goodbye godard | adieu à godard

goodbye godard

Adieu à Godard

Text/Lin Birch

Photo/Bande à part (1964), Jean-Luc Godard, Gaumont Pictures

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Seven years ago, at the age of 84, Godard made a film called "Adieu au langage" (Adieu au langage); however, today, we have to say goodbye to Godard - Adieu à Godard. I haven't picked up a pen for a long time, and I wanted to write something today, but it was actually a eulogy.

This afternoon, my friend informed me that Godard was dead, and it was accompanied by a report from the French "Liberation" - the old man is still dead. Compared with the death of the Queen of England not long ago, I feel that Godard's death surprised me more, surprised and regretted. Once upon a time, Godard was widely hailed by critics as a living fossil of the film industry—according to my understanding, today’s films are basically constructed on the concept of film constructed by Godard and that generation of French New Wave filmmakers; From east to west, from Wong Kar-wai to Martin Scorsese, all of them admit that they have been influenced by Godard; going back further, that is the teacher's teacher, Chaplin, Brecht and other people's influence on the contemporary Institute of Cinema and Drama. The foundation is laid. However, take a closer look at the entire film history: Pasolini died the earliest, then Truffaut, Kubrick died in 1999, and Varda, the "mother of the new wave" who was contemporary with Godard 3 years ago, died; according to 19 In an interview with Swiss TV in 2009, Godard, who was 89 years old, said that he was still writing a screenplay and planning to shoot in Switzerland, and we still see the old artist still harboring in this age. Respectful determination; he is an evergreen and a living fossil of film history, he is a symbol of Cannes (though he has been very embarrassing for Cannes), but on September 13, 2022, we received a With such bad news - the death of a major filmmaker; a huge loss for the art world as a whole - our time with the masters is over. Once upon a time, a young Hemingway greeted Joyce "Master" on the streets of Paris, and a few years later, still on the streets of Paris, a young Marquez greeted Hemingway, who had become a master, with a "Master". However, our generation of artistic youth has lost such an opportunity. Although Godard once joked in front of reporters that after Varda and he both passed away, there is still Jacques Housier as the only standard bearer of the New Wave movement to accompany the artists of this era - the more I think about it, the more emotional I feel. . 5 years ago, before Varda's death, she collaborated with contemporary artist JR on the documentary "Visages Villages"; one is the founder of art of the last era, the other is the contemporary creator of the new wave, two people Go together and use camcorders and cameras to photograph everything they see. Among them, they came to the Louvre Museum, which was the filming location of Godard's "Bande à part" (Bande à part), and the young JR pushed Varda in a wheelchair to visit the Louvre Museum, chatting with the old and the young. From the glorious years and those movies, to pay tribute to that era; as we said before, Varda died 3 years ago, and now Godard, who seems to be invincible, is also with his lifelong comrades, and Truffaut , Karina, Vyazemsky and others reunited.

Of course, it is inaccurate to say that they are reunited; Godard himself believes more in the theory of reincarnation in other civilizations than in the concept of "after death" as defined by Christianity. He told reporters he believed a puppy he brought back from Spain was a stretcher for the international column in his previous life. I have always had the habit of searching for the word "Godard" on Weibo from time to time, wanting to see the latest situation of this old man; is he arranging a new live broadcast, creating a new movie, or ——In the impetuous public opinion in China, the news of his death has become insignificant, and only a very few filmmakers will mention it? But I never thought that he really left today, and I only knew it after someone notified me, and the news of his death seemed to attract more attention than I thought, quite a kind of Camus expression in "The Outsider" A sense of loss; a feeling of emptiness.

Jean-Luc Godard was born into a bourgeois family in Paris, France in 1930. Because his mother is Swiss, he is also of Swiss nationality; he spent his childhood in Switzerland. After World War II he returned to France to study philosophy at the Sorbonne; his interest in cinema and new ideas during his time in Paris cut himself off from his bourgeois father, and was later incarcerated in a mental institution (though he I say he thinks university is the most mentally ill place). At that time, shortly after the end of the war, European cultural circles were eager to move, and Italian directors put forward the slogan of "putting the film on the streets", such as De Sica, Rossellini and others put forward the concept of film neo-realism, with extremely low Cost, street shooting and roughness to make a movie. At that time, the French film industry, which was impacted by Hollywood on the other side of the ocean, also absorbed the same thinking; at that time, the French cinema chain was either Hollywood production or an outdated technique of the Third Republic era, and a group of young filmmakers founded a book called " Cinebook magazine, of which Godard was one of its contributors. These filmmakers commented in very sharp language, and then they made their own films, and Cahieres du Cinéma became the main stage of the French New Wave movement.

In 1960, Godard's solo debut "Exhausted" was released, and immediately won the Silver Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival. Since then, he has shot many classic works: "Do As You Want", "Little Soldier" (which was not released due to the sensitivity of the subject matter under the approval mechanism of the Fifth Republic of France) and "Outlaws". In these films, he expresses his thoughts on existentialism and other theories that were sought after in European intellectual circles at the time, and at the same time expresses personal thoughts, such as the critique of the Algerian War and the Vietnam War - later in 1968 , he appeared frequently with the thinker Jean-Paul Sartre. As the international left-wing movement reached its climax around the world in 1968, Godard's own ideological attitude was also affected - he admitted that he was infected by the enthusiasm of socialists, and made the film "La Chinoise" (La Chinoise) ). Later in the 1970s, he himself joined a film organization called "Giga-Vertov", made some experimental films, and continued to make films for the next 20 years. After entering the new century, he returned to his individualistic style. In 2010, he filmed "Film Socialism", in which he invited the well-known European scholar Alain Badiou to appear; in 2014, he filmed "Goodbye Language", which is His first attempt at making movies in 3D. In 2020, Godard was interviewed by the Film Department of the University of Art and Design in Lausanne, Switzerland, and broadcast live on the Internet, telling his thoughts on society and the film and television industry under the new crown epidemic; at that time, someone asserted, "You said that this old man will be able to shoot vertically one day. I believe in movies." In 2018, Godard finished filming the last film of his life, "The Book of Images", and gave his speech; then he passed away at this moment, quite like Guy Debord.

Now, Jean-Luc Godard has drawn an end to his career, an era has become history - "an era has become history" has become the rhetoric of this era. For two weeks this month, the departure of Gorbachev, then the Queen, now Godard—the people of the last era, has given me the feeling that death is like a piece of glass. To a certain extent, I hate Godard now; because his death separates us from an era with which we can still be said to be in the same era, and still walk with it, until his life ceases. However, his departure gave me a sense of misunderstanding that Akutagawa Ryunosuke felt in the early Showa era, and that Akutagawa Ryunosuke's death brought to the young Osamu Dazai. A piece of glass stands between us and Godard; we stand in the "contemporary", while Godard stands in "Godard's time", or "legendary time", we can only stand on the side of the glass and watch He, gradually disappeared, but can no longer say that we are walking with him; it is like, if in 1957 Marquez had not lived in Paris, when he returned to Paris in 1962, he found Hemingway dead.

But on Godard, I still want to talk about a topic, that is, what kind of legacy Godard left. From 2019 to 2020, under the controversy, "I accuse" directed by Roman Polanski won the Venice Film Festival Jury Prize and the French Caesar Award for Best Director respectively. While the jury has been criticized for directorial integrity in today's #MeToo environment, one thing is clear: the current movie market is fed up with both the vulgarity of Hollywood and the smugness of postmodernism, so a film full of Classical films can be well-received for their technical implications. The Brecht theatrical theory that Godard abandoned may have reached the ceiling in the current drama and film industry. His most famous disciple, Wong Kar-wai, has been in doubt for his work in recent years. Many critics believe that Wong Kar-wai is now exhausted and can only rely on the fame he accumulated in the 1990s to make money in today's film market. On film theory and film techniques, Godard's status among today's film students is a "required course", but it is limited to required courses. In the future era, how art can get out of innovative styles is still a question that all artists today are thinking about. , it may no longer be realistic to take pictures of gourds and scoops from Godard and Wong Kar-wai.

But I think Godard still left a legacy for future generations; not just for today's artists, but for all people today as a guide on how to face life, society and the world. In my opinion, it is not Godard's artistic skills or techniques that really make many future artists, but an attitude left by Godard.

Today, I saw Director Jia Zhangke posted an article to commemorate Godard; in fact, the fifth-generation directors of the domestic academies are all influenced by Hong Kong films and Godard; if you don't believe it, in Hong Kong, in addition to Wong Kar-wai, the so-called 'bad movie king' king Jing also said that making bad films is just for the money. He will also invest in literary films or themed films, and watch Godard when he is free. But just imagine, what is the general impression left by the fifth generation of domestic directors? It is a sense of uninhibitedness, and this sense of uninhibitedness has something in common with the ban issued by Godard when he faced the de Gaulle authorities.

For me I think what people lack these days is what can be called "imaginary space". Today's market of public opinion and doctrine is full of various slogans, attracting people's attention and attracting a group of believers. My experience is that today's language is richer than ever, yet under the terms of a certain instrumental rationality, the claims wrapped by the various factions strike me as abstract and metaphysical. When it comes to Godard, the lingering thing is the "May storm" that occurred in France in 1968 - when Godard was standing with student workers on the streets of Paris. After more than five decades, last year Wes Anderson released his new film "The French Dispatch," which in part starred contemporary teen idol "Sweet Tea", alluding to "The Storm in May." In the film, "Sweet Tea" leads a group of young people in a protest demanding that boys be allowed to enter the girls' dormitory; this is also the original reason for the outbreak of the "May Storm". However, when I was watching the domestic related public account to introduce this film, I wanted to emphasize that the content in the film is a history that actually happened - I felt a little bit dumbfounded. People often say that history has progressed and developed, but when we look at the current generation who cannot understand the history that happened in the past, and think that this past history can no longer be true, it is so absurd; but we clearly live In a world created by those who lived through that era! Is this because the brains of people in this era have shrunk or what? We don't know. Don't people in this era even have the courage to try to imagine and face reality? Or is this era more civilized? No; this civilization seems to me more rude than so-called barbarism and rudeness; it has a hint of arrogance.

Many artists of this era were no exception; however, this was not art. Godard is a classic French intellectual, he learned from Proust's "artistic exposure theory": that is, the meaning of the artist's existence, in order to discover the reality that people will ignore in daily life; the artist is full of adventure , is full of curiosity, like Vermeer or Rembrandt to capture pictures that will be ignored by people. Godard as a photographer understood this so deeply that he and his disciples who followed his style were doing it, so much so that for Godard his task was to keep like any artist Your own passion, save every second with your own lens. In my eyes, many of today's artists are doing "greenhouse art". They grow up in the environment of the greenhouse, and naturally they also have to promote the truth of the greenhouse - but if the so-called rationality has become the norm, then what is the artistic significance of promoting rationality? Many contemporary people seem to have lost a certain spirit of challenge—whether artists or ordinary people, are caught in the whirlpool of kitsch, but in this case, what qualifications do people in this era have to blame for the dullness of this era, if the premise is Already accepting dullness and indifference as a given?

So in this day and age, Godard's value is reflected here. Are those experimental films boring? The answer speaks for itself. But the lengthy content covered in such a thick book of "Ulysses" is not to expose people's lives themselves? I see - many people today do not face themselves or the world in an honest manner, and like to hypocritically "criticize human nature"; but even cynicism, as long as it is true, so what? Fifty years ago, people dared to express their voices in the face of the landscape society, and dared to face themselves and the world; today's people are immersed in the discipline of so-called civilization, and even the art of this era cannot break through the so-called filter of daily life and habits. mirror. In my opinion, Godard has provided some kind of beacon for many people, including me; that is to find out with the most simple and true eyes and words from the hearts of people - if this era is to people's hearts What is the meaning of the so-called civilization? If there is contempt for objective existence, then what is the point of awe? Why eat and drink lasa? Why nine to five? Why do we live like this? ——For me, Godard became a symbol of a personal revolution, absurd and real, cunning but not hypocritical, to break through this era.

In any case - we, especially artists - need sincerity and passion, even if it is dangerous. Godard had his own guesses about his dog's previous life. I think Godard's next life may be an owl on an old tree in Paris. May he keep his passion, even now, never rest, never rest; just like his movies.

in Guangzhou, Guangdong