When I was a callow teenager, my friend's father asked me if I knew what Count Basie was famous for. I didn't have more than a passing awareness of who Count Basie actually was, let alone what he was famous for, so I shrugged my shoulders and murmured my lack of knowledge. He replied that Count Basie was renown for the notes he didn't play as much as the notes that he did. I mumbled something about all jazz music being strange and we trooped off into the night.
And over the years that question stayed with me, and over time, I've discovered jazz music and I've also realised that I enjoy it a great deal. Watching and listening and absorbing Goodbye to Language took me back to that question and forced me to think about how magical the human brain is to be able to piece together a whole from many apparently disparate or unconnected parts. Throughout this relatively short piece from the relatively aged auteur Jean Luc Godard, we are treated to looped little bursts of visual acuity, verbal actuality, and repeated musical motifs that make something far greater than the sum of their parts.
To ask what this film is about, or to try and explain it, is a largely pointless undertaking. It's not about anything, although it clearly is. At one point towards the conclusion, the movie deliberately and unsparingly breaks down the 4th wall with an extended shot that has the shadow of the boom mic intruding into view, to remind you this isn't real, it's just pretend. And as it's pretend, and as Mr Godard doesn't spoon feed you (and he never has), this piece becomes whatever your mind what makes it in the gaps. And that's without the quite absurd interlude from Lord Byron and the Shelley's, which sticks out like a rather large sore thumb.....
Some of the camera work is really quite original and in particular, the use of the double 3D shots is a very nice little innovation that doesn't really seem to do more than remind you that there are two perspectives to every story. Don't forget to wink. Don't forget to think.
This is about living, about dying, about zero to infinity and everything in between, and there's some sex and betrayal, all of which have been done to death on stage and on screen and in life. The dog knows this but he's not telling. The dog has probably forgotten more than we'll ever know in fact. Don't go and see this movie. Not unless you're ready to be challenged and not unless you can see and get down in between the gaps. I'm going again in a couple of weeks, when it's on a double bill with Breathless. Goodbye to Language. Bon jour Monsieur Godard, I'm glad you're still with us, and I bet you like Count Basie.
And over the years that question stayed with me, and over time, I've discovered jazz music and I've also realised that I enjoy it a great deal. Watching and listening and absorbing Goodbye to Language took me back to that question and forced me to think about how magical the human brain is to be able to piece together a whole from many apparently disparate or unconnected parts. Throughout this relatively short piece from the relatively aged auteur Jean Luc Godard, we are treated to looped little bursts of visual acuity, verbal actuality, and repeated musical motifs that make something far greater than the sum of their parts.
To ask what this film is about, or to try and explain it, is a largely pointless undertaking. It's not about anything, although it clearly is. At one point towards the conclusion, the movie deliberately and unsparingly breaks down the 4th wall with an extended shot that has the shadow of the boom mic intruding into view, to remind you this isn't real, it's just pretend. And as it's pretend, and as Mr Godard doesn't spoon feed you (and he never has), this piece becomes whatever your mind what makes it in the gaps. And that's without the quite absurd interlude from Lord Byron and the Shelley's, which sticks out like a rather large sore thumb.....
Some of the camera work is really quite original and in particular, the use of the double 3D shots is a very nice little innovation that doesn't really seem to do more than remind you that there are two perspectives to every story. Don't forget to wink. Don't forget to think.
This is about living, about dying, about zero to infinity and everything in between, and there's some sex and betrayal, all of which have been done to death on stage and on screen and in life. The dog knows this but he's not telling. The dog has probably forgotten more than we'll ever know in fact. Don't go and see this movie. Not unless you're ready to be challenged and not unless you can see and get down in between the gaps. I'm going again in a couple of weeks, when it's on a double bill with Breathless. Goodbye to Language. Bon jour Monsieur Godard, I'm glad you're still with us, and I bet you like Count Basie.