Jean-Luc Godard: Narrator
Quotes
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Narrator : Since social relations are always ambiguous, since my thoughts divide as much as unite, and my words unite by what they express and isolate by what they omit, since a wide gulf separates my subjective certainty of myself from the objective truth others have of me, since I constantly end up guilty, even though I feel innocent, since every event changes my daily life, since I always fail to communicate, to understand, to love and be loved, and every failure deepens my solitude, since - since - since I cannot escape the objectivity crushing me nor the subjectivity expelling me, since I cannot rise to a state of being nor collapse into nothingness - I have to listen, more than ever I have to look around me at the world, my fellow creature, my brother.
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Narrator : Objects exist, and if we pay them more attention than we do people, it is because they exist more than those people. Dead objects live on. Living people are often dead already.
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Narrator : If you can't afford LSD, try colour TV.
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Narrator : Where is the beginning? But what beginning? God created heaven and earth. But one should be able to put it better. To say that the limits of language, of my language, are those of the world, of my world, and that in speaking, I limit the world, I end it. And when mysterious, logical death abolishes those limits, there will be no question, no answer, just vagueness.
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Narrator : How do you render events? How to say or show that at 4:10 p.m. that afternoon, Juliette and Marianne came to the garage where Juliette's husband works? Right way, wrong way - how can one say exactly what happened? Of course, there is Juliette, her husband, the garage. But are these the words and images to use? Are there no others? Am I talking too loud, looking too close?
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Narrator : What is art? Form becoming style; but the style is the man; therefore art is the humanizing of forms.
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Narrator : Should I have talked about Juliette or the leaves, since it's impossible to do both at once? Let's say that both, on this October evening, trembled slightly.
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Narrator : There is increasing interaction between images and language. One might say that living in society today is almost like living in a vast comic strip.
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Narrator : Our thoughts are not the substance of reality, but its shadow.
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Narrator : The world alone. Today, when revelations are impossible and blood wars loom, when capitalism is unsure of its rights and the working class is in retreat, when the lightening progress of science makes future centuries hauntingly present, when the future is more present than the present, when distant galaxies are on my doorstep. My fellow creature, my brother.
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Narrator : Where do we start? But start what? God created heaven and earth, sure, but that's too easy. We should put it better: Say that the limits of language are the world's limits, that the limits of my language are my world's limits, and that when I speak, I limit the world, I finish it. And one inevitable and mysterious day, death will come and abolish these limits, and there will be no questions nor answers. It will all be a blur.
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Narrator : All I'm doing is looking for reasons to live happily. And if I now take this inquiry further, I find there's simply a reason to live. First, because there are memories. Then there's the present, and the ability to stop and savor it. Meaning, we have seized a reason to live as it goes by and held on to it for a few seconds, after its discovery amid the unique circumstances surrounding it. The birth of the simplest things in the human world, man's possession of them with his mind, a new world where men and things can live in harmony - such is my aim. It is as political as it is poetic. It explains, in any case, this longing for expression. Whose? Mine. Writer and painter.
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Narrator : I serenely take the road to dreams and forget the rest. I forget Hiroshima and Auschwitz. I forget Budapest. I forget Vietnam and minimum wages. I forget the housing crisis. I forget the famine in India. I've forgotten it all, except that since it takes me back to zero, I have to start over from there.
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Narrator : Pax Americana: jumbo-sized brainwashing.
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Narrator : She is Marina Vlady. She is an actress. She's wearing a midnight-blue sweater with two yellow stripes. She is of Russian origin. She has dark chestnut or light brown hair. I'm not sure which.
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Narrator : She is Juliette Janson. She lives here. She's wearing a midnight-blue sweater with two yellow stripes. She has dark chestnut or light brown hair. I'm not sure which. She's of Russian origin.
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Narrator : Now she turns her head to the right, but that means nothing.
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Narrator : Now she turns her head to the left, but that means nothing.
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Narrator : What is an object? Maybe an object is what serves as a link between subjects, allowing us to live in society, to be together.
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Narrator : Return to the ABC of existence.
