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13 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :- A fading elegy, sadly, 15 June 2005 Author: rino-5 from Dublin
History. Hollywood and Americans (but which Americans? The ones without history who buy others' images, the ones between Mexico and Canada). Adulthood (which doesn't exist). Resistance and WWII. Cinema. Spielberg, Schindler. Balzac (but briefly). Simone Weil. The Matrix (dubbed into Breton, please!). The English. Nude scenes in films. Grandparents. The past, self and memory. What could be finer than a JLG romp through the modern world? It starts with B&W stock and ends in saturated video and imposed montage. It has texts, quotations, historical anecdotes, book covers; and hence is in itself eminently quotable. There can be no resistance without memory or universalism. Isn't it strange how history has been replaced by technology? But why politics by gospel? The Church is in step with time. The truth may turn out to be sad. Every thought should recall the debris of a smile.Vaguely didactic, this film left me slightly worried about JLG's intensity as an artist of ideas. There's signs of the onset of scattered carelessness, of not being bothered with the unity or expressive power of ideas. And unity is what JLG's extraordinarily broad canvas has always been about. It's still hallmark JLG — no other director can get away with such a bold and direct transcription of ideas onto film. I was channel surfing of an evening and came across spare B&W dialogues about artists and projects and literature. I thought, This could only be by a New Wave director. There's the standard multiplicity, or what I like to call the trialogue of his style: dissociated, cut-up or multileveled/multilingual dialogue layered onto diverse semantic images, sometimes doubled images or of varied media, mixed with natural sound, musical refrains, interjections. Text, sound, image — usually concordant, sometimes broadly dissonant and multivalent, sometimes silent. But always thinking, writing, philosophizing. A poetry of three media; a tricolour meditation. And, as always, things, ideas and events shift subtly in meaning in the JLG cinema, in the space of thought, the crossed trialogue, the unreality of the mind — a train deliberately honking past an ambling reader is somehow neither intrusive nor uncontrolled; there's a sense of pre-ironic structuralism maybe (from studies in ethnology), of images stripped of semantics and signs, to toss jargon in a way unfair to a film decidedly a-theoretical. But when a character turns and says, When did the gaze collapse? and the dialogue becomes one about TV's precedence over life (I feel our gaze has become a program under control. Subsidised. The image, Sir, alone capable of denying nothingness, is also the gaze of nothingness on us. (I hope not, says another)), then you're in very close and delicate (as narrative) thought space. Something close to mere ideas, or ideas only, stripped of coherent context. There's also a background insinuation of deeper melancholy or near futility; of the difficulty of making a difference through signs and words, of fatigue or exhaustion with the world and ideas; as though JLG no longer wills the poetry from the image or desires its latent mystery. Whether or not this functions as a critical element of the film re: modern media, I dunno. The worry lies in resultant projects that are mere thought files set to image and music.The film seems to be stitched together with quotes. Let feelings bring about events, not the contrary. Be sure to exhaust what can be communicated by stillness and silence. (Bresson) What bothers me is not success or failure. It's the reams and reams written about it... Why bother saying or writing that Titanic is a global success? Talk about its contents. Talk about things. But don't talk around things. Let's talk on the basis of things... They're confusing life with existence, treating life like a whore which they can use to improve their existence. The extraordinary to improve the ordinary. One can enjoy existence, but not life...All in all, I can't say this is satisfying cinema like Two or Three Things I know About Her or Masculin, féminin, and there's almost zero performance quality in this — just bland faces reading (not acting) mildly philosophical lines (these characters are not even objects, let alone subjects). Neither has it the shouted intensity and layered brain work of Hélas Pour Moi. Eloge is not a plot less anti-story but something nearly a-storical that retains elements of meta narrative (disquisitions on tragedy etc). A lack of emotional integration or joyous inwardness, offset by tired, late-night images reaching for poetry and finding very little (the most suggestive scenes were the empty train sheds). And not as much sharp humour as could be: the Americans get the occasional barb, but they're mild, easy stings. Not a consistently questioning essay nor an intensely located setting for ideas and disquisition, nor an acting out thereof, this is largely a struggle to define the late arrival and realisation of History in terms that are opposed to cinema and culture (the yanks with their contracts and fat thoughtless dollars, the exploitation of historical verité, the End of Cinema etc). Sporadic without rambling, unreal whilst actuating thought (the intrepid manufacture of ideas), I yearned for the guerrilla-intensity of hardcore JLG. He's still one of the primary artistic models, and I love his head space, but...Rino Breebaart
10 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :- postmodern look at values, 17 September 2002 Author: FilmLabRat
Magnifique, artistic collage of changing times, values and worldview. While at times, the film is a bit difficult to follow (a la Godard), I think Jean-Luc cleverly works with colors and innovative filmmaking techniques to provoke the audience to consider the eclipse of art, history, devotion and faith by technology and a world of cold economics and pragmatics. Very few filmmakers can pull off a postmodern approach or style portraying societal views and values in a way that reaches the audience at both emotional and intellectual levels. The film is understandable yet artistic and profound.
9 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :- A masterpiece of reflection., 10 September 2002 Author: Phil Ed (editor@au-cinema.com) from Los Angeles
Be warned: It's not a movie! At least not in the way we commonly understand this word: it's not entertaining. And, don't be misled by the title, it's not a love story either. It's a reflection from one of the most important thinkers and intellectuals of our times, on age, memory, history, resistance, society, culture and sense of life. If you are familiar with Godard's always-experimental style, you'll be fine and leave the theater thinking of the questions he raised or more precisely, the questions he formalized for us. Godard is important because he always helps us to formalize concepts that are sometimes difficult to put in words. In his earlier films he has raised questions about love, relationship, adaptation to a changing society, rebellion and resistance. Now Godard is 71 and looks back at life reflecting, as an old man will, on memory and history, as a way to reclaim our lives (as a character says in the film) diluted if not stolen by our modern society. As he says all over the film "there is no resistance without history" and that is a very important statement, no matter which way you want to use it. Godard began resistance a long time ago as one of the founders of the French New Wave, defining a new art form by taking the camera into the streets, and shooting with direct sound as a way to tell the truth. (He used his camera to show life as it was, undiluted) Truth has always been one of his important fights. Not because he is a moralist but because he opposes the ones who try to make us believe that lies are the truth.In"In Praise of Love" he uses the image of Spielberg and Hollywood, which steals history, diluting it and reclaiming it in a more convenient way. We see an American agent coming to buy the rights to the story of two French resistance fighters to make a movie, the way Spielberg made "Schindler's List". However, the reality is that the old woman actually betrayed her lover during the war then they reconciled and stayed together after words. Of course Hollywood would never show this type of betrayal, the separation or the reconciliation although this is the undiluted truth.But as Godard says with humor, "North Americans don't have a name", "Mexicans are North American and they are called Mexicans, Canadians are North American and they are called Canadians", but North Americans don't have a name and it's why they have to steal other people's history to make their own. The same way the Nazis stole paintings from Jews during the war that another character in the film is trying to reverse by buying back the paintings. This desire for truth is emphasized by the main character, a director who is working on an uncertain project that may take the form of a film, an opera or a play where the only thing he knows is that it will be on the "four moments of love: the meeting, the physical passion, the separation, then the reconciliation." This same character is helping our director because he wants him to make something in his life "more than money". We now touch on Godard's resistance to the failure of a modern society that pushes people to commit suicide, as two characters in the movie do. We know everything has a price and is sold and bought: history as North Americans have, memory as the two resistance fighters do in order to fix their hotel, sex as a prostitute tries in the film, and of course, art. As an old man looking at his life, Godard wonders how "memory can help us reclaim our lives", in other words: who am I but a product sold and bought, manipulated and lied to? The present is filmed in beautiful black and white 35 mm and the past uses video images shown in even more beautiful saturated colors, similar to the way memory intensifies the past (All the young directors who made video their medium of choice, should take lessons from the old man!). Godard's video images are a major source of emotions, and as his character says in the film: "emotions should bring events and not events emotions". Can memory then, as well as history, help us resist but even more, learn? Of course we should learn from history and memory, which the contemporary society tries to avoid, and here is the central subject of the film: becoming adult. As Godard explains, when we see a child or an old man in the street, we say here is child or an old man. We never say, here comes an "adult". Like North Americans, adults don't have a name they have stories to define them. But, at the end of their life what remains? Only stories or bits and pieces of a story like the film? Yes, the film is made of bits and pieces, intercut by a black screen and people talking on top of each other. But isn't this the way life is? It's an effort to get into the true message of the film. But thanks to Godard, truth doesn't come for less. The movie more than praising love, praises resistance, resistance to this mediocre culture which falsifies the truth and take us down to mediocrity with it. The style is as much an act of resistance than the content."In Praise of Love" is a masterpiece of reflection, to help us enter in resistance and look at ourselves. Cinema can't do much more than that. Movies can't make a difference more than that. Let's hope that Godard will make movies
4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :- Philosophy or socioeconomic critique? Godard's eloge de l'amour, 18 December 2007 Author: Carl Packman from United Kingdom
Critic Douglas Morrey says Godard's cinema is not simply about philosophy or cinema with philosophy, rather it is cinema as philosophy. The question is whether the film is concerned with philosophical issues, or a more simple polemic of how love is failed by the capitalist machine? Philosophy or socio-economics?Filmmaker Edgar (Bruno Putzulu) pitches an idea for a project about love. When casting for the female antagonist, he meets a girl who he thinks he has met before. He later finds out that she has died. He soon realises where he had met her before in a flashback from two years before to when he was working on a production of suffering during WWII. The film is a critique on Hollywood and how capitalism is destroying cinema and love. As for Socio-economics, (Late) Capitalism strives to be the End of History and would consequently maintain freedom of capital over the freedom of mankind (Demonstrable in the film where Edgar wants his film to be history not Hollywood)The film succeeds in offering a philosophical problem, but demonstrates philosophy's inability to enter into any realm other than the abstract. Godard here follows Marx' dictum: 'Philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it'.
4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :- Man with no balls allows girl to slip away., 2 September 2007 Author: tfmorris from United States
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
One thing is for sure. When Edgar is walking along the train tracks, he pretends to be too involved with what he is reading (a blank book) to acknowledge the train's greeting. But he is involved with the outside world. Even though his face is in the book he carefully steps over the obstacle in his path. He is a poser.The girl's situation begins to make sense to her only when she considers her history. American media does not give us a history. That's why Godard sometimes talks about "She Wore A Yellow Ribbon", a movie in which the John Wayne character is so concerned about the Indians. So, of course, things are not going to make sense to us. We are going to see things as they are presented to us. Cool cars and hot chicks! But the naked girl in Friedman's "Steambath" says "I did well, didn't I." While we're thinking she's great (as a sex object), she's looking to be related to as a human being.Edgar wants to be an adult. He wants to see himself in connection with his childhood and old age. He doesn't want to be someone who lives as though they would never die--and thus go with the way things are presented to him. He gets on the train of the city with "future" in its name, but then steps out. Who can imagine a future in such a place? And then she tells him: The man comes home and tells his little girl that he did good work that day. He could have had it. She takes off her jacket and whispers to him, and he stays objective. No, no, it is perfectly fine for me to stand out here on the outside of the window looking in--no problem. This is why the film ends in a train station: it is where he didn't get on.And what a girl! The reason why she is poor now is that she refused to read the American-type lines in the soap opera she was performing in: a truly virtuous person. In "Forever Mozart" the captives nod to each other before he takes issue with their captor's mistaken remark about Danton and the Directory. They know they are going to be in for a hard time, but they don't think of what they shall eat or what they shall drink; they just pursue righteousness.On the old man in the shower. The young man holds her hand. She is not relating to him as an old man who can hardly walk down the steps, she is relating to him in continuity with the very agile young man that he once was. The young man is present.If you don't relate to the present or to the future what do you have? It's like a poor man's dream, I'm going to get material stuff, and then more material stuff. We go from flower to flower thinking that summer will never end. What a joke, being proud of how much your car costs in a world in which 4 million children a year die from the effects of malnutrition. History has been replace by technology. We are conditioned to look for the boobs, or whatever by TV. It trains our eyes. That's why Godard characters walk along the side of the road. They don't want to be separated from reality by technology. Contrast the World War II boat going over the waves with the helicopter. The sports car just zooms off. It's occupants merely relate to its interior, not to the world about them. Relating to the world around one would mean respecting people's humanity. Rather than needing a pep talk to be tough with them (hand hitting palm), they would not be cheating them with a tricky contract. Indeed, isn't that what the hand hitting the palm means: be tough; don't start relating to them as fellow human beings. Edgar stops visiting the old art dealer as well. The pen drawing up ink represents how the old man draws life from Edgar. But after Edgar stops coming by whatever ink is there is dried up.The sunlight reveals the Vietnamese maid's body through her dress as she looks into the distance, just as you can see the black bra of the girl was in love with as she looks into the distance. But the old man just relates to her as a servant. An old man couldn't very well love the maid. Though he could arrange for another old man to have a prostitute. The maid says that the Americans are everywhere. "Who remembers the Vietnamese resistance?" She has got the same insight as Edgar. He could draw life from her as well. He's like Edgar this way. Just do what is expected. Give the girl a tip. Hell, he doesn't even say anything to her. She's just a maid. He doesn't even give her an acknowledgment of what her people went through. He does better than Edgar though. At least he commits to Edgar, even though he is counseled against it. He is responding to his own need. When the film asks whether humanity will survive, it is talking about non-Americanized humanity. It seems to be implied that humanity will survive if it deserves to survive. If we strive for real life we will receive. But hey, I'm tired now. I wonder what's on TV?
3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :- Godard begins the new millennium with one of his greatest works yet., 16 March 2008 Author: Graham Greene from United Kingdom
In 1961, Jean-Luc Godard directed Une femme est une femme; a full colour pastiche of the contemporary relationship foibles of a troubled young couple at the heart of swinging-sixties Paris. Starring Godard's own former wife and muse Anna Karina in the lead role, it saw the filmmaker at his most joyous and creative; resulting in a finished film that was not only 'in praise of love', but very much in love with its characters and the presentation of the film itself. Forty years on however and Godard found himself looking once again at the subject of love with Éloge de l'amour (2001), a film that claims to be 'In Praise of Love', but is actually quite the opposite.Presenting a melancholic view of love that is as bewildering as the emotion itself, Éloge de l'amour opens in a monochromatic Paris that brings to mind the beauty and grandeur of Godard earlier classics, such as À bout de soufflé (1959) and Bande à part (1964). Enticing it's viewers into a world of jarring contradictions, a varied selection of characterless characters who shuffle through the streets like empty vessels dying without soul, and some of the most intense uses of cinematic composition ever seen; 'Éloge de l'amour' successfully draws us into a labyrinthine underground of dreams, thoughts, desires and hopes; never quite sure where one ends and one begins. Here, we are constantly being forced to look at the film more closely than we normally would, searching for some kind of clue to unlock the images and scenes that are being offered to us, in a way that manages to reference the full spectrum of Godard's work; from the aforementioned romanticism of Une femme est une femme, through to the Brechtian-like alienation techniques of Week End (1967), and on to the blending of the two with Slow Motion (1980).Being Godard of course, the film also throws us some political ideology and some valid arguments against Hollywood film-making and its strangle-hold like monopoly on the idea of what cinema really is. Those raised outside of the US will no doubt agree with Godard's allusions to Hollywood re-writing history to serve as entertainment, as we grow up in a world where films like The Patriot (2000), Braveheart (1995), Titanic (1997) and Pearl Harbour (2001) are becoming educational tools to a generation who derive little pleasure from reading books or researching history. Godard understands the importance of historical accuracy in cinema and makes the points clear (one scene in particular stands out; a scene in which an elderly man and a young couple stand outside a cinema, the old man looking at the publicity poster for Robert Bresson's Pickpocket, whist the young couple completely ignore it, more interested in an advert for The Matrix). Is Godard trying to suggest that an ignorant youth will someday slowly discard what has come before? Or is he simply showing us the cinematic climate as it is now? Éloge de l'amour is never relaxed in its messages; sometimes bordering on the same kind of inconstant ranting that for many destroyed the intensity of a film like Week End. Yet Godard curiously restrains himself here, and, with the last thirty-minutes of the film, makes his attack clearer, and more concise.Photographed in vibrantly coloured digital-video, over-saturated and manipulated, the end of the film seems much more human in comparison to the cold, black and white "pure cinema" appeal of the first hour. The focus of this segment is people; elderly people for that matter, at odds with a world and culture they no longer understand. The gesture here is touching, not only because of the way its shot and acted, but because it draws a beautiful parallel with the now seventy-something Godard's own thoughts and ruminations on life. Éloge de l'amour is certainly not easy going; it's uncompromising, jarring, distant, elusive, alienating and for the most part, hard to follow. It has a bleak and broken down view of life which creates a sour undercurrent to the optimism of the title. This is not a film that praises love; this is a film that is trying to come to terms with love in a society and culture that is slowly bastardising the word into something devoid of deeper meaning, and searching for that meaning on a horizon filled with broken vessels and broken dreams. No matter what your opinion of him, Godard has, with this film, created a cinematic dream that requires the viewer to invest some time and thought into the experience.Think of the significance of the interspersed black screens, the recurrence of the title caption, and what is achieved with the switch from monochrome stock to colour video. These are all just part of a single interpretation, but there is a joy that comes from looking at a film and being challenged to think about it. Éloge de l'amour is a film that never quite makes sense and is often hard to watch, but you thank god for its existence. Whether you see Godard as a filmmaker passed his peak and nearing the end, or whether you believe that with this film he is working up to something bigger and better - something that will bring back the magic of his early works - you can rejoice in the fact that Éloge de l'amour is every bit as intelligent, challenging, thoughtful and emotional as anything he created before.
3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :- A post-modern enchantment for eye and mind., 23 September 2002 Author: Peegee-3 (poetsrx@webtv.net) from Santa Monica, CA
This movie is a seduction that led me willingly through its labyrinth...not toward a Minator...but to the riches of cinematic imagery and intellectual meditation. Godard continues his exemplary journey into the unexpected, the unconventional, confounding, but with a paradoxically deliberate pull into the first hand experience of the mystery, not through a narrative telling, but in the evocation of the quick-cut images themselves. Despite the aphorisms and many linguistic delights that tease the mind, its the dense black and white film in the first half of the movie and the sudden shift to digital video color (symbolic, in its gaudiness, of the distortion that occurs in memory) that create effective impact. In its content, the maturation process, memory, history, politics, resistance to the pseudo. and above all art in its many forms are dealt with largely through the eyes of the artist/creator...with a sense of note-taking and exploration. In its anti-Americanism there tends to be exaggeration and projection...although a wise comment ("They're just like us." i.e., the French) is a saving one.The performances are splendid...totally believable with an almost documentary realism. For any film-goer interested in imaginative, challenging movie fare this shouldn't be missed.
5 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :- As frustrating and cold as it is involving and interesting, 26 November 2004 Author: bob the moo from Birmingham, UK
Edgar is a director trying to pull together a project around the subject of love. While drawing it up the author meets a young woman he once knew very well and he spends time with her again while jumping through the various funding and organisational hoops. In the second part of the film we skip backwards two years to the point where the author originally met the woman. At this point in his life he is representing Hollywood and is in the process of purchasing the rights to the story of the girl's grandparents, who ere in the resistance during the majority of World War II.There's one thing to be said for Godard and that's that you can be fairly confident he isn't going to be directing the next Harry Potter film as this 2001 movie shows he is as difficult and rewarding as he could be. The first half of the film is in black and white, while the second is in blistering digital colour. If my plot summary suggests a total cohesion then forget it – the suggested connection with a romance is more from my summary than the actual film. Instead what we have is free flowing dialogue that covers issues around America, art, love, age, humanity and so on – it is difficult to get into but it is worth trying. The dialogue is rather pretentious and too 'deep' to be natural or realistic but it still engages the brain in a way that kept me interested even if I struggled to get into narrative or characters, or to really agree with much of what was being said. I say it is worth trying but I would suggest that this makes it a weak film by the standards of more linear films and should be seen as more of an experience than a story or 'normal' film.Matching this, the direction is both hypnotic and off-putting. Shots are framed in very arty ways with the characters in shadow, out of focus, out of shot etc for much of the film; the b&w section is crisp and feels older than it is, while the colour section is startling in its intensity. Again all this has the dual effect of coming across as rather pretentious and overly arty but then also being interesting enough and imaginative enough to keep you watching. Of course many audiences will be put off, and rightly so because not even once does this film take a step towards the audience to help us out – instead it pitches its tent and simply says that we can take it or leave it. In my own 'difficult' style, I managed to do both and found the film as frustrating and alienating as I did interesting and involving. The cast are hard to judge because they are rather stilted and cold throughout, but none of them really give anything that could be described as a poor performance.Overall this is a strange film and one that is worth a try and worth sticking at for what it does well. However this is not as simple as it should have been and the film does very little to help the audience keep involved and interested. Visually it is true art-house stuff but yet is also great to look at – starkly beautiful or weirdly colourful; meanwhile the dialogue is unnatural and pretentious but yet still interesting and thoughtful. A strange mix but one that is worth a try.
1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :- Challenging, 29 November 2008 Author: Robert Bloom from United States
Jean-Luc Godard's episodic opus about a man who interviews various individuals about an unknown project called "Eloge de l'amour," which will involve three couples experiencing four stages of love. The first half of the film, shot in Paris, appears in 35-mm BW and displays some of Godard's most impressive footage. The second half, set in Brittany two years earlier, is shot in super-saturated, bright digital color, deliberately crafted to overwhelm the viewer. The film is oblique, contemplative, challenging, esoteric, and profoundly beautiful. Includes a haunting piano score from Ketil Bjornstad and Arvo Part. Not too be missed.
1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :- Fascinating fragments, 16 February 2008 Author: paul2001sw-1 (paul2001sw@yahoo.co.uk) from Saffron Walden, UK
Jean Luc-Goddard's film is so unlike a conventional plot-driven movie that it is hard to imagine how he conceived it. You almost imagine that he started out by making a conventional movie, got stuck, and so chopped up the footage into a thousand pieces, which he then redistributed at random. In fact, the mood of the piece is far too carefully controlled for the film to have been made in this way, but it is a confusing mix: half shot in black-and-white, half in a vivid colour (altohugh it's hard to correlate the style of cinematography to a time-frame within the story), the face of some of the characters is deliberately not shown, and a fragmentary story about Catholics in the French resistance and the attempts, sixty years later, to make a film about this, is interspersed with lengthy philosophical meditations from the characters. What can be said is that the images and music are tied in perfectly, the words hold a certain interest (although there is a degree of pretension in them), but the narrative as a whole never coalesces. What's left is like a master's primer in how to create an atmosphere in film; intriguing, but not wholly satisfying as an end in itself.
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