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…

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…

Not Another 30 Day Film Challenge: Day Fourteen, An Art House Film.

Why do you look so sad? Because you speak to me in words and I look at you with feelings.

Jean-Luc Godard is my personal favorite and one of the most misunderstood French directors of all time. A lot of his films seem to get criminally underrated by the public, but that may be due to the fact that his artistic, avant garde filming style can be a turn-off to many people. Granted, I don't care for some of his later work, but he has seemed to be beginning to redeem and resurrect himself with the most excellent Goodbye to Language 3D. Despite my lauding praise for that…

DVD: Godard in a Box (and in Color)

Just in time to coincide with André Téchiné’s The Witnesses, Criterion has released an enhanced DVD of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1966 Pierrot le Fou. The source for the vibrant color scheme of The Witnesses is Godard’s 1960s movies shot by Raoul Coutard, a collaboration that peaked with Pierrot le Fou, where color expresses the emotional intensity of its tragic love story.

Jean Paul Belmondo plays Ferdinand, a poetic-minded bourgeois drawn into the criminal world of Anna Karina’s Marianne, a modern femme fatale whose rebellious personality plunges them into political and moral risks. Godard and Coutard convey this twisted grand passion through an emphasis on color that re-imagines both the natural and sentimental world.…