Film Socialisme

Jean-Luc Godard
,
FR
,
2010
,
35mm
,
colour
,
102'

A symphony in three movements… 

“Contrary to the cliché of the crowning achievement, Edward Said’s description of late style – as a memento mori to lost totality – suggests the stubborn refusal to agree to a final reconciliation. Viewed from this perspective, Godard’s relentless grumbling and solitary cultural pessimism, expressed so eloquently in his own private endgame, could be more accurately read as what Said calls ‘a sort of deliberately unproductive productiveness going against…’. Since this self-proclaimed dinosaur, gardener and country doctor of cinema (sometimes also referred to as the ‘hermit of Rolle’, the town in which he lives in Switzerland) has retreated into voluntary exile, his sporadic returns to the land of film and especially this, his potentially final appearance, have caused even more consternation. He is at once a relic from the past and a messenger from the future. Too early, too late: ‘Rien que l’heure juste’, as the sighed final words of Film Socialisme’s voice-over puts it. And I read lateness now as a form of unintentional and partial untimeliness. This film is ill-timed, inappropriate, yet still unquestionably a sign of the times. This film-maker is out of touch and out of tune, and at the same time contemporary as no other”. (Herman Asselberghs)