Primary Colors
Éloge de l'amour (2001)
directed by Jean-Luc Godard
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Because Eglantine will not accept what Perceval tells her - that he placed her too high above him - they break up. If memory has obligations, then an old man is still in love, and Godard is so far from the cynic his detractors expect him to be. Thus "reconciliation" is the fourth stage of love, "separation" only the third. Whatever inquiries are made into art, thought, and adulthood here, the film is endlessly renewable as a discovery: I could watch it a hundred times and not exhaust it of its treasures.
So long as the woman - black, no less - sitting at the bus stop in Paris is smiling, she, and not the actress auditioning for Eglantine, is how the rest - the politics especially - retreats into the background. That isn't me preferring one part of Godard's process to another; I couldn't find her if she wasn't there. He argues that adults need stories more than children or old men, gives us dozens of names, and recommends a book or two. Together, they cascade far beyond his 90-minute frame. Who else is so generous with credit for the ideas he compiles? Has digital video ever looked better?
Anger and frustration can be part of things. They can be synonymous with awareness, even, and with both a willingness and unwillingness to accept the world as it is. But to film those emotions, and to remind your audience more of Douglas Fairbanks on a flying horse in a movie palace in the 1920s - what is that if not a dream?
directed by Jean-Luc Godard
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Because Eglantine will not accept what Perceval tells her - that he placed her too high above him - they break up. If memory has obligations, then an old man is still in love, and Godard is so far from the cynic his detractors expect him to be. Thus "reconciliation" is the fourth stage of love, "separation" only the third. Whatever inquiries are made into art, thought, and adulthood here, the film is endlessly renewable as a discovery: I could watch it a hundred times and not exhaust it of its treasures.
So long as the woman - black, no less - sitting at the bus stop in Paris is smiling, she, and not the actress auditioning for Eglantine, is how the rest - the politics especially - retreats into the background. That isn't me preferring one part of Godard's process to another; I couldn't find her if she wasn't there. He argues that adults need stories more than children or old men, gives us dozens of names, and recommends a book or two. Together, they cascade far beyond his 90-minute frame. Who else is so generous with credit for the ideas he compiles? Has digital video ever looked better?
Anger and frustration can be part of things. They can be synonymous with awareness, even, and with both a willingness and unwillingness to accept the world as it is. But to film those emotions, and to remind your audience more of Douglas Fairbanks on a flying horse in a movie palace in the 1920s - what is that if not a dream?
posted by NPK at 7:57 AM
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