I don't think there is any other film where my opinion has flip flopped more while I was watching it than "Film Socialisme". In many ways, this has been the film I have been waiting for, in other ways, it's a film I've dreaded. I can't quite make my mind up about it, but for the sake of argument, I am going to say you should see "Film Socialisme", people who love film as I do should see it, people who love new and different film should see it, people who love the weird, short circuit mind of Jean-Luc Godard should see it.
What is "Film Socialisme"? I can't really say, it seems to have three parts to it. The first part takes place on a cruise liner where we are introduced to many different characters, of the ones I remember the most, a man in a fedora, a young boy and girl who seem to be brother and sister, and famed new wave music icon Patti Smith who seems to be playing herself.
The second part of the film consists mostly at a gas station, or near a small town surrounding the gas station, this has a woman who sometimes seems to be a reporter, maybe a filmmaker, her camera woman, a young boy first seen in a Soviet Union t-shirt, a woman who may be an actress playing herself, and her daughter who hangs around the gas station.
The last part in a series of images put together by Godard which involve newsreel footage, old films, and still photographs, and in the end, you may have an idea what it all means, but maybe you don't.
All in all, "Film Socialisme" doesn't work as a movie, yet there's a part of me that think it is brilliant, stay with me. Jean-Luc Godard is a giant of the French New Wave, he made movies in the sixties that were far beyond what other people were making at the time, today we are still trying to catch up with what he introduced into the film language. The way he used jump cuts in "Breathless", or how he cut out the soundtrack in "Contempt", or how he blended the film essay format with narrative/mockumentary in "2 or 3 things I know about her". In total he made 15 films between the years 1960-68, that is the Godard the majority of the people know and love.
With "Film Socialisme" I feel the film got away from Godard, it doesn't make a clear link, but I also think this was a brave film for him to do, because here he is tinkering with the film language yet again.
More than with any other filmmaker, Godard makes me ask the question what is film, what can film accomplish as an artform. We must remember, film is barely over a hundred years old, I feel like there are still new boundaries to be broken, new room for experimentation, and new ways to explore what film can do, so in that way I think "Film Socialisme" is a success.
Godard seems to be trying to create an entire movie based on film, and he uses his tools in new and unique ways. Take some scenes on the Ocean Liner, where Godard uses live sound. We hear the wind blowing in the microphone, usually the director would choose ADR. Why does Godard choose to do this? I'm not sure but it does give off a certain effect.
Godard also chose the film sometimes with HD cameras, and sometimes with video. Occasionally he plays with the image by overexposing it, underexposing it, or distorting it all together, sometimes to the point where we don't hear what the people are saying.
This also brings me to the issue with the subtitles. This is mostly an all French film, I could hear some German being spoken and a little Russian, very little English, and other languages I know little of. Subtitles are provided, but only three words appear at a time. I know enough French to understand that some of the subtitles correspond with some of the words being said, but it's certain they are saying more. Again I'm not sure what Godard was meaning, I took it as sort of his version of "Babel" where people aren't meant to understand eachother. Done this way, I found the film to be somewhat liberating, instead of the subtitles being just words the people are saying, Godard is incorporating it as part of the film, making what we are seeing one hundred percent authentic cinema.
Now as to the finale which in my mind was the most effective part of the film where Godard is bombarding us with image after image. We are shown images from Eisenstein's "Potemkin", which are cut with modern day children on the steps of Odessa in Russia. We see images of war, the holocaust, words appear on the screen which seem to reflect the conflict with Israel and Palestine. All this comes to a heated climax, where again we are meant to interpret in for ourselves.
In the end I felt adrift with "Film Socialisme", but I also felt liberated by it, I wasn't given the conventions of a usual film, I was faced with new possibilities of the potential it could be. "Film Socialisme" isn't a masterpiece, but I think, and I really mean this, it could lay the groundwork for a new and unique movie that has yet to be made.
Godard created a film that looks to the future, Hollywood seems to think the future is with 3-D, which to me seems like a step back. Movies seem to be jumping back from what we have learned, it's the price paid for being the most popular artform. It needs to grow, to flourish, to experiment to discover its true potential. "Film Socialisme" had the courage to try something never done before, it failed at being great, but perhaps it can lay the groundwork for new and exciting cinema.
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