Marx and Coke

We control our thoughts which mean nothing, and not our emotions which mean everything.
~Masculin/Feminin

The central character Paul just returned from military service, disillusioned and trying to take a profession in either writing or doing something significant. He meets the “wanna be” pop singer Madeleine in a coffee shop and the film rolls on. Masculin/Feminin is an absorbing essay digest on the 60’s French young people dealing with value judgment, political views and daily existences. The unfolding is flamboyant, often with ingredients of documentary attributes, deliberately created by Godard. This film adds factors to the implicit commotion between political biasness and emerging pop culture (!) among young French guys in 60’s. Actually, this film can be showcased as Godard’s early approaches towards political movies or as a surface premonition of his later day’s anti-bourgeois contents.

The narration is elegant; there are few moments of long chat scenes, in which Godard can be regarded as a mastermind. He focuses on the protagonist’s off-dialogues; sometimes he fashions the audience as a part of the discussion by changing the focal points from person to person and suddenly spotlighting only one person for long. The discourses are also pretty cerebral, though I have grumble towards the DVD subtitles here, sometimes I felt the English captions are not coagulating properly (“deliver us from liberty?”).

There are few master strokes in the long interview shots, individuals are been interviewed throughout the movie, sometimes with repeated queries. Questions on politics, or suddenly jumping to topics of Pepsi or Vietnam War (Dylan in quoted as a Vietnik (Vietnam + Beatnik). Godard as always dismantles the predictive form of film narrating, by suitably inserting captions, titles, iconoclastic images (the death scene of liberty in the guillotine), bucketing dilemmas and insecure self-identification of French people caught in the middle of pop and Bach.

Is Godard sexist? Perhaps his remark on “masculin” word (“there is a mask in the word”) and “feminin” (“the word feminin has nothing...”) may protract this argument. Also, in the end Madeleine comments that she knows nothing, there is a big stress on the word “nothing”. Is this nothing has to do anything with Godard’s hesitant attitude towards pop culture and bourgeois?

Perhaps, the turbulence of 60’s can be best described in a slogan of the movie. The movie can be re titled as “the children of Marx and Coca-Cola”!

Children of a lesser god?

Masculin, féminin: 15 faits précis
( Masculin/Feminin -1966)
Directed By: Jean-Luc Godard

Living the life...

My life to live is an unnatural cinematic experience. This is a movie not only about style and intelligent film making; it is more about the ongoing commotions of delving into values of life and pathos. Godard, one of the most cerebral movie makers of all time (perhaps, his contributions can be summed by a single critical comment, that his worst movie is also so stylish and revolutionary, can be seen many a times and beat hands down other celebrated movies) is at his zenith, for my personal opinion just for my live to live, he can be remembered through space-time.

The main protagonist Nana, (portrayed by the amazing Anna Karina) is a stunning naïve young woman, who is in the search of joy and meaning of happiness and freedom in life. She has left her family and tries to take an acting profession but ends up in being a prostitute. The film starts in a coffee shop, Nana and her boy friend Paul having an uneasy conversation. Godard’s proverbial camerawork follows the scene from uncanny and uncomfortable angles depicting the turmoil of their affiliation and the emotional distance between them. From this shot, we follow the beautiful narration of the movie by seeing numerous times the dismayed and suffered face of Nana. Godard splits the movie into twelve tableaux, with very significant sub-headings. This unformulated adaptation of creating different sections for the movie been used to show different layers of Nana’s different personas, uncomprehending agony and run for freedom. The camera follows her face from various angles, stunning long shots showing the turbulent, lost and desperate countenance of Nana. She is a sensitive person, emotionally breaks down while watching Maria Falconetti in “Passion of Joan of Arc” (a classic from Dreyer). She sees herself in Joan of Arc’s role, tries to come out from the sordid mundane lifestyle of her, to achieve something more bigly.

Godard personally has put up few questions with this using of mazes in the film. We see a photographer takes a little interest in Nana to give her a chance to enter into film world. Soon we see Nana meets a pimp who imitates the photographer. Are both professions replicas of each other?

I cannot forget the mesmerizing scene of Nana’s free flow dance while playing the juke box. Relentlessly, she moves and dances beside the pool tables, just as a weightless cloud. It is a very short fleeting glimpse of happiness and joy in her life, she has ever known. Such a brief but fresh air brought by the scene! You will feel deeply how truly she is desperate to find out bits and bytes of cheerfulness from the banality of life.

In the end wee see a petite scene while Nana consorting with a guy, just after her degraded and discarded experience. This guy reads a story of Poe which ends with the death of the artist’s love. Similarly, Nana’s life is also judged by mankind and experience a sudden tragic end, resembling the character of Joan of Arc.

Godard was the part of French New Wave of filmmaking, and this is one of the finest austere moments of movie history. He creates layers of layers of Nana’s vacuous and empty lifestyle and brings a shocking unexpected conclusion. Perhaps, there was nothing left to articulate her pains. This is one finest instance in films to fashion perfect characters, no matter how much you taint her, but you will always memorize the mournful but hopeful expressions of her. It is a remarkable film, a ballad of the director’s own doubts on today’s world blended with desolations and sufferings of human life.

My life to live is an astonishing fable of an existing tragedy.

Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux
(My Life to Live -1962)
Directed By: Jean Luc-Godard