Watching a Jean Luc-Godard Movie Does Not Always Need to Be Frustrating

Jean Luc-Godard is without question one of the giants of international cinema, up there with Fellini and Kurosawa and maybe even the master himself Ingmar Bergman. Maybe. Foreign films in general can be frustrating for Americans since they have to read in order to get the fullest enjoyment; badly dubbed English language versions should be avoided at all costs. But Godard presents a further difficulty apart from language.

No, that's not true. The frustration involved in enjoying a Jean Luc-Godard film does have to do with language, but not language in terms of words. Rather, the language that frustrates so many American filmgoers is the language of cinema. Jean Luc-Godard is a Marxist and therefore his films exist to challenge the ideology behind cinema as an art form. Since ideology is expressed not only in content but form, the non-linear structure of Godard's films serve a purpose.

The ideology behind Hollywood movies are dependent upon the importance of narrative. The story is what it's important. Yes, there can be meaning in a movie even as seemingly absent of a deeper meaning like Nacho Libre, but what's important above all else is the story. And the way the story is told is designed to further the understanding of the story. Even when a story may get a little complex---Syriana or Memento, for instance-it's still pretty easy to explain what happened. And we have come to think that narrative is the only real reason to make a movie. Anything else is art-house avant garde. Or pretentious. Pretentious is a word granted Godard's movies quite often. Usually by frustrated people who didn't understand it. Pretentious is always a reliable adjective for describing what you don't understand.

Not surprisingly, Godard's film language harkens back to the great early Soviet directors, especially Sergei Eisenstein. The power of film for the communists was as a propaganda device. Don't misunderstand; the power of Hollywood film has always been propaganda as well, but it a much more subtle, yet infinitely less artistic manner. By focusing on narrative, the real strength of the medium itself is often lost. Even the most high-tech, special effects-laden films could very easily be translated to the stage with no loss in narrative. It would be almost impossible to make a stage version of a Godard film.

The center of frustration-and by turns the center of appreciation-at a Godard film is through his insistent use of discontinuity. American films have taught us that within a single scene made up of a series of cuts that the characters should always appear in the frame in the same way: their clothes shouldn't change, their positions shouldn't change, the props shouldn't change. The fact that they have so often changed by accident has given rise to a subgenre of the film trivia book, the film flub book. In a Godard film, this audience expectation is deliberately upset. Godard may present a scene in which each cut reveals the same character wearing something different each time. The natural reaction for an American watching this is a sense of confusion and disconnection; he may even question whether the scene is a montage that is taking place over a series of time.

But time is meaningless in a Godard film. Narrative films depend on time; Godard's films are concerned with space. Classic narrative filmmaking is concerned above all with creating a sense of unity; we know where we're going and we know that everything we witness will give us clues to that end. Even in films that upset genre expectations, we still know we're watching a narrative. While a romantic comedy is unlikely to turn into a science fiction space opera, there are films that have started out as comedies and ended up as tragedies, films that have introduced a thriller into a story that started out as an examination of small town life, and so on. But what Godard does goes much further. You'd be hard pressed to find an American film that turns from a family drama into a documentary midway through.

When watching a Godard movie, first time audiences are likely to be thoroughly flummoxed when an actor turns to face the camera and begins to answer questions delivered by an off-camera voice, assumed to be Godard himself. Even more unsettling is that the actor may seem to be speaking not in character but as himself, the actor, discussing the filmmaking process. Or perhaps a recognizable real-life person enters the scene and engages in a dialogue with the characters. Another device that Godard often uses is to show the filmmaking equipment. We've all watched scenes in American movies where the boom mike dips into the frame, or the camera is reflected in a window. (Next time you watch Taxi Driver, pay close attention to the scene when DeNiro walks past Scorsese sitting on the stoop.) Again, however, these are flubs, mistakes, gaffes, fodder for collectors of movie mistakes.

In a Godard movie, they serve a purpose. The distinction between the narrative and the fact that a narrative is being filmed is never supposed to enter the minds of those watching Hollywood films. No matter how outrageous or realistic the story, the ideology at work behind movies is one in which the audience believes fully in the story and never takes a moment to question how or why it might be different. Those who question whether American films are driven by ideology or exist as propaganda are the perfect receptacles for that ideology. What the Soviets failed to understand is that ideology is best inculcated by subtle coercion and not clumsy force. By creating a film language that presents narrative as the ultimate goal, it became far easier to interject the pro-America propaganda. These messages have flowed like subliminal messages to audiences who have been so deeply engaged in the story that they don't realize the messages have been serving to conform them into the system. But Godard attempts to upset audience expectations. He wants to remind viewers that they are watching a film and, further, that all films have an ideological purpose.

Hollywood films don't want you to recognize that they are mechanistic structures; you are supposed to lose yourself in the story and not ask what these stories are wanting to you think. Jean Luc-Godard's films are frustrating because they don't conform to what we think a film should be. Even when watching a film by David Lynch with all it's weirdness, we're still comfortably within the system. But a Godard film works outside that system, breaking it down and tearing it apart. The point of the a Godard movie isn't the story that takes place, which may not lead to a standard conclusion, but rather the ideas within it. Revolutionary cinema cannot really work unless it confronts the cinematic language. You can't honestly make a movie that attempts to subvert the Hollywood system by using Hollywood techniques. By using those techniques you are already telegraphing to the audience that what they've come to expect is the best way to go about it.

When watching a film by Godard and noticing that his story doesn't proceed in a linear fashion, or that his editing seems unprofessional or that there was no continuity person on the set you have to remember it's all by design. Before you can understand the content, first you have to have your expectations stripped away. Godard works on a perceptual basis, understanding that audience perception of how movies are made informs their understanding of what they are seeing. The perception of most American audiences has been ingrained to believe that a narrative structure is the only way to make movies. If a cut takes us from the face of a character to a poster, we naturally expect that the poster is either somewhere in the scene or will be seen again by the character. But when Godard cuts from a character to a poster, the poster serves to underscore his meaning. There is no guarantee that the character has seen or will ever see the poster. The Hollywood design is that anything that is actually shown must somehow contribute to that sense of unity. If the director cuts from a character's face to a close-up of a gun, we can be pretty certain that a gun is going to wind up in that character's life, either in his hands as a weapon against him. But if Godard cuts from a character to a gun, it is the ideological meaning of the gun that is important, and we may never see that gun again.

The frustration involved in coming to Godard stems from audience assumptions about how movies are supposed to be made. The story is everything; narrative is king. In a Godard film, the narrative is simply another cog in the machine. And the narrative is often commented upon as being a false construct. You are reminded this isn't really taking place. Once you come to understand that Godard isn't introducing non-linear elements just for the sake of being artsy-fartsy or purposely abstruse, but that they all serve a palpable reason to help you better understand meaning of the filmgoing experience, you can turn the act of watching a Godard movie from one of pure frustration into one of the most thrilling cinematic experiences of your life.