Wednesday, July 15, 2009
TORPOR
Today's NYTimes Best 1176 Film was Jean-Luc Godard's
You can look at this film in two ways. It can be seen as breakthrough cinema. There are lots of innovative things in here. The long tracking shot of a traffic jam with all the tableaus of cars and people caught in funny, mostly, activities. Wonderful.
Or you can see it as a political tract. If this is the case, then you are hopelessly mired in the 60's mentality and you are in a hopeless state.
There are vast sections of the film where I just plain got sleepy. Nodding. Somnambulant. I could see what was happening but I was disconnected. It is a tribute to Godard's film skills that I didn't skip. What I was seeing was interesting and sometimes innovative. I could have done without the slaughter of a pig. Real. I didn't like it. I felt mugged into watching something that I didn't want to see.
As a historical document, the film is still interesting.
A time capsule, in a way.
Of course, there are still capitalists and terrorists and anarchy and the inevitable bourgeoisie who catch so much shit from the lefties in these films. Filthy swine those Bourgeoisie. Of course that would be most of us watching the picture.
There are hippy revolutionaries in this film and they all wear fashionable duds. Funny. I hope it was intentional. I suspect not. The working class people that we see in here, the Proletariat, are uniformly portrayed as slack mouthed and passive.
Not very revolutionary except to show how they are downtrodden.
I could go on but I won't.
It was fun to see again. No more. That is enough.
I will give it a 3 out of Netflix5 if only for the wonderful tracking shot that goes on for at least a kilometer (this being France).
Labels: best films
