A few days ago I viewed Jean-Luc Godard's film "2 or 3 Things I Know About Her", and it continues to nag me. There are those films that you watch and you know right away it is a masterpiece, "2 or 3 Things I Know About Her" is one of those films.
The way Godard tells the story is a mesh of different styles, and for those familiar with the director's work, this comes to no surprise. This year I've discovered many of Godard's films for the first time including his other masterpiece "Contempt", "A Woman is a Woman", "Masculine-Feminine", and "Made in U.S.A." He's the kind of director who can entertain as well as frustrate, he is perhaps the most intellectual of filmmakers, he uses the medium sometimes against itself to prove a point, for many of his films, I'm still trying to figure out what the point is, but I continue to be more and more drawn to his work.
"2 or 3 Things I know About Her" was made in 1967 near the end of his great run of films ("Breathless" to "Weekend"). It tells the story of a woman who turns to prostitution in order to stay in her living conditions. If that weren't a great film subject already, Godard has other things on his mind as well. The film not only shows the life of this woman, but it also becomes a personal attack on consumerism in our culture. Throughout the film we hear the soft whisper of Godard as a narrator (although he sounds more like an essayist)as he spouts out his general distaste for the culture. In one poignant scene, the greatest one I've seen in his films thus far, Godard takes us to a cafe where the main character has a coke. Godard cuts to separate people in the cafe and then gives us a brilliant close up on a cup of coffee. Godard begins on a thoughtful monologue about the state of the world: "The world alone today, where revolutions are impossible, where bloody wars menace me, where capitalism is no longer sure of its rights and the working class is in retreat, where the overwhelming progress of science gives future centuries an oppressive presence, where the future is more present than the present, where far-off galaxies are at my door.....Mon semblable, mon frere"
As he says this,a sugar cube is added to the cup of coffee and we see it form into a sort of universe. Godard's film becomes philosophical, that other films would never dare to travel, the story of a housewife who has to work as a prostitute becomes a personal statement in a most unexpected way.
I am in no way an expert of Godard, I have only seen a handful of his films. I am confident to say he made perhaps the greatest films of the sixties, he moved them further to what they could convey than any other director of that time. It seems with this film he was building up to something, which to my knowledge was unleashed with "Weekend", a film only know by reputation.
"2 or 3 Things I know About Her" was released the same year as "Bonnie and Clyde", which was America's answer to the French New Wave. While "Bonnie and Clyde" was the beginning of a new generation of personal filmmaking in Hollywood, Godard proved with his film, he was still miles ahead of them all.
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