Movie Review: Godard Mon Amour

Godard Mon Amour *** / *****

Directed by: Michel Hazanavicius.

Written by: Michel Hazanavicius adapted from the novel by Anne Wiazemsky.

Starring: Louis Garrel (Jean-Luc Godard), Stacy Martin (Anne Wiazemsky), Bérénice Bejo (Michèle Rosier), Micha Lescot (Bamban), Grégory Gadebois (Michel Cournot), Félix Kysyl (Jean-Pierre Gorin), Arthur Orcier (Jean-Henri Roger dit Jean-Jock), Marc Fraize (Emile), Guido Caprino (Bernardo Bertolucci), Emmanuele Aita (Marco Ferreri), Matteo Martari (Marco Margine).

 

For better and for worse, Jean-Luc Godard has constantly been pushing his filmmaking style ever since his debut film, Breathless, nearly 60 years ago. Even if Godard had stopped directing films after 1968’s Weekend, he would still be one of the most important filmmakers in cinema history – those earlier, “funnier” films are among the most influential films ever made. At the time, he was one of the most famous filmmakers in the world – a celebrity in his own right, and a massive figure in France. And that’s when Godard decided to turn his back on the type of films he was making, and go in a more experimental direction – a progression that has continued ever since. I just saw his most recent film, The Image Book, at TIFF last week, and while it is still undeniably a film by a genius – a deep thinker on film, images, politics, philosophy and everything else – there is not a lot in common between that film and what Godard was making in the 1960s. And that, of course, was on purpose. Perhaps because Godard is a genius, he’s also prone to getting bored when he feels like he has perfectly something – and is ready to move on. It’s also fairly undeniable that Godard is more than a little bit of an asshole – you just have to look at the trail of broken friendships, burned bridges and incendiary comments from the man, who has left the filmmaker isolated. Even his former friend Agnes Varda went after Godard pretty hard at the end of her brilliant Faces Places from last year. You don’t have to be an asshole to be a genius, but in Godard’s case, it seems like the two went hand in hand.

 

This is the backdrop of Michel Hazanavicius’ Godard Mon Amour, which takes place over his brief marriage to actress Anne Wiazemsky, when she was 19, and he was twice her age. The pair has just made La Chinoise (1967), Godard’s film about Maoist students trying to spark the revolution. The reaction to that film furthers Godard’s thinking that this mode of filmmaking is useless – it won’t solve anything, won’t get anywhere. He is starting to talk to a young Jean-Pierre Gorin, about an entire new way of filmmaking – a revolutionary way, that takes the principles of the revolution seriously into the methods of making films. Godard comes out and criticizes his own films – saying that are shit – and wanting to do something more revolutionary. At the same time, as much as Godard speaks about the workers and the students, and against the ruling class, he seems to be living comfortably in his bourgeois lifestyle.

 

I don’t think Hazanavicius is the right filmmaker to tell this story. He is a gifted stylist and recreationist of former styles – the Oscar winning The Artist did a very good bringing silent movie stylings wonderfully – but it wasn’t a particularly deep film. It wasn’t really about anything. His main thesis in Godard Mon Amour seems to be that Godard was a pompous ass – a brilliant filmmaker who threw it all away to become a political filmmaker, and went against everything that made him so good in the first place. By the end of the film, Godard is divorced yet again, and arguing on the set of his latest film with the crew – all decisions were supposed to be democratic, but Godard wants to do things a certain way – but the principles override making a good film. Hazanavicius seems to be mocking the very idea that film can be about anything, that it can have a larger meaning. Godard eventually moved away from the ideas he and Gorin worked on for a few years in the late 1960s and 1970s – and onto a different style (and would continue to do so). To me, it’s admirable that an artist continues to push themselves. For Hazanavicius, he seems to be like one of those people in Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories who keep asking the filmmaker when he’s going to making funny films again.

 

I will say this about the film though – it’s a hell of a lot of fun. While I don’t think Hazanavicius gets the underpinnings of Godard’s work, he certainly has seen a lot of them, and he uses a lot of the tricks that signified Godard’s work in the 1960s – and does so in some clever ways. I also like Louis Garrel’s performance as Godard – a cranky, yet comic figure – he reminded me more of Woody Allen, than Godard – a kind of pretentious fool, who will eventually become a jealous asshole in his marriage. I do wish that the film had decided to develop Anne Wiazemsky’s character more than it does – she is just there to be the window through which we see Godard as an asshole. I like Stacy Martin quite a bit here – but I wonder what the film would have been had it treated her with more respect. It’s almost as if the film treats her the same way Godard does.

 

And for film buffs, I do think Godard Mon Amour is a must-see. If you have no interest in Godard, then I wouldn’t recommend it – I don’t think you’d learn very much about him, or the student protests that shut down Cannes that year, or anything else about this turbulent time. But if you already know – and have a definite thought on Godard, then the film will be interesting. If you’re fully in the tank for Godard, then the film would become an entertaining hate watch – something for you to sneer at and rile your blood up. If you kind of agree with Hazanavicius, that Godard has become something of a pretentious asshole over the years, than you will like his two hour trolling of Godard. And if you’re somewhat in the middle – like me, who admire much of Godard’s later work, but don’t love any of it as much as I love Breathless (1959) or Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Contempt (1963) or Pierrot le Fou (1965) – you can knowingly laugh, while also disagreeing with some of what is said.