Jean Luc Godard - Les Carabiniers

There are few - if any - films as devoid of anything interesting or exciting as Les Carabiniers. I don't know if Godard had any kind of fun making this film - maybe it was as much a chore to make as it is to sit through. It is surely Godard's worst film by a mile. So let's get this over with...

The film opens with a text card, loosely explaining Godard's intentions. It then cuts to two men and their girlfriends in a hut, somewhere in a post-apocalyptic landscape. The four have meaningful names (Cleopatra for example), but not much comes of it.

Two soldiers arrive, with a letter, informing the two men that they are drafted. At first, they are not thrilled by the idea of going to war, but when the soldiers tell them that soon, they can come back and carry "all the riches of the world with them" and give them to their wives, the two agree and leave.

We are then presented with various montages of the two fighting - walking through post-apocalyptic landscapes, shooting people, occasionally fighting or talking to generals. The only narration present is provided through read-out letters of the two men. Accompanied is all this by some ugly shots, terrible bothering a-tonal music and a washed out look (which came from the old film stock Godard chose to deliberately make the film ugly).

So what happens? Not much. There are two or three scenes of interest (one being an execution, another is one of the two men going to a cinema for the first time, walking towards the silver screen and touching it), but all in all, the film has not much to say apart from the usual. War is bad and gets the worst out of people. Soldiers are exploited. Both sides are equally wrong. Nothing new or interesting here.

War concludes with the men returning home. As their partners demand the riches of the world promised in the beginning, they are offered thousands of postcards. Godard then goes on to have his protagonists throw the postcards into the air, describing them... for twenty minutes. Ouch. The film ends with the four walking into a city - turns out their side has lost the war. The two are thus smoothly executed by a former companion (as a text-card informs us).

Maybe money ran out, or maybe Godard already thought of his next venture (apparently, Hollywood had called). It is evident that politics are not Godard's best friends, rendering Les Carabiniers a disaster. One critic remarked the film was "hell for the first hour" but "exiting to think of afterwards" - ironically, the film only lasts about 70 minutes. So this one is "for Godard completists only", and even in that context I can't imagine anybody liking it.

Thankfully, Hollywood had called Godard before realizing this film. It seemed they were interested in funding his next film. Thankfully, Godard agreed.

FINAL VERDICT: 3/10 - a disaster, avoid at all cost!

Jean Luc Godard - Vivre sa Vie

There are few films that have the emotional punch and intellectual weight that Vivre sa Vie offers. It is Godard's first perfect film, from start to finish a dark and surprisingly striking tale of a young woman's descent into prostitution. If A Bout de Souffle was a saccharine depiction of the dreams inside a teenagers head, Vivre sa Vie portrayed the same persons from an outside point of view, unmasking false dreams, loneliness and the influence capitalism has on ones soul. The film is told in twelve chapters, all starting with a "tableaux", in which the forthcoming events are summarized. While some chapters don't stand out, others are visibly separated from most of the movie, either thematically or in tone.

Most of all, this is Karina's movie. If she's been striking in the two previous films, her portrayal of Nana cements her as a giant of the silver screen. Albeit the story of Nana isn't too special - a young woman leaves her husband and infant child behind to become an actress. She works in a record store, sees men, has photographies taking of her and waits for the world to realize her ambitions. But he work doesn't guarantee high income, and her dreams seem to have vanished into hot air. And although the tragic turn her life will soon take is evident to the viewer, Nana seems to be strangely content to one day make it big. Although there are definite symbols that the girl is looking for self-destruction as a romantic way of liberation: In one early scene, Godard has his heroine go to the movies, to watch Carl Theodor Dreyer's "La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc", followed by an already iconic shot of Karina crying. The audience is already aware of the impending doom to come, and if Nana isn't, then she's surely quite in love with the martyrdom of young women around her.

And so Nana starts her life as a prostitute - although she seems to hold back at first, she quickly falls into a routine, and is picked up by a pimp, who takes her in and further promises to "look out" for her. Godard equips a documentary approach in those scenes of Nana's daily routine, including cold voice-overs that recount the proceedings step-by-step. Sexuality looses all of its personal and romantic traits, and even though some men seem interested in what's behind Nana's beautiful facade, they can't penetrate deeper than physically.

But Godard allows his audience to gaze deeper. One tableaux includes Nana looking straight into the camera, seemingly spilling her heart to the viewer. Another tableaux recollects Nana meeting a young philosopher in a Café, with whom she has a long argument about the difference in spoken and written word, and what it implies about the person "talking" through both (this segment is ironically followed by one in which Godard takes away the soundtrack to include a monologue of his own). Those moments provide us with a troubling realization: Nana is not a dumb girl who has fallen into prostitution by her own actions - she's rather an intellectual woman, whose mindset of naive dreams have catapulted her into isolation. While capable of intellectual realizations, her self-perception is utterly deranged.

Godard, throughout his film, hints at capitalism as the culprit: commercials, pop culture and americana have invaded the european mindset and introduced Hollywood and Coca Cola to the youth of today. Sex, drugs and status symbols rule the minds of the young, exchanging spiritual liberation with materialistic over-identification. To become something is evidently more important than to be something, and what we are is seen merely as a passing state that can only lead to something better. In other words - Nana's life as a prostitute seems - to her - to be a fantasy, out of which she could escape at any point, hardly realizing she is heading towards her personal doom.

In contrast to the dark plot, all of Vivre sa Vie looks absolutely astonishing! The film is full of visual beauty, be it in Karina's face, the streets and apartments of Paris or the cinematography. Of course Godard's many influences are felt - Renoir, Bresson, Dreyer - but he manages to emulate these influences into his own style and comes up with something unique and innovative!

As for Nana, her story ends in surprisingly un-Godardian fashion, and seemingly contradictory to the film. It's open to debate whether Godard saw this ending as a nod to american filmmaking or tried to further implicate the fantasy world Nana saw herself in. It is a slight departure that takes the viewer out of the film (and maybe it's only slight weakness) and feels rushed. There are some which dislike the film for its ending, and some who believe it is crucial to the narrative itself, varying on interpretation.

One way or another, Vivre sa Vie was Godard's triumph over cinema. He had made a film as important as it is beautiful, that still rings true fifty years after its release. It is forgivable that his next film would be an unwatchable farce. But more on that later...

FINAL VERDICT: 9.5/10 - a masterpiece, must be seen!