Le Redoutable, based
on autobiography by Anne Wiazemsky, written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius
Le Redoutable has been
nominated for the Palme D’Or and this means it is one of the best films of 2017
Furthermore, the writer of the screenplay and
director of the motion picture is Michel Hazanavicius, the winner of the Oscar
for The Artist, a phenomenon that not only won the Academy Award for Best
Picture, but also caused a thunderstorm with the other Academy and multiple
prizes it won.
The hero and at the same time antihero of this
provocative, thoughtful, worthwhile, difficult film is Jean-Luc Godard.
Recognized as a Deity of the New Cinema, a
genius with quintessential art works like Contempt, based on the consummate novel
by Alberto Moravia, Breathless, Pierrot Le Fou, Godard refutes all this at one
stage.
This is the archetypal case of the genius who
descends into a big depression, if an authoritative artist, he is also an
obnoxious, rude, impossible, loathsome and despicable human being.
If one only considers his political views, his “revolutionary
stand” and that would be enough to reject the personage completely, even if he
would find so much to argue in favor of tyrants, mass murderers like Stalin and
Mao, the latter is so present in the conversation, quotes and on the walls of the
apartment of Godard.
On the set of La Chinoise, the director becomes
infatuated with the actress Anne Wiazemsky, who would later write the autobiography
on which this excellent motion picture is based.
La Chinoise was not well received by a good
number of critics and the communist Chinese that the filmmaker so cherished,
who refuses his request to visit China, even going as far as to state that,
were it up to them, they would make Godard change the title of his bourgeois,
putrid feature that they hate.
The media is excited by the marriage and they
insist on finding the details and keep asking about the ceremony, when the
subject of the press conference is actually La Chinoise and one representative
of the film festival is so upset that he starts referring to the film as “La
Tonkinoise” and this results in further jokes, the spiritual Jean-Luc Godard
rectifies the mistake, then corrects the official, even when he has the correct
title and then changes the name of the man…
However, if the director can be affable, he is very
often rude, insults people in a restaurant, talks dismissively about Truffaut
and his romantic movies, he even rejects…Godard, saying I am not this Godard, he
is dead.
This “new”, unlikeable Godard is not interested
in making “middle class features”, not anymore, for he wants to depict, film
fares about the revolution and keeps quoting the heinous –in this cinephile’s
view- Mao and Che Guevara.
Che said that we have to create an “interior Vietnam”
and that stupid quote is repeated at least twice and Jean-Luc Godard is repellent
when, during one of the few marches he attends, one couple approaches him and
the woman talks about the need to see felicitous films, since life is so “moche”.
The hero almost kicks these people, as he does
with some others, including one working for Publicis, who has attacked the
idol, deity of the stupid-in this matter- Godard.
Paradoxically or not, this ultimate
revolutionary, adept of Che and every other damn killer in the name of communism,
is rejected by some fired up student as in the same category of consumerism
symbols as- anathema- Coca Cola…
He even understands them and he has a clash
with his young wife, who is flabbergasted by his lack of response when so
viciously insulted, and the director says that he hates “vieux cons „and as he
becomes one, he despises himself.
Jean-Luc Godard, as described by his wife is unbearable,
with his obsessive fight against the bourgeoisie and anything destined for its
consumption, insistence on revolutionary attitudes- he even rejects Anne’s
suntan and he gets a funny response: Lenin did not have a suntan, but Che Guevara
surely did.
In terms of films, the man turned antihero
rejects all his works and everything the others did, with some strange
exceptions like…Jerry Lewis, The Marx Brothers…he attacks viciously Renoir and
his “bourgeois films”, provoking an intense fight in the car, as they travel
800 kilometers to reach Paris.
When Anne is invited to act in a modern film,
the husband is appalled by the script which has the protagonist naked
throughout and rejects the project, only to accept it when the screenplay is changed,
but he still insults and abuses his spouse when he arrives at the filming
location, where he is jealous of the partner…by the way, he once calls all
actors stupid, they only know to do what you tell them…
Jean-Luc Godard has another fight, he is a
dedicated, serious combatant in this later part of his life, with Bernardo,
whose work he destroys, as he does with everything except some aforementioned
productions.
“Pezzo di merda,
vaffanculo…c’est tout de la merde” these words are shouted with incredible frequency and they indeed might
point out to mental failure and a serious depression which could explain some
of the behavior and the extreme acts committed by this troubled artist, who
just wants to be a “Maoist, communist and revolutionary” in his sad, loathsome
part of his life.
The question posed in the later works is if
Godard should make films or revolution, for films with the revolutionary
message are hard to make, as he tries to have collective decisions on the
making of features, with people voting on what should be and could not be in,
the atrocities committed against Native Americans…but do we have the money to
include that? You pay for it Godard, if you want them…the crew appearing to
vote the director out of his ideas …if it a revolutionary film, it still needs
to be a film…n’est pas…