing failure of humour, if it was intended as such. But having stuck with him for so long, I view these fallacious missteps with a hint of sympathy.

But the vantage point I get is this: why does Godard feel he matters, at least enough to pose for his own self portrait?

It's folly to expect a very lucid picture, or a particularly honest one, but it's important for me to see how the question is formulated, what conditions is it posed under. For this I must go back to the premise I had touched on in one of my first Godard writings, his ouevre seen as the koan of the Zen Buddhists, the enigmatic phrase that means nothing in the face of it yet demands an answer by the initiate, the answer again meaning nothing, serving only as proof that the mind is unlocked.

To my surprise I discovered as I was watching this that I could read the typically inscrutable musings like they were a simple text. What used to demand real effort of concentration, now flows naturally. The question then is formed by two admissions, both magnificent.

One is the realization of the illusion of ego: a man who feels cold says "I am cold", but in the silence before and after the utterance only the cold body exists. The other is the promise of love: promising to love, a man becomes the embodiment of love, the only reward being this; after the hardships of a lifetime, he can look back and see that he has loved.

What I get from all this, is the state of awareness that emerges. The mind is not transcended yet, and the Buddhist koan remains inscrutable, but it does not dictate desire and ego anymore. Like the citations that burrow his works, his early New Wave period then exists as an original text (itself the product of citations) to be dismantled, a gradual constant process of the shedding and destruction of self. For the majority of viewers this early period is a stumbling block, a hindrance, whereas as a lot of Godard fans conclude the coming of age happens in the 90's. This is his truly great period (and onwards perhaps).

Having pursued the political chimera that failed him, he knows this is not our saving grace so he turns inwards. Having pursued, upon that realization, the mind, he discovers that only illusions inhabit it.

Godard matters then because he came this far. I'm curious as ever to see where he goes from here.

This film, a companion piece to Hélas pour moi, is so rich in theme and idea that one can only begin to write about it. Godard's artistry (which as always, is total) works like a gadfly across many levels, and so maybe the best way to go about this is to list its main themes.

* Swiss/French Nationality (father, homeland and identity)

* Semiotics of Imagery (composition and idea, the duality of reality, technology)

* Editing (blindness and sight)

* Perception (phenomenology, the humanity of the image)

* Music (the layered nature of sound association/interpretation)

* Politics (current affairs and historical, Europe/America)

* History (literature: in quotation - Rimbaud, Diderot, Kafka etc. and socio-political)

* Oeuvre (reference and statement, responsibility and reputation)

* Time (memory and culture as co-dependent, predictions and 'passing', death.)

* Love (the portrait GIVES, JLG as affect)

* Meditation (the reflective writer, interpretation & truth, translation and puns)

* Cinema Industry (distributors, censors/classification)

* Tennis (Proust)

• With so many themes, all patiently painted in close to an hour, we should admire Godard for his patent fluency. Even in the early 90s he is still at the height of his powers (despite the 70s rumours), much like the peak of the Baroque period several centuries ago.

rino breebaart

I really don't want to be to hard with this movie just because I didn't liked it. The film has very interesting ideas and thoughts but well, they are just to boring for me. It is a typical postmodern movie which in my opinion would be better understood on a book. After all, self portraits are more usual found in paintings or who knows, perhaps even books, but films are a visual form of art. The film could be compared with Bergman's films because they both handle existentialism and are a good sample of the post modernism wave. Godard's self portrait is not an autobiography,it reflects how he feels about several subjects which include death and cinema. In my opinion, it is like he would have plugged a tape recorder into his brain in order to record his thoughts and then put this tape together with some images to produce a film. Perhaps if Virginia Wolf had lived in the 60's she would had been a very good friend of Godard and instead of becoming a writer, she could have become a filmmaker. So,I guess this movie is for the very intellectual kind of person who can bare a 102 Minutes boring to dead film, or, perhaps if you rent it, you can press the "stop" button every 10 minutes in order to think about what you just heard and then continue with the film, otherwise, you'll get lost with so much ideas in such a short period of time. oh! and Just for the record, I do like other Godard Films.

To see this work is to realize what becomes of a man whose monumental contributions to his craft/art came many decades prior. It's a shame that Jean-Luc Godard, grandmaster of the French New Wave, who once brought unprecedented spunk and verve to his films of the early 60's, all the while shattering and redefining most accepted cinematic notions for a new generation of filmgoers and filmmakers, now is forced to deal with his downfall. Yet he refuses to acknowledge the glaringly obvious fact that his magic touch has just about totally dissipated, for he has become so forlorn in his contempt of accepted societal expectations of film and in his need to further push his musings that the cinema is dead, that he is stuck within himself.

In JLG/JLG, we get many, MANY quotes from philosophers and other high-thinkers, put to what use? Beats me. Juxtaposed with shots of rolling hills, ocean waves crashing onto rocky shores, Godard toying around with rolls of film, writing on large pads of paper, and then playing tennis, it all ads up to a nice variety of static images. Pedantic in tone and crusty in narration, the film nevertheless abruptly dispenses one though provoking moment when Godard explains his take on metaphysics via two interlocking triangles that form a 6-pointed star.

Ultimately, I left the film with just one clear idea, albeit likely not one that Godard had intended - it is evident that for Godard, life does not imitate art; as, unlike his best films, he is going out with a whimper instead of a bang. Final Grade: D