During the interview, Godard asked – Where is this Kerala? C.S. was interviewed by prominent film critic. Venkateswara explained Kerala. Film lovers who heard it would have said: Kerala is the land of those who watch Godard films with bated breath from Breathless onwards. Goddard addressed the Malayalees online last year when he was honored with the IFFK Lifetime Achievement Award, and then the question regarding Kerala came up during the interview. Let’s start with a question like that.
Since when did Kerala start watching Godard films? His Breathless, released in 1960, was screened at various places in Kerala by film societies in the eighties (maybe even earlier). The film was seen for the first time in such a screening. All the dialogues and actions of the hero portrayed by Belmondo in the film are moving towards crime. The film established that the underworld is also the upper world at the same time and challenged Malayali’s ‘moral consciousness’. It was that challenge that brought French innovation to Kerala; It also prompted a variety of open-ended thoughts regarding the grammar of cinema.
Seven years following ‘Breathless’, ‘Weekend’ elevated him to the status of ‘master’ of filmmakers. Through the presentation of weekends and holidays, many layers of human violence have been broken on the screen. The couple is traveling from the city to visit the wife’s parents in the village. The goal is to kill the parents and inherit their property. Many experiences of violence come during this journey.
In an interview, Godard corrected the journalists: “Weekend is not only violence, but also cannibalism: Swiss-French life following the two world wars led Godard to present the emotional worlds of people in Europe in this way.” Godard made a living turning the concept of narrative cinema upside down, presenting his arguments in such a way as to defy the stereotypes of film critics.
In his 2004 release ‘Our Musica’, renowned Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish appeared and spoke regarding the Palestinian issue. This docu-fiction film features Godard giving a lecture on ‘Image and Text’ in Sarajevo. The core of his filmmaking is the same – what is the scene, what is the work? In fact, his life-long investigations into this subject are the entire content of his life. Whether this question was answered was not important to him.
However, he thought that this should be repeated as a new question. Godard dispelled the myth that the screenplay is the foundation of cinema. Like any other filmmaker, Godard relied heavily on literature in his early films. Later we see him abandoning the idea that literature is the refuge of cinema. It can be seen that Godard was driven by the later conviction that visual language should not be mined in literature. That is why he asked: “Why must one talk?”
In 2010, he made the film ‘Socialism’. The films ‘Goodbye to Language’ in 2014 and ‘The Image Book’ in 2018. I have to remember with regret that a section of the audience shouted when Godard’s retrospective ‘The Image Book’ was screened at Thiruvananthapuram IFFK. Kouviyavar’s reasoning is that the movie has no story and no narration. The poet and painter George’s voice rose as the procession and the film screening went on together: Those who are not interested should leave, we want to see this film: some left. Koval is contained. Imagebook continued on the curtain.
Titled Drishya Pustakam, he presented in the final film the argument, perhaps with various disagreements, that the visual is the book and not the other way around. The film just before it ‘Farewell to Language’ is the entry of the last film. Humans were not so ’emoji language’ when that film came out. But when we see it today, we can understand more deeply how people say goodbye to the languages that have survived until now.
It is possible to recognize how Godard’s idea works if you think regarding the emojis that have already been exchanged by people all over the world following hearing the news of Godard’s death. Godard firmly believed that the visual language was a socialist language and that it would help man more. The character in ‘Alfe Villa’ says: Sometimes, reality is too complex for oral communication – that is the problem Godard sees in spoken language. He firmly believed that visual language would overcome it.
In the interview at the beginning of this post, Venkiti Godard is asked: How has the Covid era changed cinema? Are things like online platforms, OTTs killing the ‘publicness’ of the art of cinema? Is cinema becoming a private art? Or is the pandemic changing things that way? With the help of a French translator, Godard responded: When I was in cinema, the producer/production was the most important thing.
But now distribution is the main thing. The distribution/distributors have swallowed up the producer/production of the film. Through this observation, he presented the two ends of his long film career (of world cinema itself). Godard, who argued that cinema does not exist, it only projects (shows, exhibits), left that theoretical level and summed up the life of today’s cinema with these words.
There doesn’t seem to be a Godard film that doesn’t touch on the teenage issues of several generations. We were all young at the time: not just us, but Godard too, said the friend who was with us when we wandered to see those films. I responded. Maybe that’s why when hearing the news of his death, ‘the youth of the movie has faded away!’ It feels like it’s going on. As if humanity’s shining youth had vanished, at least temporarily. Thank you Master for your wonderful movies. Now relax.
