https://open.spotify.com/track/1rZUvvrb11470D3KltbZu2?si=20f275b1317944cb
Recommended if you like Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Tag Archives: Rolle
Redoubtable [2017)
Formidable.
Inspiring fear and respect.
Impressive.
Intense.
Capable.
That Swiss-Maoist asshole is my hero.
In many ways.
But which Godard?
If I were to say “late Godard” (and that would be my natural, truthful answer), Monsieur Godard would likely point out the merits of his early films…just to annoy me.
If I spoke lovingly of Vivre sa vie, he would probably proclaim that it is shit.
Jean-Luc Godard is a very complex individual.
And I can wholeheartedly identify with that.
A walking civil war.
This film never makes reference to Cahiers du cinéma.
It doesn’t need to.
This film covers a period of time which Wikipedia classifies as Godard’s “revolutionary period”.
When did Godard stop writing for Cahiers?
He never stopped being a critic.
We know that.
And I see his point.
This is shit.
Because we want to invent new forms.
Breathless was like his “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”.
Or his Bolero.
He couldn’t escape it.
Couldn’t lose it.
Must be nice.
But maybe not.
“Play the hits!”
Did politics ruin Jean-Luc Godard?
Sure.
But it was necessary.
It was his process of growing up.
His process of attaining wisdom.
Trial and error.
Formative years.
But not the last word.
I don’t agree with Godard’s politics.
Perhaps at some point in my youth I did.
But not very much.
Because I never really understood them.
I dabbled.
But I too am a revolutionary.
In these days.
After the 2020 election.
You may call me a reactionary.
I don’t care what you call me.
I think George Washington is cool.
I think the United States of America is worth saving.
And the American Revolution has recommenced.
Same goals as the founders had.
Love it or leave it.
Godard did not show up in 2010 to receive his honorary Academy Award.
Good for him.
Fuck Hollywood!
Give me the old stuff.
Hitchcock.
Howard Hawks.
Not this new crap.
Tripe.
Perhaps you see where me and Godard overlap?
Too rashes like a Venn diagram…with a particularly-irritated common ground.
The skin is red and peeling.
Weeping.
Scratching.
Itching.
I scratch my arms.
I’m running out of real estate on my body for these nicotine patches.
Yes.
You thought it was something more interesting?
More taboo?
No.
Where does the former President of Peru come in?
Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.
Godard’s first cousin.
I too had cousins.
Who are as far off as Peru.
But always close in my heart.
Kuczynski is 82.
Godard will be 90 in one week.
I will be 44 when the Electoral College meets.
Anna Karina died on my birthday last year.
She was 79.
But this film doesn’t deal with the wonderful Ms. Karina.
No, this film deals with another stunning beauty: Anne Wiazemsky.
Wiazemsky died three years ago.
The same year Redoubtable came out.
In the English-speaking world, we know it (ironically) as Godard Mon Amour.
Sounds more sophisticated to have the subtitled film with a more commercial FRENCH product label.
Redoubtable is too vague.
Godard Mon Amour sells itself.
[that’s what the advertising guys must have said]
Godard and Wiazemsky were married for 12 years.
Godard and Karina married for a mere 4.
I’ve never read Mauriac.
I have nothing against Catholics.
I adore Olivier Messiaen’s music.
So it bears mentioning that one of the smartest, most unique artists in the history of the world was a French Catholic [Messiaen].
Which is to say, believing in God does not make you boring.
I believe in God.
The same God.
The Christian God.
God who gave us Jesus.
God who gave us synesthesia.
Combat didn’t like La Chinoise.
De Gaulle withdrew from NATO.
Will Trump win?
De Gaulle supported sovereignty.
The European Union is the antithesis of what de Gaulle wanted.
De Gaulle criticized America’s war in Vietnam.
But that wasn’t enough for revolutionaries like Godard.
Too lukewarm.
De Gaulle wanted Québec to be free from Canada.
If you’ve ever been to Québec, you might see why.
It is unlike the rest of Canada.
Except for New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
But not really.
Île de Chêne?
1755-1764.
Conservatism.
De Gaulle.
Biography.
Mauriac.
Wiazemsky.
Mauriac’s granddaughter.
Starring in a Maoist film directed by Jean-Luc Godard.
La Chinoise.
And then they married.
Godard was correct.
Au Hasard Balthazar is the antithesis of the Central Intelligence Agency.
But Godard never said that.
I did.
So Anne Wiazemsky wrote a book called Un An Après which was published in 2015.
She died two years later.
The same year her book was adapted for film as Redoubtable.
She died of breast cancer.
Less than a month after Redoubtable was released in France.
This film proves that Michel Hazanavicius is a very talented filmmaker.
It proves that he knows his Godard.
But it is flawed.
Aren’t all masterpieces?
Maybe not.
Is Redoubtable a masterpiece?
In some ways, yes.
In some ways, no.
It is probably most similar to Sacha Gervasi’s Hitchcock.
Both of them are films of “exorbitant privilege”.
Which is to say, a little out of touch with their subject matter.
Was Pablo Picasso ever called an asshole?
Not if we take Jonathan Richman at his word.
Art contains deeper layers of meaning.
Usually.
Unless you’re Warhol.
In which case, the meaning MAY be found closer to the surface.
Stravinsky liked this too.
Music has no meaning.
It is just tones.
Timbres.
Rhythms.
Harmonies.
Little dots on a page.
So we are told.
By Igor.
Jean-Luc Godard and Igor Stravinsky both embraced MANY different approaches to their craft over their long careers.
Because they loved their crafts.
They were addicted.
It was a compulsion.
And, for Godard, it remains so.
Godard married the girl who rejected Robert Bresson.
Do not underestimate the thrill of this.
The thrill of it all.
Bresson was a genius too.
But she was only 18 when Bresson made his advances.
Girls want to live.
Bresson was 65.
Bold.
Numbers can lie.
Godard and Wiazemsky were only together as man and wife for three years.
Though they were married for 12.
Three years was enough, apparently.
The divorce appears to have been more a formality.
Anna.
Anne.
Anne-Marie.
I spoke to Anne-Marie on the phone once.
In exceedingly-broken French.
She was saintly in her patience.
All I wished to convey, as I called Rolle (Switzerland) on my flip phone, was that Godard was my intellectual hero. [it is true] And that his LATE films mattered. That they mattered THE MOST. That he had created beauty. That he had plumbed the depths. I owed it to my master to deliver this message before I (or he) died (God forbid).
I was compelled.
Jean-Luc Godard is my favorite creator this side of heaven.
Even though I don’t agree with his politics.
Bob Dylan is neck-and-neck for this honor.
Dylan is, no doubt, my favorite musician to have ever lived.
Neck-and-neck with Roland Kirk (perhaps).
My favorite jazz artist.
My favorite instrumentalist.
It is never noted that Wiazemsky was in Les Gauloises bleues.
And Godard could be an asshole.
So can I.
So can Trump.
Trump is my ideological hero.
My political hero.
I DO agree with his political philosophy.
Wholeheartedly.
And yet, my favorite film director (auteur) remains Godard.
No one is even neck-and-neck with JLG for me.
Brakhage is a distant second.
Welles is formidable.
But they do not hit the mark like Jean-Luc.
Il seme dell’uomo.
Nothing suggestive there.
Global plague.
Marco Ferreri.
Marco Margine?
Shot-reverse shot.
And then I gave Jacques Demy’s grandson piano lessons.
Or Agnès Varda’s grandson.
Same difference.
More like organ lessons.
Booker T.
You should use Belmondo again.
Funny films.
We see Coutard’s hair early.
Politics entered soon.
Le Petit soldat.
Shadow war.
The perfection of Vivre sa vie.
The jaunty, carefree, playful anarchy of Breathless.
And a sadness tied to beauty.
Politics again with Les Carabiniers.
An attempt at commercialism with Contempt.
Equivalent to Nirvana’s In Utero album.
Big-budget negation.
Nihilism.
A thorough disdain for the Hollywood system.
And the “tradition of quality” in France.
But something deeper…and more bitter.
Bande à part more like Breathless.
A little like Vivre sa vie.
Dancing.
Pinball.
Billiards.
Cafe culture.
Down and out in Paris.
Life at the margin of society.
YOUTH!
Hazanavicius first really gets going with Une Femme mariée.
Stacy Martin in the nude.
Stunning.
Cinematography.
Grabbing the bedsheets.
Clutch.
Brace brace brace.
The resemblance to Charlotte Gainsbourg is striking.
A little Alphaville.
Someone who nibbles Godard’s neck.
The Samuel Fuller scene from Pierrot le fou turned into a fistfight.
Politics.
Don’t insult me!
A bit of Macha Méril in the hair.
And a bit more of Chantal Goya.
Getting shouted down by a situationist during the May ’68 occupation of the Sorbonne. Lumped in with Coca-Cola.
Things go dark with insults.
Swiss-Maoist jerk.
On the blink.
“Ruby’s Arms”.
It hurts.
Made in U.S.A.
Two or Three Things I Know About Her.
Urbanism.
“You ruined my shot!”
Ciné-tracts.
Eating Chinese food.
A rather unfortunate outburst directed at a war hero.
And his wife.
These are the things we do.
When we’re young.
And stupid.
And fiery.
What is striking is the humor in Redoubtable.
The broken eyeglasses.
The slipping shoes.
And their replacement.
I must give credit to Louis Garrel.
He really does convey the mania and eccentricity of Godard.
While Stacy Martin is very good here, it is a shame that Hazanavicius chose to lovingly evoke every detail of Godard’s life…except Wiazemsky’s red hair.
-PD
Salinger [2013)
I read every book J.D. Salinger ever wrote.
This was, of course, due to The Catcher in the Rye.
If my memory serves me, it was the first book I ever enjoyed reading.
The first book that ever made me laugh.
[what a concept!]
And so I made it through the other three books published during the author’s lifetime.
None of them made the same impression upon me as had Catcher, yet I knew this was a special, special writer.
One story did, however, stick with me for unrelated reasons.
That story was “A Perfect Day for Bananafish”.
And the connection was Richard Manuel (of The Band)…who died in a similar way (and in Florida, near enough in my mind…city notwithstanding) to the protagonist of that haunting little tale.
But I am not obsessed with J.D. Salinger.
Indeed, I had not given thought to him in quite some time.
His writing affected me deeply, but it was not the kind of stuff that I wished to revisit.
Once was enough.
But still…
Perhaps his greatest work…was his strange, mysterious life.
THAT is what fascinated me!
Long after the books ended.
In my literary pantheon, there is one very small category which holds but two authors: Salinger and Pynchon.
The recluses.
And so, in the final estimation, Salinger was the consummate artist.
A genius of public relations as much as a weaver of phrases.
Well, dear friends…if you relate to any of the above, then you absolutely must see the documentary Salinger.
What is particularly fascinating is that our author was in counterintelligence.
Yes, by this I mean to infer that Salinger’s self-imposed exile was very much a calculated move from the mind of a trained spook (for lack of a better word).
But there’s more to the story…
Salinger likewise was a soldier.
World War II.
Voluntary.
From D-Day through V-E Day.
299 days (as director Shane Salerno makes wonderfully clear).
But if this has not piqued your curiosity about this mammoth of 20th-century literature, consider the pithy, icy story of how Salinger was jilted, while at war (!), to the benefit of an Englishman [wait for it] living in America…
Yes, his girlfriend married Charlie Chaplin.
While J.D. was seeing men die in France and Germany to push back and defeat the Nazis.
And the cherry on top of that bitter sundae?
His erstwhile girlfriend was the daughter of America’s only Nobel-prize-winning dramatist: Eugene O’Neill.
This is the kind of stuff any documentarian would drool over.
But likewise, portraying the delicate enigma of Salinger is a task which could have resulted in crumbling failure with any faux pas (in its literal sense).
Shane Salerno (any relation to Nadja…Sonnenberg?) crafted a thoroughly engrossing document of Salinger’s richly-fabriced life.
But the coup comes at the end (and it is not too much of a spoiler to reveal this).
Salinger appears to be the primary source (if Wikipedia is to be even marginally trusted) concerning the forthcoming publication of Salinger’s fruits of reclusion.
We have a timetable: 2015-2020.
40% has come and gone.
You know, I never thought I’d live to see the day when a “new” Salinger book hit the shelves.
And I won’t believe it till I see it.
But one thing is for sure: I’m buying.
Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Salinger.
He passed away in 2010.
What a special gift he had!
What joy he shared with the world!!
It was the real thing.
The masses, after all, CAN (in the final estimation) tell the difference between shit and Shinola.
And to all the critics who ever panned J.D. out of jealousy, a big “Fuck you” is in order.
One more thing…
This review is dedicated to all those who travelled up to Cornish, New Hampshire hoping to catch a glimpse of the man…
All those who left a note…
All those whose pleas fell on deaf ears…
I know your dedication.
My hero is Jean-Luc Godard.
I know.
I know letters.
I know the long-distance call.
My Cornish, New Hampshire just happens to be Rolle, Switzerland.
But I know.
And I want to make this very clear.
You are not dupes.
You had the open hearts to dream.
And you let an author into your lives.
Perhaps J.D. Salinger was incapable of expressing his gratitude for all of you.
Perhaps out of some kind of self-hate.
But I’m bold enough to speak for the man.
He loves you.
Always did.
Always will.
Else, he never would have given you Holden in the first place.
-PD
La Chinoise [1967)
Even geniuses make mistakes. That’s how I thought I’d begin. And then…viewing again. It is like “Heroin” by The Velvet Underground. Was Lou Reed, the songwriter, promoting the use of this drug in the song of the same name? Not necessarily. It boils down (no pun intended) to something I learned in economics: positive vs. normative.
And so, we have a film by Jean-Luc Godard which is very difficult to sum up. On the surface it is easy. The Situationists called Godard a Swiss Maoist (a sort of double insult). Even in that, they were only part right. Yes, Godard today lives in Rolle…in the canton of Vaud: Switzerland. But he was born in Paris. He didn’t move to Switzerland until he was four years old. Of course, he would return to Paris for university (and eventually to make a name for himself as critic and director). Actually, it was a back and forth: la France, la Suisse, la France, la Suisse…like a tennis match.
Back to my point: this film does not necessarily “prove” that Godard was a Maoist. But was he? And what would that mean? Let’s investigate.
First, I should mention that I have read four books about Godard, one more which is a book-length interview, an additional collection of his writings, and finally an actual book by Godard which was published by Gallimard. Of the first category, two were biographies (by Richard Brody and Colin MacCabe respectively).
In my opinion, a short review of Jean-Pierre Gorin and the Dziga Vertov Group are needed.
First Gorin. Wikipedia (in English) is typically terse when it comes to Jean-Pierre. For our purposes, it is enough to say that Gorin is nowhere called a Maoist in this short entry.
Next…Dziga Vertov Group. Again, no one is called a Maoist in this similarly curt Wiki reflection. The closest thing is a non-hypertext mention of the film(s) British Sounds/See You at Mao.
This may seem like laziness on my part (and it is), but it is important to note that the “Dziga Vertov” period of Godard’s oeuvre is the most unknown (and, one might say, mysterious). This would be roughly 1968-1972.
And so we are brought to the man at issue himself: Mao.
What ideas are pertinent? Anti-imperialism. The Long March. The People’s Republic of China. The Great Leap Forward. 45 million dead? The Cultural Revolution.
One must wonder whether it is a coincidence that the Dziga Vertov Group disbanded the same year Nixon visited China: 1972. Was this seen as weakness by Maoists?
Let’s recalculate: 40 million dead? 70 million?
Just as in the Holocaust, how much about China’s “dark side” was known outside of the country during Mao’s tenure? For young idealists, the concept of radical revolution might have an appealing luster, but when deaths are counted in millions and tens-of-millions the appeal should (must!) become appalling.
What were the nature of these deaths? Mao bragged about burying alive 46,000 scholars. One thing is certain: there is a persisting battle between those who seek to rehabilitate the tarnished image of Mao and those who perhaps feel that the extent of atrocities for which he was responsible has not yet fully been made evident to the world at large.
Mao is a strange figure…to whom just about every superlative and, equally, insult has been applied. Just as in a criminal investigation, we must scrutinize the sources and their authors with cui bono: what do they stand to gain by promulgating such theories?
Were 3 million tortured to death during the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962)? If even one was tortured to death, isn’t that too many?
Yes. We do not hold torturers and terrorists to be our heroes. They forfeit our respect at that point…no matter how great their theories are. It is solemnly inexcusable.
No, rather we uphold the nonviolent masters: Gandhi and King. Obama is no King (nor king). The end does not justify the means. We who torture lose our humanity. We are only torturing ourselves.
And so even Nixon himself was a Maoist in a cynical, Machiavellian way. Anything to counter what Reagan would later normatively call “the evil empire.” Yes Mao, it is still the imperialists who are the true axis of evil in this young century. But China is learning how to project its influence. It would be wrong to call the China of today anti-imperialist.
Enough about Mao. That is the freedom we have…at this late moment…to still express such a thought.
Godard’s dalliance with Maoism didn’t last long (in terms of his career as a whole).
Perhaps it was Dostoyevsky. No doubt Paul Nizan. Most importantly it was the ravishing Anne Wiazemsky. Godard was doubtless smitten…you can tell by the camera’s loving gaze. He would have gone to the end of the earth for her. A revolutionary goddess!
Veronique Verkhovensky. Her eyes are wild in their tranquility. She is no paper tiger. Juliet Berto is the brunette…Wiazemsky the redhead. Such a beautiful revolutionary group!
Henri Shatov. He endures the brunt of human stupidity here. No, he cannot entice Juliet to abandon the radical cell as they dive headlong into terrorism.
Kirilov adds a dash of Peter Max color before his inevitable demise.
Will the Maoists in power continue to struggle on two fronts (ISIS and Ukraine) while fronting like sucker MCs? Yeah, oops: Nemtsov and Nisman worked for you…32 was 23 (if 6 was 9).
Francis Verkhovensky. Like Jimmy Stewart in Rope. Should we contact Arthur Lee or Althusser in regards to all those little red books of Aden Arabie? I’m inclined to believe that Love is all you need.
-PD
paulydeathwish 