We are lucky to live in a time when a
small handful of cinema giants are still living and making films. One
of the greatest (and crankiest) of all is Jean-Luc Godard, aka “Uncle
Jean,” one of the premiere cine-poets and image-makers. He doesn't
speak to the press very often these days, and when he does it is
often in the context of the release of a new film.
Given that he didn't attend this recent
Cannes festival (but sent them a short film saying that he would not be attending), each new interview becomes a small “event”
unto itself. Subtitled interviews are even more of a rarity, so I am
delighted to pass on this 45-minute talk Godard had with interviewers
for Canon Europe.
The chat was shot in March of this year
and is tied into JLG's latest feature, Adieu au langage.
A big portion of it naturally turns to the 3-D process, since this is
Godard's first feature in 3-D and his second film in it (he
contributed a short segment to the anthology feature 3x3D).
The best (and most characteristic) thing is that he begins by making
fun of 3-D, but then gradually begins to explain why he used it –
because there are no rules for its use and so he was free to do what
he wanted.
Godard's manner of speaking is very
circuitous, and yet he does give direct answers (if you're paying
attention, the answer arrives eventually). He favors a lot of
wordplay, and so here he winds up dissecting the current-day
fascination with phrases that contain the word “high.” (Like
George Carlin, Uncle Jean has loved for most of his career to dissect
popular language.) He also provides all of the synonyms in different
languages for an “answer print” (which has locked the image with
the sound), citing the British “married print” as the most
interesting.
He reiterates the fact that he films without complete scripts – or, in this case, any script at all. His goal, he notes, is to “escape the rules” when embarking upon a new project, so quite naturally he gravitated towards experimenting with 3-D. Godard speaks conceptually, so when watching/listening to/reading one of his interviews, one must regard his responses as part of a bigger argument (see more on his contrarianism below). Part one of the interview is here.
In part two of the interview he mocks
the notion that younger directors often come to filmmaking with
dreams of making a big-budget blockbuster. He also notes that his
personal friends are not in the arts, and that he hasn't had a circle
of artist friends in quite some time.
Perhaps the most revealing set of
answers he gives relates to his wanting to come up with “the
oppsite of what someone says.” He has spent a career confounding
critical and popular expectations, and he clearly enjoys looking at
things from other angles, both in art and in life (and he notes this
is something he inherited from his father, whom he “barely knew”).
Watching this interview, I was at first
taken aback because M. Godard seems frailer than usual (he is now 83
years old, of course), but that he gradually becomes comfortable
being interviewed. Since he has been notoriously hard on interviewers
I can only mark this up to the fact that he's being interviewed by a
woman.
Godard stated that he based the character of Parvulesco
(played by Jean-Pierre Melville in Breathless) on
Nabokov, but it's clear that some of the character's responses
(especially his delight in having a female interrogator) is partially
Uncle Jean's own impulse.
Thanks to Zach C., for leading
me to this interview.