Jean-Luc Godard is back in his most complex films, In Praise of Love, an exuberant satire of the media's affect on the cold real world. The film's sharp insights come from its self-containment, constantly posing questions as to the methods behind its filmic madness. Godard is one of the most intimidating modern filmmakers; I will have to watch this film again (and again (and again (and again))) before I can have a rich interpretation of it. But, to give you an idea of the first impression I got from the film, it brilliantly questions the mainstream media's attempt to give the cold world we live in a more romanticized appeal. The film starts in black-and-white as we learn about the hardships faced by members of the French resistance during World War 2; this part of the story is told in a dark, dreary way, giving us the real world, stripped of hope or joy. Later on we see some of the first color images in the film: we see a vibrant ocean but the sand is blue and the water is orange (it is a beautiful image
but it is not true to reality). This introduces us to the second part of the film-two years earlier than the first part-in which the characters who will later be in the resistance try to sell a story about their past to some Hollywood producers who will turn it into a glossy potboiler directed by Spielberg. Godard has been criticized for using Spielberg as a target but I would say that he is hardly meant to be a target. Spielberg-at the least in the 70s and 80s-made a dozen film that make the world we live in a more beautiful and innocent place; Godard is honestly trying to figure out whether Spielberg's way of looking at the world is the right way. In the end, however, he disagrees with Spielberg: You can make the world look more magical than it is but, sooner or later, the black-and-white world of sadness will come crashing down-often right after the happy ending. Footnote: As for the complaints about the films anti-Americanism
well, yes, the dialogue in which it is proved that our country has no real name (there are two other united states in America) is a bit silly, but it is simply in some (as far as I can tell) insignificant dialogue between two characters. It isn't as if Godard went out of his way to prove that our country has no name.
Review of In Praise of Love
