The Bertolucci film makes a interesting view of a young man entering “life” with “experiences,” but we can make an interesting comparison to the philosophical film In Praise of Love (2001 – “Eloge de l‘amour” dir. Jean-Luc Godard, New Yorker Films, Manhattan Pictures and Studio Canal, PG, 98 min) which is supposed to present a ponderous example of French “New Wave” film. Structurally, this is a “film in two parts,” the first in a garish black-and-white, with wonderful precision as it creates its abstract Parisian world, and then equally garish color video for a long epilogue that happens two years earlier. All of which brings us to the “plot” or story. That’s hard to pin down. There is an artist trying to cast his film, a composer with a cantata to sell, and American media businessmen more interest in French resistance fighters in World War II. (Actually, the artist is trying to develop a project about three couples in different ages; one of the women dies, and her story, which itself involved another film, two years earlier will make the second half.) These elements come together like a dream. But it actually strikes close to home. The artist apparently has a few authored books, one of which has managed to sell just three hundred copies. Another one seems to be full of blank pages. And the artist has somewhat separated himself from the organic experience of living. And this gets to the point of the substance of the film, especially the black-and-white part, as a series of a lot of philosophical, existential discussions (I expected to hear H.G. Well’s “Meanwhile” and stoics and epicureans come up—a 12^th grade book report for me, but that never quite came up. Or maybe Sartre’s “Nausea.”) There is the woman talking about what happens when someone grows older, and outgrows her earlier connection to everyday experience, and this gets elaborated into talk about childhood, adulthood, old age. Then there is the whole issue of realism: one line is “Most people have the guts to live their life but not to imagine it.” There is talk of parallels: history being overrun by technology, and politics by gospel. Americans have no real history, so they resort to cheesy capitalism. Hollywood suppresses the truth in order to fill auditoriums, and Hollywood is the evil empire. Here, then, the film must meander into left-wing politicos that would almost fit Michael Moore, but they are much quieter. Many of the shots are almost like touristy postcards but with an alley-like underbelly, as when the artist talks to a girl who might fit the film and tells her that he lives alone, he is just with his art. There is no motion at all in that scene, just a David Lynch-like shot of a factory on a river. Or the scenes with action are very understated, as when the artists goes into a homeless shelter and looks for an extra.  Godard has stitched together a series of impressions to create a retrospective, winsome experience rather than to really tell a story. My own material (DADT) lends itself to this approach, and my own 36-minute concept video is rather like this. And in 2001, I had just sold about three hundred copies.

Notre Musique (“Our Music”) (2004, Wellspring, 79 min, sug PG-13) is Godard’s must recent New Wave film. His concept is draped over snippets of classical music, from which we reconstruct our own lifetime experience of our world. But the world is divided into three parts: Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. The first and last make a brief prelude and epilogue of the film—Hell consisting of shots of war and Holocaust, and Heaven being in the woods, by the water, with healthy looking young adults milling around. In between is the hour long Purgatory—Sarajevo, shown in garish HD video (though only in 4:3 aspect ratio), with the ruins of war and the gradual revival of a city. The very first image is telling: a tram, on a winter landscape, with the opening of the Sibelius Second Symphony playing. The characters talk about war and morality, questions like whether superiority in poetry gives you the right to conquer, then the whole question of Palestine, and displacement of native Americans, who populate the scenes. There is a Jewish freedom fighter, Olga, who is ready to commit suicide (life exists, death does not). Well, she makes it to heaven. But the discussion gradually filters down to what our own personal moral responsibility is on a broader world stage. The Sarajevo section of the movie is really quite fascinating and reminds me of passages of Bazhe’s autobiography Damages, which I wonder if Godard read before making the movie.