Sticking with France for now we’ve got Jean-Luc Godard’s 1965 flick PIERROT LE FOU, yet another in the “young lovers on the run” genre, which seems to be a running theme this year for Romancefest.
This time it’s Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina. Belmondo snaps at an insufferably douchy party and abandons his family, taking along Karina, the babysitter, who turns out not only to be his previous lover, but also a gun-runner with criminal ties.
Like most of Godard’s stuff, and French New Wave in general, there is a certain artificiality assumed in the material, which is more about “being a movie” than about really telling a story or featuring authentic characters or situations. A flippant way to describe it would be “all style, no substance.” That’s a little too dismissive and simple for Godard’s work, but it kind of gets the point across.
The problem with a movie like this is if you take it seriously, the joke is on you. If you get all uptight about our cute little lovers killing people and stealing cars and stuff, you’re missing the point. But, if you don’t take it seriously, the joke is still on you, because now it’s just a series of seemingly unconnected events and images.
So you kind of have to meet Godard halfway, and I guess you could argue his style of filmmaking is the act of the artist meeting the audience halfway. You and Godard both agree “it’s just a movie” and then you both agree “movies are to be taken seriously” and then you have something. Kinda.
The nice thing is, this flick is beautifully shot in blazing, alive color with great locations and great looking people. Even if there’s nothing going on, there’s always something going on.
The movie does have something wise to say about relationships, I guess, if you can see through all the shenanigans and goings-on long enough to try to pick it up. But, again, if you try to see through all the shenanigans and goings-on, you might miss the movie, so you kind of have to look at it out of the corner of your eye without it knowing that you’re looking at it.
All right, now I’m being as annoying as Godard.
No comments:
Post a Comment