I guess it was only a matter of time before I was so impacted by a film that I wrote something in regards to my personal life as much as an actual review of a film. It's something that I've been wanting to talk about for the longest time but deep down, I always feared that something like this would only annoy people on top of contributing nothing to the discussion of the very films that make me feel this way. But then I remembered that letterboxd is explicitly designed to work like a diary, and what are diaries good for if you cant express yourself and your fears. I'm being weird and rambling and blaghhhh so I'm gonna move…

As with all of Godard's movies I feel I'm only skimming the surface of a deep pond full of greater meaning than I'm capable of attaining without having seen all of the same movies, read all of the same books, heard all of the same songs, thought all of the same thoughts, or breathed all of the same breaths as Godard. I suppose that's what makes him a definitively personal filmmaker, his "fingerprints on every frame" as my Francophile film studies professor would repeat like a damn mantra. It can be alienating at times, but in Pierrot Le Fou I think the perfect balance is struck between Godard the ponderous semiotician, Godard the strident leftist, and Godard the movie dude.…

Another Godard, another pleasantly inviting, off-kilter trek with charismatic outlaws. Jumping from Breathless to Pierrot le Fou couldn't have been a more serendipitous selection, as their similarities are shocking. Not just in star Jean-Paul Belmondo, nor in the tale of two lovers on the wrong side of the law, but in the vibe and content - a strike against society and its inane, mundane commercialism. Here, instead of the law, Godard has Belmondo escaping from a drab life full of corporate sponsorship, empty philosophers, and family just as sick as he is, but too apathetic to change. Both Michel and Ferdinand craft fantasy personas for themselves; Michel a gangster, Ferdinand a poet. And both are in way over their heads;…

"Chapter Eight"

The fragmentary incoherence of the stories we tell about ourselves; the inherent contingency and inconsistency of both narrative and identity.

I’ve been trying to include more plot synopsis in my reviews, because I easily get carried away with a lot of nonsensical posturing, but Pierrot le fou makes that a rather difficult task. At its most basic, it’s a story about a man who runs away with a woman (the French New Wave’s two most beautiful people, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina), but it’s filled with so much structural experimentation and narrative ambiguity that such a summary sells the movie short by ignoring its most interesting elements. Godard confines himself to some extent to the formal constraints of…

A great quality of Pierrot le Fou is that it escapes from the conventional form of storytelling by having our protagonists interact with the audience and with each other during their narration. The movie is a nice blend of various genres and Jean-Luc Godard's use of color here makes it visually unique and interesting to watch. However, I couldn’t get that invested in the story unfortunately. Most of the dialogue has a poetic approach and I got put off by how Ferdinand and Marianne often complete each other's lines or keep delivering the same sentences. There are also some contrivances in the plot and a couple of silly moments that ended up making me not care so much for the…

The basic skeletal plot framework of Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 film, Pierrot Le Fou, is simple enough. Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a disillusioned intellectual who is bored with his marriage, returns alone from a shallow bourgeois party and runs off with the family babysitter, Marianne (Anna Karina), with whom he had a relationship years earlier. Ferdinand discovers that Marianne has ties to shady paramilitary gangsters and arms dealers apparently associated with the French-Algerian conflict, but is nonetheless swept up and away into her thrill-seeking lifestyle after the two of them narrowly escape two gangsters while leaving her apartment. Offbeat mayhem ensues in the form of a road trip that resembles, at turns, a Bonnie and Clyde-style crime spree, a slapstick comedy, and…

I guess it was only a matter of time before I was so impacted by a film that I wrote something in regards to my personal life as much as an actual review of a film. It's something that I've been wanting to talk about for the longest time but deep down, I always feared that something like this would only annoy people on top of contributing nothing to the discussion of the very films that make me feel this way. But then I remembered that letterboxd is explicitly designed to work like a diary, and what are diaries good for if you cant express yourself and your fears. I'm being weird and rambling and blaghhhh so I'm gonna move…

Personally, I prefer Godard's revision/critique of this film in Weekend. It uses a lot of the same form and content: the red white and blue color scheme; the car crashes; the random, seemingly unmotivated acts of violence; the constant literary obsessions. But whereas this movie has a blissful if occasionally death haunted tone, Weekend is all merciless, cruel satire. Weekend is a much more offputting film, though in some ways Pierrot le Fou anticipates its deep ambivalence.

The amoral comic book violence, halfheartedly justified with some vague references to left-wing politics, is particularly alienating. Although it is interesting how ahead of his time Godard was. For example, Karina expresses a feminism of violence: "A woman can kill a lot of…

"And do what?"
"Nothing. Just exist."
"Doesn't sound like much fun."
"That's life."

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Everyone has a Godard phase. It's like a rite of passage. Just like everyone has a Nirvana phase. And just like everyone has a Vonnegut phase. Phase not meant in any kind of disparaging way here. Not like tarantino who conveniently "outgrew" him directly after godard criticized one of his films. In this sense, phase refers to that time in your life when you begin to understand what these artists represent in the creative and counter-culture movements.

Pierrot le fou remains one of godard's most stylish pursuits -- with the cast to match. Honestly has there ever been a cooler trio than belmondo, godard, and karina?…