It's very difficult to see some of Godard's most recent work here in the United States, but what's available confirms in my mind that, as a director, he's still ahead of the game. True, contemporary trends combined with the business of film leave little room in the commercial market for those who work in such a subjective and experimental way - as Godard continually does. But being pushed to the sidelines of commercial cinema does not, in my opinion, automatically mean the artist (in this case, Godard) is any less powerful or innovative. And to my way of thinking, IN PRASE OF LOVE, though difficult at first to penetrate, is a terrifically rich and rewarding experience; as wildly innovative in its own way as the jump cuts were in BREATHLESS over forty years ago. The most ironic thing about Godard's work all of it is how his continual exploration of film technique and convention over the last forty plus years has been so thoroughly digested by the mainstream. The kind of non-linear editing that so perplexed many in the 60's is now the basis of modern, Hollywood montage. Music video owes much to what Godard did back then. Fragmenting an action or series of actions in such a way that the result is not an easy, linear flow of time and space, but the visualization of an idea or, more often the case today, an emotion, seems to me an essentially Godardian concept. (Trivialized now, in the way its function serves today's action movies.) The way Godard's technique fragments and folds the past with the present in IN PRAISE OF LOVE, serving, as it does, the very basic conventions of a love story, took my breath away. To me, the film evokes both an intellectual response, and one that is entirely emotional. Left to his own devices, Godard continues to show us that possibilities exist beyond current trends and expectations. His experiments lead the way in cutting edge technique and personal expression. (Indeed, Godard was using tape a long time before the Dogma boys, and I suspect years from now digital tape will in fact be the norm.) So I wouldn't count him our. Not at all. He'll never again be the toast of any new wave, but his influence will always be with us
Review of In Praise of Love
