The Meaning of JLG/EFA

It was the ultimate contrarian statement - almost a cliche at this point - from the ultimate contrarian. After having announced, months ago, that he would accept the Lifetime Achievement Award for the European Film Awards this year, Jean-Luc Godard a statement on December 1st, the day of the ceremony, in which he announced that he would not be attending.

"If someone says I've created a life's work, I'll have to accept that," he said. "But my form of criticism is not to go."

What was surprising was not that Godard declined the award in the end, but that he changed his mind at the last minute - it's the sort of statement one would've expected Godard to have made as soon as the award was announced, months ago. Why did it take so long for Godard's gut reaction to get the best of him?

Godard has always been one for self-criticism, especially in his later years. In the 90s, he told Andrew Sarris, in an interview, that he had "never read Marx," and was never serious about the films he made in his Marxist period. It's a dubious claim, but interesting that it was made; how much faith, one wondered, had Godard lost in that significant portion of his life's work? Particularly memorable was the letter Godard sent Armond White upon being named the New York Film Critics Circle's lifetime achievement award winner in 1995. In said note, Godard "refused" the award. He wrote:

"It is my duty - not copyrights, only copyduties - not to accept any longer the honor of your reward. Do please accept the incomplete following reasons for such a genuine and shy statement. JLG was never able throughout his movie maker/goer career to: Prevent M. Spielberg from rebuilding Auschwitz...Force Oscar people to reward Abbas Kiarostami instead of Kieslowski...Shoot Contempt with Sinatra and Novak, etc., etc. I'm still not over, dear Sir, through my long voyage to the home of cinematography, but I missed indeed quite a lot of ports of call - no girls in every ports, but no honors neither I could deserve."

This note was striking for a number of reasons, the first being Godard's puzzlingly poor English, when it's known that he became fluent in the 1960s, and directed numerous films in English. What is the admission Godard seems to be stumbling around? Does he genuinely believe he has "failed," in some way, to achieve what he set out to achieve - to change the face of cinema? In both statements, its clear that he believes himself to have fallen far short of what would be constituted by a "lifetime" of work. Godard has been known for his abstruse statements, but let's afford him the benefit of the doubt for a moment. What if Godard is right? What if he really has failed, and is deserving not of awards, but of rebukes?

The first period of Godard's career, which lasted from 1959 to 1967 and resulted in fifteen feature films and seven shorts, is a period of artistic creativity amongst the most prolific and impressive of the 20th century. The possibilities were endless; despite having made only one commercial successful film in that period (his debut), critical acclaim and socio-cultural relevance on both sides of the Atlantic placed him as one of the key artists in the middle of the cultural zeitgeist that was the 1960s, alongside Bob Dylan and Norman Mailer. When asked if his goal was to change the cinema, Godard remarked, "my goal is to change the cinema, and, by doing so, to change the world."

To think of Godard's towering relevance then, and compare it with where he is now, is a shocking - and saddening - exercise. It is not uncommon for once-great artists to recede into the shadows, but Godard's fall really gives such recessions a whole new meaning. Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman, the two iconic modernist filmmakers who died this summer, were at similar levels of popularity as those of Godard at their peaks, in the 60s and 70s. Antonioni's popularity in later years is hard to judge, as his last feature film was released in 1982; Bergman, however, made his last feature in 2003 (Saraband), and it received a significant U.S. release in 2005 via Sony Pictures Classics. This is the sort of release most giants of past eras are used to today; but compare that with Godard's most recent film. That film, Notre Musique, was picked up by tiny distributor Wellspring (now defunct), which gave it a very minor (albeit spirited) release in New York and L.A. Godard, for the most part, has been forgotten - ask any random smattering of film students today whether he's alive or dead, and you'll get a whole lot of blank looks, a smattering of both "alive's" and "dead's," and quite a few responses that are something else altogether - "who's Godard?"

If Godard has failed, certainly not all the blame falls on our shoulders - the growing difficulty over the years of his films has certainly contributed to his falling of the map - but the fact that, in the later years, there have been so few of his films with any significant releases or interest speaks to the power of cultural amnesia, in full force here. Godard may not have changed the world, but if he failed, perhaps his failure is our failure as well.

Posted on 12/04/07 by: ZacharyWigon 11:55 PM