"Hey, Johnny, what are you rebelling against?" "What've you got?" - The Wild One (1953)

From what I’ve gathered, this year’s selection of movies is not that impressive. I’ve had a tradition, since about 2007, to watch as many movies as possible from the Oscar nominees, and I believe this year has been one of the most productive years, in what concerns the topic. I can gladly say I have been able to watch every nominee from the Best Picture category, Best Director and obviously, Best Cinematography.

When I first taught of this article I was going to name it ‘ You Had Me At Hello’, because I wanted to cite a very annoying line to show my love for cinema. Cinema indeed, had me at hello, but I can’t say the same thing about the movies selected this year. It’s funny how, if you try to imagine how many of these movies will stand the test of time, the way I look at it, most of them fail. It feels wrong that some of them already have, since they’ve been released this summer and everyone in show business (at least) seems to have forgotten they exist, even if they are actually great movies, such as ‘The Tree Of Life’ or ‘The Help’.

From my experience, the movie that should win the title for the best picture, is, by all the Academy’s previous criteria, ‘The Help’ – good reviews, wonderful actors, box office hit, moral and social issues. I would whisper ‘Here’s looking at you, kid’ (Casablanca, 1942) to this movie. It was a pleasant surprise, honestly. 

But there are two others on the table: on the one hand, we have ‘Hugo’, which is great, really, but more of a kid’s movie, or more of a two-way ‘Cinema Paradiso’, if you want. I don’t recognize Martin Scorsese, the reckless smuggler, the ‘You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? Well, who the hell else are you talkin' to? You talkin' to me? Well, I'm the only one here. Who the f--k do you think you're talkin' to?’ Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver, 1976), where are you? I’ve already watched the 3D + catchy story + wonderful cinematography recipes work before (Avatar, 2009) and I really don’t want to see it work again, even if it’s for my beloved Scorsese.

‘I wouldn't worry too much about your heart. You can always put that award where your heart ought to be.’ (All About Eve, 1950) – if this is what makes you happy, then I guess you should have it, place that award next to the one you received for ‘The Departed’, but please know I thought ‘Taxi Driver’ or ‘Goodfellas’ or ‘Raging Bull’ or even ‘Gangs of New York’ would’ve deserved it more that ‘Hugo’. 

‘All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my closeup’ (Sunset Boulevard, 1950). ‘The Artist’ is the first silent movie to be shot, with great success, after the talkies appeared. It’s also a form of reminiscence - a redemption for what the movies nowadays have become. I loved the cinematography, it follows the subject, it gives it meaning, substance and makes it a great silent movie. It should probably win, why the hell not? The public will love the controversy, the special, the never-seen-in-a-long-time or never-seen-before of this movie. This is no more that a filmmaker’s movie that ‘The Tree Of Life’ is. Sorry. 

‘The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.’ (Moulin Rouge, 2001) and so, ‘The Descendants’ is a soft drama, with hints of comedy - language, situations – and a great performance from George Clooney. This movie doesn’t really belong in this category. It’s too small, too tender, it lacks the magnitude of the story and the setting to be treated like one of the three above. I would rather it just got Clooney a well deserved Oscar for Best Actor. It doesn’t need the publicity, it couldn’t handle it. I am afraid it’s going to be crushed – the way I see it is more of an indie movie that an Academy Award winner and I appreciate when thing are in order and everyone knows where they actually belong.

"Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." (A Streetcar Named Desire, 1951). The magnitude of this play doesn’t even compare to this little, again intimate movie, ‘Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close’. I’ve read the book and loved it and I cannot see past that. The movie doesn’t even compare, but it managed to render the same feeling, the characters follow the same patterns as the ones in the book, and even if it doesn’t underline every detail I once adored in the book, it still managed to depict it in a colorful and subtle way. I love the fact that the Hollywood version of the book isn’t dramatic or pathetic, it’s just simple and soft spoken, just like the book itself. The 1^st person  perspective is kept and underlined by sounds and images. I feel like it deserves a place in the Best Cinematography section, the use of lenses and camera movement is really important and brings extra flavor to the story. 

‘Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.’ (Casablanca, 1942) This is exactly what I feel about the moment in time Woody Allen decided to go back to, it’s the era of the bohemian, almost decadent Paris, where abstract and surreal meet, post dadaism and pre existentialism – but with influences from both. I’ve pondered on the topic of pseudo-intellectualism in connection to this movie, but it’s just an awakening. The character is still a younger version of Woody Allen, with the same angst, he’s still neurotic and wonders about the emptiness of living in the exterior world and wished to keep the interior world alive. Magic realism- hell yes, come right in!

'Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'. (That's goddamn right.)" (The Shawshank Redemption, 1994) – the motto of the movie, of the team, of the players, the main character? The revival of a baseball team. I must admit, I didn’t care about the subject, so I am really going to be subjective on this one. The only thing I actually enjoyed was watching the two male performances – both Brad Pitt and fat kid from ‘Superbad’ Jonah Hill were great. I believe it would be fair if the Oscar for the Best Supporting Actor went to this one.

'Enough of symbolism and these escapist themes of purity and innocence.' – (8½, 1963) What the heck, Steven Spielberg? But on a more awkward note, please don’t win Best Cinematography, just for that weird shot of a sunset at the end of the movie, in which even the skin tones or the grey on their clothes is orange. 

‘Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.’ (The Wizard of Oz, 1939). Oh no no no, believe me, we’re not. This is the type of movie a lot of people categorize as pretentious, artsy, European maybe. I must say I loved every shot, every piece of musical composition, every detail, every whisper, every look. I loved the omniscient angle, as if an angel was following the characters, the good old-fashioned family life, the evil in their lives, the lingering of lost people, the strict education, the bad deeds, the ignorance, the perverseness, the malice, the redemption, the bliss. It’s an honest picture of life – from birth until death and afterwards. If it isn’t going to win any other prize, I would love it if it would at least win Best Cinematography, because it really deserves it. Although, a little recognition wouldn’t hurt Terrence Malick, for Best Director. 

Jack: [voice over] Brother. Keep us. Guide us. To the end of time. (The Tree Of Life, 2011)

Best Picture	Best Director
The Artist – Thomas Langmann	Woody Allen – Midnight in Paris
The Descendants – Jim Burke, Jim Taylor and Alexander Payne	Michel Hazanavicius – The Artist
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Scott Rudin	Terrence Malick – The Tree of Life
The Help – Brunson Green, Chris Columbus and Michael Barnathan	Alexander Payne – The Descendants
Hugo – Graham King and Martin Scorsese	Martin Scorsese – Hugo
Midnight in Paris – Letty Aronson and Stephen Tenenbaum
Moneyball – Michael De Luca, Rachel Horowitz, and Brad Pitt
The Tree of Life – Dede Gardner, Sarah Green, Grant Hill and Bill Pohlad
War Horse – Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy
Best Actor	Best Actress
Demián Bichir – A Better Life as Carlos Galindo	Glenn Close – Albert Nobbs as Albert Nobbs
George Clooney – The Descendants as Matt King	Viola Davis – The Help as Aibileen Clark
Jean Dujardin – The Artist as George Valentin	Rooney Mara – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as Lisbeth Salander
Gary Oldman – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy as George Smiley	Meryl Streep – The Iron Lady as Margaret Thatcher
Brad Pitt – Moneyball as Billy Beane	Michelle Williams – My Week with Marilyn as Marilyn Monroe
Best Supporting Actor	Best Supporting Actress
Kenneth Branagh – My Week with Marilyn as Laurence Olivier	Bérénice Bejo – The Artist as Peppy Miller
Jonah Hill – Moneyball as Peter Brand	Jessica Chastain – The Help as Celia Foote
Nick Nolte – Warrior as Paddy Conlon	Melissa McCarthy – Bridesmaids as Megan Price
Christopher Plummer – Beginners as Hal Fields	Janet McTeer – Albert Nobbs as Hubert Page
Max von Sydow – Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close as The Renter	Octavia Spencer – The Help as Minny Jackson
Best Writing – Original Screenplay	Best Writing – Adapted Screenplay
The Artist – Michel Hazanavicius	The Descendants – Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash from The Descendants (novel) by Kaui Hart Hemmings
Bridesmaids – Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo	Hugo – John Logan from The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
Margin Call – J.C. Chandor	The Ides of March – George Clooney, Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon from Farragut North by Beau Willimon
Midnight in Paris – Woody Allen	Moneyball – Screenplay by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin; Story by Stan Chervin from Moneyball by Michael Lewis
A Separation – Asghar Farhadi	Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré
Best Animated Feature	Best Foreign Language Film
A Cat in Paris – Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli	Bullhead (Belgium) in Dutch and French – Michaël R. Roskam
Chico and Rita – Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal	Footnote (Israel) in Hebrew – Joseph Cedar
Kung Fu Panda 2 – Jennifer Yuh Nelson	In Darkness (Poland) in Polish – Agnieszka Holland
Puss in Boots – Chris Miller	Monsieur Lazhar (Canada) in French – Philippe Falardeau
Rango – Gore Verbinski	A Separation (Iran) in Persian – Asghar Farhadi
Best Documentary	Best Film Editing
Hell and Back Again – Danfung Dennis and Mike Lerner	The Artist – Anne-Sophie Bion and Michel Hazanavicius
If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front – Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman	The Descendants – Kevin Tent
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory – Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky	The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter
Pina – Wim Wenders and Gian-Piero Ringel	Hugo – Thelma Schoonmaker
•     Undefeated – TJ Martin, Dan Lindsay and Richard Middlemas	Moneyball – Christopher Tellefsen
Best Art Direction	Best Cinematography
The Artist – Laurence Bennett and Robert Gould	The Artist – Guillaume Schiffman
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 – Stuart Craig and Stephanie McMillan	The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – Jeff Cronenweth
Hugo – Dante Ferretti and Francesca Lo Schiavo	Hugo – Robert Richardson
War Horse – Rick Carter and Lee Sandales	The Tree of Life – Emmanuel Lubezki
Midnight in Paris – Anne Seibeland Hélène Dubreuil	War Horse – Janusz Kamiński

                                                                           

                    (*Yellow = Seen)

The One With The Book And The Right To Closure

I knew what to expect when I first started reading this book, a few days ago. I knew about the ultra romantic setting, the premise was simple: a little girl meets a man who came from the future and with every conversation he tells her things about her future – or actually, about their future together. After a few chapters we are in the present – she is 20, he is 28 – and they meet for the first time, more precisely, he meets her for the first time, she first met him when she was 6.

The book doesn’t have the most spectacular development, the most disturbing fact is stated in the beginning, when we find out he time travels. The following is actually a recording of their encounters when she’s a kid, or of their present days, up to his death.

So this is a pretty romantic book, probably really catchy for teenagers (especially because of the language, the perfect love story or the taste in music of the protagonist), but I’m not saying I didn’t like it. It was a pretty easy read, so I devoured it in a few days, reading avidly until I reached the back cover.  

What really puzzled me was the idea that prevails: waiting for someone your entire life. I find it unfair and I feel it has already been suggested in a bunch of books considered classic literature. A modern writer should give into the social pressure and just admit this is never going to happen nowadays. And it almost didn’t happen in the book either. Until it did. I feel that people should be able to get closure (even if it’s a matter of right or wrong, death or relationships). I hate the hook (as Barney, the character of ‘How I Met Your Mother’ names it) and I admit I have been under its influence too and I know how it feels. This is why I find it unfair to also read about it in a book I actually liked up to the last chapter where she’s 82 and waiting for their last date.

It’s like a person that’s brain dead, you’ll always live with an IF locked deep inside your life. It’s like living your life being unhappy, but hoping that someday you will find happiness.

I know artists should reach catharsis through their art – I do exactly the same thing and I can barely call myself an artist – but if you read the acknowledgement, Niffenegger actually claims the waiting has worked for her – NOOO!, just as it worked for Penelope. 

I send this book out there with the closure issue as a warning. I recommend it to girls, mostly, because even the male characters are pretty feminine in actions. Don’t get fooled by the time travel thing, it’s still a romance and should be treated as one.

Cultural Encounters. Or How to Handle Being Snowed - In Bucharest Version.

Exams. Going to school every day and spending most of it there. Feeling the high school air linger through the desks. Bad cheating. Subjects you would write papers on but you only have half the page for space. The laziness of borrowing another sheet of paper.

On the other hand, SNOW. A lot of it, all of a sudden. Practically the first snow of the winter. Closed the hidden path that takes us all home for the weekend. Frost. Blizzard. Yum. But how were three students supposed to handle this?

Thursday night. Bulandra Theatre. Crossing the street from the subway to the theatre was totally worth it. In a really cold, but wonderful hall the three of us witnessed ‘Endgame’, a play written by Samuel Beckett, in the Theatre of the Absurd style. From the characters’ dialogues, shouts, monologues to their costumes and the play’s art direction everything was more depressing than absurd, but majestic at the same time. Seeing a favorite actor of mine (Razvan Vasilescu) play on a stage instead of on a screen was a revelation. I had visions of Oblomov, Kin Dza-Dza and the Irish interiors depicted in ‘Angela’s Ashes’ throughout the entire play. I left the theatre to face the blizzard feeling resuscitated from a long sleep. My own private sleep of reason, of conscience.

Friday night. The National Theatre. It was only two of us left to face the cold and glass ice covered by misleading snow. As you know, in times of blizzard, you just take the subway. So we walked from the subway through the small park at the University’s Place, passing the crowd (a 100 people max) who was still annoyingly shouting antigovernment phrases. It wasn’t like I didn’t care about them, I just wanted to be inside and see the one play I had been waiting to see since it’s premiere in 2010 – ‘The Avalanche’, written by Tuncer Cücenoğlu and directed by Radu Afrim, a young but creative director, famous all over Europe for his controversial plays (München loves him). With surreal images, the set was a wonderful warm white, with touches of gray. The story is about a village who takes a lot of precaution measure to avoid an avalanche which would kill everyone – the ceiling is all lace, the chairs and tables are also covered in it, the doors and floor are covered in fur, women give birth taking into account the snow. Everyone whispers. The echo is dangerous and the atmosphere is almost magnetic, sick, heavy. I think I clapped for ten minutes straight. On the way home we were both just high, pumped, talking only about the play and how we would go see it again.

Saturday night. The Jewish State Theatre. Four people walk towards the theater until they can’t even feel the skin on their faces anymore. When you can’t raise your eyebrows, it’s too cold. We enter an intimate small theatre, the smell of fresh coffee imprinted the walls. They hand us headsets for translation. This was the first shock of the night. Yiddish…This building was actually the first Jewish Theatre in the world so that place has a special meaning. We walked into a small beige room, where the walls have small golden flower patterns coming down on the walls. The smell of heavy seats and silent walls – ‘It smells like communism in here’. We plug in and watch a sweetened version of ‘King Lear’ where the themes are moved into a Jewish context, and the emphasis is on the decay of the family and its small dramas. Another pleasant surprise, except for the intonation of the woman who was translating.

Exams. Snow. Theatre for three days in a row. Hot coffee. A beer. Some loud music. And we go back to studying. And getting on with our lazy lives. And promise to have pleasant surprises again soon within a theatre’s walls.

Stay open. Allow mesmerizing. 

There’s a land called ‘Passiva Aggressiva’ and Cristi Puiu is its king

First, I should unravel something about the way I watch movies – I basically enjoy every movie I watch, trying not to be too harsh, judgmental or cynical, considering the fact that I’m still somehow in the learning process of making movies. This is why my friends would often hear me say this exact sentence, over and over: ‘I’ve recently watched this … (fill in the blanks with movie title) and it was really good. Well, actually…’ and then I develop the idea.

But seriously, ‘Aurora’ has been the first movie I watched this year, a story set in gloomy, contemporary Bucharest – a slice of life, if you may call it that way – where a divorced man follows his ex-wife through town with the not-so-obvious intention of killing her. The movie is long – three hours – and as some interesting critics who haven’t even had the decency to watch an entire movie before reviewing it say – pretty boring. But instead of boring I would like to call it slow paced, aerated, leaving just enough room for the characters to develop and for the viewer to get accustomed to their lifestyle. I think it was actually polite – yes, I’ll use this word – that the director took the time he thought he needed in describing the characters (mostly the main character, played by the director himself) and the situations created by the relationships the characters are in. And even though the movie opens with a post-sex scene between Viorel (main character) and his new mistress (Gina – played by Clara Voda), I really think this way of opening a movie was necessary in order to establish the ‘slice of life’ perspective – it doesn’t really matter where you start the story, it’s their everyday life anyway, but where the story takes you. The story runs you through the relationship Viorel has with Gina, which is pretty simple and uninvolved from what concerns Viorel – she keeps telling him about her daughter learning about Little Red Riding Hood but he starts replying after she has already changed the subject. You can almost feel her care for him, when she hands him a wrapped sandwich for work. Instead of going to work, a really wide shot discovers him stop the car in front of some railways, getting out, crossing it at night just to spy on his wife going to work and taking his daughters to school at the break of dawn.

He then goes to work, where it is implied (this is what I understood, at least) that he’s clearing out his desk and office because he had been fired. I’ve always loved Cristi Puiu’s subtlety, but this time I only got this from a singular line of an employee of the plant. This employee then slips him a few self made bullets.

I know I’ve said this before, but it feels like religion, sympathy, decency and relationships are all dying and the scene is the Romanian New Wave Cinema. They’re not dead yet – the way they are presented in Sergei Loznitsa’s ‘My Joy’ (2010 – ‘Schastye moe’), but they are really dying in front of the viewer and the only breaths of fresh air are, in this case, the innocent kid we see in the movie (Viorel’s daughter, not Gina’s spoiled brat) or the collateral victim (Viorel’s ex-wife’s layer’s date). It just feels like the situations in the movie, as well as the characters’ behavior are decaying in front of us.

Almost the entire movie is shot with wide or normal lenses, the camera doesn’t really get involved, keeping a distance between the viewer and the character. The viewer is a simple observer and he can make his own opinions about the situations depicted in the movie. I personally enjoy watching a movie that puts this sort of distance between me and the characters, I believe there’s no better way of shooting a story like this one. There’s a specific connection the actor/director sets at some point in the movie with the spectator and this consists of a medium shot taken from the backseat of the car Viorel is driving, when he stares through the rear view mirror straight at the camera, piercing through the barrier or the lens. It is right there when we discover the eyes considering killing a person. The movie is almost a study, a documented murder.

An hour into the movie, I can finally say I figured out the complete set of relationships and main behavior features of the characters. Viorel is distant, intellectual, listens to good music in the apartment that once belonged to him and his wife – apartment that is now being renewed (a vision?) – is highly specific about his stuff (he tells his wife’s father to only take certain things back to her) and wear his hood inside out for the entire three hours which makes an OCD viewer want to reach for the screen and put it back in (this is where I had my issues and felt mind raped).

I like the way Puiu chose the show the murder of his mother – in – law, through a handheld long shot that follows the woman going up the stairs in her home, and then following Viorel and letting the viewer literally staring at the ceiling and just letting the sound give us the idea of what’s going on upstairs – talk about Puiu’s subtlety again! And even though he only manages to shoot his wife’s lawyer (which launches the question: ‘did this guy fuck his wife too while dealing with their divorce papers?’) and his in – laws, he goes to the police station to confess in the coldest way. The director chooses to depict the Romanian authorities the same way a lot of other Romanian movies do – these policemen are talking about the murders when he walks in, and even though he sais he’s the one responsible for them they don’t even mind his existence in the room, they just make him write his statement. This would seem absurd for a non-Romanian citizen, but if you’ve lived here all your life, you’ll know this is just the way they handle ‘cases’ (see also ‘Police, Adjective’ – Corneliu Porumboiu, 2009).

Just one more thing: Puiu migrates at least a character from an older movie ‘The Death of Mr. Lazarescu’ (2005 – Un Certain Regard Award at the Cannes Film Festival), Mrs. Mioara Avram (interpreted by Luminita Gheorghiu) to underline the humanity of these characters and the idea that they could exist in every other movie or in everyday life.

In other words, I liked not everything being explained because it involves the viewer more, I liked the slow paced sequences and the fact that it launches questions not everyone of us would answer the same way. 

We Had Our Month - It's Over

My bad day began at 11:00 AM this morning when I finished the book after a long month of reading only a few pages at a time, hoping for a never ending version of it. Neither the sun shining at my window, nor the warm coffee on my bed stand could turn this morning back into a usual December morning.

It’s been a long time since a book drew and captured me like this one did. Fairy tales weren’t my thing as a kid, but as I grew up, I started re- reading childhood books, such as Poil de Carotte and falling in love with them for real, this time. The association between Poil de Carotte and Still Life With Woodpecker isn’t involuntary – both of them are full of adventures, almost falling out of the their covers, they both mess with your imagination and perception up to the point where you start acting the same way the characters would, or find yourself in a real situation and ask yourself the inappropriate question that will tell you the degree of addiction you’re facing: ‘What would Poil de Carotte/ Bernard Mickey Wrangle (Baby) do?’

The narrator is omniscient, and has only a few 1^st person ‘interventions’ throughout the whole book. These are either distinct chapters, epilogues or prologues, whenever he switches from one moon phase to the other (the moon phases are larger units and include a few chapters each). The narrator launches a basic question in the beginning – What makes love stay? – and a few others that derive from this one and get answered on the way – What’s the importance of the moon?, What’s the significance of the Camel pack design? He tries to answer the first question structuring the story as a post-modern fairy tale, where the princess is a vegetarian ex- cheerleader and her future - to – be – prince is… a lot of guys. But mostly, Bernard, a redhead (such as the princess herself) outlaw (not criminal!) who has a passion for explosives. We then have a mixture of random fairy tale – like characters, such as the princess’ servant – the actual throne heir and a cocaine addict -, her parents – a father with a noisy mechanical heart valve and a foreign mother, with a strong accent and a little dog -, the vengeful sheikh who painted the pyramid black and an unopened pack of Camel cigarettes.

These handful of characters have to make peace with themselves and their captivating personalities and solve their problems at the same time. Tom Robbins has written the funniest comparisons I’ve ever come across in literature (e.g. ‘The first time that she spread her legs for him it had been like opening her jaws for the dentist.’) or just funny, interesting, morally correct or slightly philosophical sentences, such as ‘It's never too late to have a happy childhood.’

If I were to think of these characters as real life human beings, I would say they are full of flaws, egocentric and immature bastards. As characters from a book they become fascinating and close to role models. After she heard about me reading the book, the girl who recommended it to me asked me whether I was already in love with Bernard (of course I am, damn it).

It feels I went on an entire trip with these special, but dysfunctional people and I have to let them go now. And we all know I’m terrible with that.

A fairy tale ended with a crooked, but happy ending. We were together for a month. I can’t make myself set it on the book shelf, next to the other victims. 

JLG - “Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.”

In what concerns my relationship with Jean – Luc Godard, it happened pretty late, long after I’ve watched movies from authors like Fellini, Antonioni, Truffaut, or Bergman. I was already studying film and Godard showed up one rainy afternoon, with his sequences of playing pool from Vivre sa vie, the absurd conversation between Anna Karina and Jean Paul Belmondo from Pierrot le fou, the dance of the two guys and this girl from Bande a part and the pan shots and monologues from his self – portrait JLG – Autoportrait d’hiver. The movie represents a search for truth, whenever a movie can be considered honest, it lacks the linearity, but it certainly doesn’t lack a concept concerning this idea: realism is the essence of cinema, but movies have to start with a start, and have a middle and an end, but not necessarily in this order. 

Even though Patrick, the liar seductive high school kid from Tous les garcons s’appellent Patrick, was conceived by Eric Rohmer, and Michael Poiccard – by Francois Truffaut, these characters obviously appear as characters belonging to Godard. Patrick, tha character interpreted by Jean – Claude Briary is an endless garrulous, who picks up girls in the garden of Luxembourg. He’s a film fan ( he mentions Mizouchi and Kurosawa) and taks about cars. The young blonde girl he picks up is wearing a striped t-shirt (a reference to the feminine character from A bout de souffle) and she listens to popular songs on her portable radio an her walls are covered in posters of James Dean and pictures of Marilyn Monroe. With these typologies for male characters, Godard changes completely the idea of movie character, turning them into people who carry words or speak them out.

In ‘ A bout de souffle’, Godard goes through the entire history of cinema, integrating in his movie the B series heritage, more precisely the one of the thriller movies produced by Monogram Pictures, in a very heterogeneous structure. Godard’s movie is a long monologue through which the hero tries desperately to communicate with Patricia, the young American girl who has a hard time trying to follow the slangy meanders and the literary quotes. It’s the bullet from the last shot that turns him silent : ‘ What a gross world!’ says Poiccard, and the rude inspector Vital tells Patricia: ‘ he said you were gross!’, and then does Michel’s gesture, touching his lips with the tip of his finger.

Even though Godard repudiated it, ‘ A bout de souffle’ had, after more than 50 years, the same impact as in the beginning, which, looking back, turns it into the movie – manifesto of the New Wave. The feature films  Godard directed later were as inventive as this one, but in very different directions.

Godard’s style stays on the same line with the shape generated by the creation concept of the movies that belong to the New Wave: long shots, which show several subscenes, so that the visual information is sent all at once, not having excessive cutting. He didn’t want the rending of the sensation of reality a cut transmitted. This type of shot can be recognized in most of Godard’s movies, but on the other hand, he uses the same amount of jump cuts. 

 

Jean – Luc Godard sau both the art and the society declining: he first theorized the idea, and then made movies that included it. Using the contradiction technique, but also bringing new forms of art, he underlined society’s decline and the impossible labyrinth of art. Godard was probably the first personalities in art to suggest the idea of minimalism in film, always saying that all you need to make a movie is a woman and a gun. Another present aspect in his movies is politics – even in his shorts he situates the situations in the foreground in a political context, which will play the role of a background, connecting with the actors’ interpretations and the dialogue. Very conscious, but also active politically, Godard doesn’t miss any occasions to connect the foreground to the background. In the beginning of ‘Pierrot le fou’, in the car sequence, Marianne (Karina) hears a piece of news on the radio about the war in Vietnam, and later in the movie she says “Damn Americans!’, subtly suggesting the director’s opinion  concerning the contemporary society. 

            Of Godard’s trademarks, I love the most the fact that he uses Anna Karina in a lot of the female roles, also having an actor in the foreground and the portrait or the image of another actor or personality in the background. The references to the American B series cinema (noir movies) or the frequent quotes from French literature give his movies a familiar air, almost touchy.  JLG’s movies are special because of the alert editing style, which looks like jumps, which doesn’t care much about the 180˚ rule or about continuity, space becomes limited, but in a lot of his movies he manages to send out the feeling of not belonging to a place, the same way Antonioni uses it.

He really trusts the atmosphere created by the long shots (sequence – shots) and the sincerity these send out, so much that he claims every cut is a lie, hiding a time unit. 

He’s still fascinated by the shapes and structures the cinema allows him to use, so much that his movies have been a turning point in the worldwide cinematography, because of the way Godard used these structural elements – he helped the cinema’s stylistics evolve. He wants everything to be obvious, to almost hurt the spectators’ eyes, especially concerning the camerawork and the cinematography itself, but also when he edits, and these elements give rhythm and continuity , ‘rounding up’ the movie. The concept behind the editing has a rhythmic sense. 

His characters are superficial, the lack substance, but explode from so much charm.