Mediocre essays on great film, part two

Here’s my essay on Godard’s La Chi­noise, as promised. It’s so fresh that I haven’t even read over it since turn­ing it in to my pro­fes­sor.
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Real­ity of the Reflection

“The social­ist lit­er­a­ture and art must fight on two fronts. Art doesn’t reflect real­ity, but is a real­ity of reflec­tion.” — Kir­ilov in Jean-Luc Godard’s La Chinoise

In 1967, Jean-Luc Godard released La Chi­noise, his thir­teenth fea­ture film. The work fol­lows four French youth who align them­selves with Maoist com­mu­nism in their search to find mean­ing in their lives. Through a series of documentary-style vignettes col­laged with pop art and arranged into a lin­ear nar­ra­tive, La Chi­noise shows the char­ac­ters seek­ing great leaps for­ward based on Mao’s phi­los­o­phy and aim­ing to coor­di­nate a com­mu­nist rev­o­lu­tion in France for the ben­e­fit of its citizens.

In May of 1968, the stu­dent protests and gen­eral strike con­sid­ered to be the cat­a­lyst for France’s shift in social moral­ity occurred. Now, in 2008, La Chi­noise does not exist on DVD, and is only avail­able for view­ing when its film print is shown in theaters.

There is a very real pos­si­bil­ity that the release of La Chi­noise, the protests in 1968 France, and the cur­rent inac­ces­si­bil­ity of the film are not con­nected; how­ever, the three ideas in a group can rep­re­sent the role of art in social impact.

After a recent view­ing of the film at Seattle’s North­west Film Forum, a middle-aged man asked me if I’d liked it. I answered him sim­ply: I thought the film was fan­tas­tic. Despite the dra­matic irony sup­plied by its dat­ing, the story felt fresh and the cin­e­matog­ra­phy and gen­eral artis­tic risk-taking was unlike any­thing I’d seen. The man scoffed at me, and I real­ized he’d been look­ing for some­thing a lit­tle more scathing. I asked him what he thought, and he response was some­thing to the extent of

“I found it self-indulgent and narrow-minded. You know who the main char­ac­ter was? The direc­tor. And I think he’s got the wrong idea about the value of col­lec­tive action. You can’t just go around killing peo­ple and think that it will solve society’s prob­lems. The peo­ple in power don’t always do what they should, but indi­vid­u­als can’t change that. You know Barack Obama? He wants to send more troops to Iraq. There’s no one we can trust any­more, and those self­ish kids in that movie set a bad exam­ple of social action.”

Though I prob­a­bly shouldn’t have been sur­prised, the man’s out­burst had me floored. Incor­rect asser­tions aside, that inter­ac­tion can rep­re­sent a com­pli­cated idea that’s present in most socially-conscious work of today. The film, which is clas­si­fied as a fic­tional work (though it could eas­ily be argued oth­er­wise) seemed to soften the inter­sec­tion between social respon­si­bil­ity and beau­ti­ful art in a method of chang­ing peo­ples’ per­spec­tives on the causes they address. In the case of the man I spoke to, this pur­pose was clearly not achieved: he only reacted to the social con­tent. Though the film could prob­a­bly stand alone on either side of the argu­ment (social com­men­tary vs. piece of art for art’s sake), it pro­vides a good rep­re­sen­ta­tion of what is referred to in La Chi­noise as “the strug­gle on two fronts”: the attempt to make a work that suc­cess­fully addresses a social issue while mak­ing it avail­able to a larger audi­ence through artis­tic accessibility.

DEUXIÈME MOVEMENT D’ESSAI

La Chinoise’s level of suc­cess as a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of the two sides of the strug­gle and gen­er­ally as an artis­tic piece of social com­men­tary can be exam­ined through the the­o­ries of Kant and Niet­zsche. Both the­o­rists write on the pur­suit of truth’s ani­ma­tion through the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of two dif­fer­ent worlds — for Kant, noumena and phe­nom­ena, and for Niet­zsche, for the Apol­lon­ian and the Dionysian — which relates directly to Godard’s strug­gle on two fronts. Relat­ing more specif­i­cally to redemp­tion aside from truth, how­ever, both the­o­rists also advance the idea of going through and then destroy­ing beauty as a method of lib­er­a­tion that res­onates well with La Chinoise.

TROISIÈME MOVEMENT D’ESSAI

We can first take a look at beauty and respon­si­bil­ity in the one of the documentary-style inter­views with Guil­laume — one of the film’s prin­ci­ple char­ac­ters — in the sec­ond por­tion of the film, where he begins rehears­ing the first few lines from a play he’s prac­tic­ing and then stops, laughs a lit­tle, and then explains “Yes, I’m an actor.” At this point, we are intro­duced to the idea of “true the­ater,” which Guil­laume advances as the idea that every­one is an actor at all times reflect­ing on true sit­u­a­tions, and that just because he is an actor (which we see by the ques­tions asked of him off set and the turn­ing of the cam­era on the cam­era­man) we should never doubt the sin­cer­ity of his words.

He fol­lows up this beau­ti­ful idea of sincerity’s neces­sity in social cri­tique and art with the asser­tion (in the same breath) that you also need vio­lence. He takes one idea, for exam­ple by rehears­ing an idea of the cul­tural Marx­ist, Louis Althusser: “I turn around, and sud­denly the ques­tion is the words I’ve just said are part of a greater play con­tin­u­ing through me,” and then makes it his own: “the play of the worker in the theater.”

We can begin to under­stand Guillaume’s asser­tions through Kant’s think­ing. In his Cri­tique of Judg­ment, Kant writes on new meth­ods of judg­ment as well as a new method of look­ing at the move­ment inspired by beauty and truth. We see a def­i­n­i­tion of two dis­tinct worlds of exis­tence: one of nat­ural neces­sity, and one of free­dom. This divi­sion between nature’s objec­tive, deter­min­is­tic laws and moral freedom’s sub­jec­tiv­ity is not unlike Plato’s divi­sion between the sen­sory and intel­li­gi­ble realms; how­ever, it is not based on a dialec­tic where an indi­vid­ual can ascend or descend within those two realms on their jour­ney toward a sin­gle One. Here, the two worlds — the sen­sory, sub­jec­tive world of the noumena and the intel­li­gi­ble, objec­tive world of the phe­nom­ena –are ani­mated via their need for some sort of unity, which can occur through a super­sen­si­ble sub­strate: art.

Through­out this film, we sense a need for the stu­dents to be able to apply their the­o­ries to real life; they need to find a way to apply their facts, which are based on the objec­tive asser­tions of the col­lec­tive work­ers ethos and Mao’s Lit­tle Red Book, to the rest of the world. They become obsessed with the idea of devot­ing them­selves to a cause and being com­pletely engrossed in their endeav­ors, ensu­ing in a fanat­i­cal study of Mao’s doc­trines and sub­scrib­ing to the Cul­tural Rev­o­lu­tion in China. In so doing, how­ever, we could doubt their sin­cer­ity just due to the fact that they are try­ing to “strug­gle on two fronts”: that they are focus­ing their energy both on their art — act­ing — and on sup­port­ing their cause.

Guil­laume pleads that we don’t doubt, and instead only real­ize that a film can be the work of a col­lec­tive group of peo­ple who share in sim­i­lar ideas and should there­fore be taken very seri­ously in their meth­ods of demonstration.

Kant’s dis­tinc­tion between the ana­lytic of the beau­ti­ful and the sub­lime also lends itself to an exam­i­na­tion of this film. “[Nature] excites the ideas of the sub­lime in its chaos or in its wildest and most irreg­u­lar dis­or­der and des­o­la­tion, pro­vided size and might are per­ceived,” he writes (Kant, 84). And as for its redemp­tive value? “[In] gen­eral, it dis­plays noth­ing pur­po­sive in nature itself, but only in that pos­si­ble use of our intu­itions of it by which there is pro­duced in us a feel­ing of pur­po­sive­ness quite inde­pen­dent of nature.” The idea of a strange kind of uneasi­ness lead­ing to great joy con­nects to another of the film’s inter­views where Veronique, arguably the leader of the group, looks the cam­era in the eye and explains that she would dyna­mite the Sor­bonne (edu­ca­tion), the Lou­vre (visual art), and the Come­die Fran­caise (the­ater) if she had the courage, just for the sake of start­ing over from zero and recon­sid­er­ing our morals from the present, based on the col­lec­tive (size-based) ethos. She tells us that the Rev­o­lu­tion can’t be art: it can’t hold the ten­der­ness or finesse of a piece, but rather it rips away all that we know and forces us to begin from the present, start­ing from scratch.

We can also see a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of this ide­ol­ogy Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, where he pro­vides us with the exam­i­na­tion of the Dionysian-Apollonian dual­ity within Greek tragedy. The Greek tragedy, Niet­zsche writes, is the only instance where the mutu­ally exclu­sive Dionysian and the Apol­lon­ian are united — and are united only for a moment — and in that moment of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion we have a glimpse into what­ever real­ity we can con­ceive (though Niet­zsche writes that we can never know the thing itself). As said in the film: art isn’t a reflec­tion of real­ity, it’s the real­ity of reflection.

The Apol­lon­ian wis­dom is that of dreams, which is purely based on images and allows appear­ances to appear at all. These images, which are also referred to (among other things) as masks, are able to cloud the dark chaos that Niet­zsche believes char­ac­ter­izes the world. As such, for­get­ting is a fun­da­men­tally Apol­lon­ian char­ac­ter­is­tic, which also allows indi­vid­u­als to trust in their own indi­vid­ual frame­works via their faith in their own autonomous ego. The Dionysian wis­dom, on the other hand, is the wis­dom of ter­ror and is specif­i­cally char­ac­ter­ized by the awe of and result­ing drunk­en­ness relat­ing to that ter­ror. As said, Niet­zsche believes the uni­verse is ulti­mately is irra­tional and wants to devour every­thing. Diony­sus, as the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of this belief and the pri­mal heart of the world, breaks down the bar­ri­ers devel­oped and sus­tained by the indi­vid­ual trust in Apol­lon­ian aes­thet­ics: “Under the charm of the Dionysian not only is the union between man and man reaf­firmed, but Nature which has become estranged, hos­tile, or sub­ju­gated, cel­e­brates once more her rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with her prodi­gal son, man […] Now the slave is free; now all the stub­born, hos­tile bar­ri­ers, which neces­sity, caprice, or ‘shame­less fash­ion’ have erected between man and man, are bro­ken down” (Niet­zsche, 501). When the bar­ri­ers between man and man (and man and Nature) are bro­ken down, man senses his par­tic­i­pa­tion in uni­ver­sal har­mony and a higher com­mu­nity and expe­ri­ences a “redemp­tion through release” (Niet­zsche, 508). This redemp­tion, Niet­zsche writes, is deserv­ing of a “rap­tur­ous vision” and fur­ther fuels the Dionysian energy as it is the clos­est por­tal to real­ity man can possess.

Kant finds some unity with Niet­zsche based on the con­cepts of the sub­lime with Nietzsche’s idea of the redemp­tion of Dion­y­sis. Dionysian unity tears down Apol­lon­ian prin­cip­ium indi­vid­u­a­tio­nis, thereby rip­ping away the Apol­lon­ian masks to expose real­ity. As Niet­zsche writes, there is a cer­tain sat­is­fac­tion to this decon­struc­tion: “The hor­ri­ble ‘witches’ brew’ of sen­su­al­ity and cru­elty becomes inef­fec­tive: only the curi­ous blend­ing and dual­ity in the emo­tions of the Dionysian rev­el­ers remind us — as med­i­cines remind us of deadly poi­sons — of the phe­nom­e­non that pain begets joy, that ecstasy may wring sounds of agony from us” (Niet­zsche, 504). We see fur­ther appli­ca­tion of Veronique’s the­ory in the film in her long, sta­tic scene on the train with her pro­fes­sor when she dis­cusses, in com­plete earnest, her inten­tions to bomb the uni­ver­si­ties as a method of reeval­u­at­ing their abysmal sit­u­a­tion which is tired and com­pla­cent, even in the face of the Viet­nam War. Her pro­fes­sor, who was involved in the Alger­ian War, explains that she will never find any last­ing sup­port unless she has pop­u­lar back­ing at the time of her bomb­ings, and she only had con­trol of three peo­ple in a movement.

DERNIÈRE MOVEMENT D’ESSAI

As sug­gested before, the idea of the strug­gle on two fronts as well as the idea of rip­ping way apa­thetic, indif­fer­ent exte­ri­ors in favor of the real­ity that lies beneath and start­ing from scratch at the present isn’t just applic­a­ble to La Chinoise’s con­tent: it’s also applic­a­ble to the film’s aes­thetic and tech­ni­cal elements.

Godard’s inno­v­a­tive film­mak­ing ethos expertly walks the line between social com­men­tary and work of art. From the begin­ning, the film doesn’t let the viewer a rest or retreat into a stream­lined nar­ra­tive. Though the nar­ra­tive pro­gresses in a some­what lin­ear fash­ion, we are often sub­jected to a dif­fer­ent form of blur­ring fic­tion and real­ity. As said, this film is based on a fic­tional nar­ra­tive of four stu­dents liv­ing together in a com­fort­able Parisian apart­ment over the sum­mer, and the nar­ra­tive works in a cir­cle that begins and ends on the same image of their apart­ment doors, giv­ing us the per­cep­tion that noth­ing has been accom­plished in the film, but within that rev­o­lu­tion (as in a cir­cle), we are engrossed in var­i­ous vignettes. To fur­ther com­pli­cate ideas, the art of the film varies between scenes full of jump cuts between images of the actors as well as col­lages of pop art. Though the align­ment of visual art with images of human actors may prompt some explicit ques­tions, they do more to excite a feel­ing rather than actu­ally pro­mote any fur­ther under­stand­ing of the subject.

Godard addi­tion­ally cre­ates a new sphere with his audi­ence as viewer-listeners rather that just view­ers alone, which is a hugely sig­nif­i­cant part of his film­mak­ing. Rather than just being able to lose our­selves in a pro­gres­sion of images, the sounds he uses keep us off-balance, never let us sit back, make sure that we’re still extremely present. It makes us expe­ri­ence the rejec­tion of pas­siv­ity that he’s try­ing to sup­port. This expe­ri­enc­ing of emo­tions is what makes La Chi­noise so riv­et­ing, and what gives it a redemp­tive power that even the man who talked to me after the film had to under­stand. Which brings us back to Kant’s orig­i­nal point: we don’t nec­es­sar­ily all have to agree that La Chi­noise is a great film, but we should all feel a cer­tain way about its effects.

There is a notable scene relat­ing to the power of music which may be a car­i­ca­ture, but still raises a valu­able point. As Kir­ilov, another of the com­rades, lec­tures the oth­ers on social­ist art and literature’s need to strug­gle on two fronts — in other words, to have a moral pur­pose behind its beauty, just as Godard attempts to do — Guil­laume con­sid­ers the idea and then claims that it is much too com­pli­cated, assert­ing that he wouldn’t be able to make sense of two things at once. At that point Veronique, his girl­friend, asks him if he loves her, as she had done before in the film.

“Of course I do,” he responds.

“Well, I don’t love you anymore.”

He stares at her, bewil­dered, and says that he doesn’t under­stand. “You will,” she replies, and she lets a record drop and aligns the nee­dle. As the music begins to play, she says,

“I don’t love you any­more. I don’t like your face, and I don’t care for your sweaters. And you bore me ter­ri­bly.” She removes the nee­dle from the record. “Under­stand now?”

He responds in the affirmative.

“You see? You can under­stand two things at once — you’ve just done it.”