What a wonderful combination of one of my favorite directors and a female philosopher I greatly admire. Jean-Luc Godard reads Hannah Arendt’s “On the Nature of Totalitarianism.”
Enjoy it here!
Category Archives: Film
An Eye for Beauty
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You know those movies that just get you and you just get them? Not necessarily because they’re very relatable, but simply because of the way they make you feel and think about things. I recently had such an experience, and I love these experiences, but they seem to be few and far between. I saw the Canadian film, An Eye for Beauty, which I knew would be good after seeing the trailer, but the actual film really blew me away. I’m interested in design, so the discussion about design, although not extensive, definitely caught my attention. More so than that, though, the complicated human characters and relationships were really intriguing; not to mention the French language, which is always alluring. I won’t say much more about it because you should see it rather than just take my word for it.
Reality vs. Story
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I recently saw the new movie, Mr. Holmes, about the one and only Sherlock Holmes and was struck by something Holmes said at one point while talking to a female character. He’s talking to this woman who he’s been hired to investigate, and she confides her unhappiness with her life to him. In response, he contemplates whether it’s better for people to know the truth about things and confront reality, or if it’s better to tell people stories you know they would like to hear. No real conclusion is reached, but putting the question out there got me thinking about my own life. Which would I prefer? And which do I tend to tell other people? Certainly it seems easier to believe in a story and think of it as true, and I’m wondering if perhaps there’s nothing wrong with doing so. Whether one accepts reality or lives within a story, either one becomes reality for that person. So if one does live within a story, what harm does it really do, because it’s still real to that person? As long as doing so doesn’t harm oneself or others, it could be perfectly acceptable. Don’t we all indulge in the in stories anyway? It’s called daydreaming. I myself find myself fluctuating between stories in my head and the reality that I’m confronted with, and it seems to me like we have to reflect on stories to a certain extent just to put up with the reality that surrounds us. So perhaps it’s not either/or, but the necessity for both in order to carry on.
Love/Movies
0You may not be able to stop thinking about someone, but the reality is, he/she may not be thinking of you at all. Rarely do people feel the same way about each other, and rarer still is it that people fall in love quickly, as is portrayed in the movies. Why do the movies give us such false hope when it comes to the nature of love and relationships? Then again, the movies are fairly unrealistic about their portrayal of most things simply because they are edited and typically condense a profound amount of time into two hours – thus resulting in an idealized vignette that we like to take as true and real. While relishing in such filmic vignettes brings us joy, we have to remember that they are what they are: fictionalized, idealized scenarios that seldom match up to reality.
The Woman in Gold
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I recently saw The Woman in Gold, and as I am usually touched by movies, I was particularly touched by this one. I could relate to it because although I am not Jewish, my grandparents are from the Czech Republic and their families had everything taken away from them by the Russians. The scene that particularly touched me was the one where Maria had to say goodbye to her parents before escaping. I couldn’t help but cry. My grandparents left Czechoslovakia separately and they couldn’t even tell their families that they were leaving. My grandmother left on a scholarship to study in Paris with the promise of returning, but of course, she never did. My grandfather hired a spy and left in the middle of the night with only a briefcase in hand. He made his way to a refugee camp in Germany and then eventually to Paris where he rejoined with my grandmother. I can’t imagine leaving my family without saying goodbye and knowing that I would never see them again, which is what transpired with my grandparents. In the movie, Maria and Fritz’s escape was very dramatic and nerveracking. I guess what I liked most was simply how emotional it was. I don’t know if it evoked the same kind of emotion in others, who might not be able to relate to the film at all, but I imagine it was even more touching for those who have a similar story.
Theory vs. Emotion in Film
3When we say we like a movie, what are we really saying? Sure we can appreciate and admire films for their form or content and we can like them for the ideas they convey or for their beautiful cinematography, but what is it that leads us to say we like a certain film? It’s the feeling they evoke in us. There are film theorists who will go great lengths to describe what signs are present in films that cause us to like them, or the ways in which certain films connote or denote things that make them ‘good’ films. But I don’t think that all that theorizing gets to the heart of what makes us like films. I think the power of film really lies in how they make us feel, rather than certain qualities that might be inherent in the film. How often do we like films solely because of their form or content and cast aside the emotions they evoke in us? Perhaps there are truly genuine film connoisseurs who can look at a film only for the ways in which it excels in terms of its medium (and I’m sure there are), but I find it virtually impossible to separate my emotions from my appreciation for a film while I am watching it. If this makes me an average film spectator, then so be it. I would rather remain an emotional film spectator than take the emotion out of the film-vieweing experience and look at films purely from an intellectual standpoint.
Machines
0Do you ever think to yourself – I wish I knew how my computer worked? It might sound like a silly question, but truly most of us have no idea how our computers actually work, and yet we use them everyday with incredible ease. What happens when we hit the command key? How does hitting that key correspond with some little chip in the computer’s innards to make something happen on the screen? It’s an incredible thing when you think about it, and we take it for granted.
This question popped into my head last night as I finally got to see The Imitation Game (which is an excellent movie, by the way), and it occurred to me that not only do we not understand how our own computers work, but we don’t really know how many machines work. Surely, mechanics, engineers, and mathematicians understand how machines work since they are the ones inventing them, but the average person really has no idea and simply reaps the benefits of these machines. I’m thinking of machines such as cars, medical equipment like an MRI machine, machines in factories, etc. What marvelous inventions they are that can do work beyond the comprehension of most people. The device created by Alan Turing in The Imitation Game was the birth of computers, and not only was the film extremely well-done, it evokes themes that are really important such as technological advances, the treatment of homosexuals, and the common social handicaps inherent in geniuses.
Dancing in cafes
0This scene from Jean-Luc Godard‘s Band of Outsiders is one of my favorite scenes in all of film. Ana Karina is classically stunning as usual and the dance number is infectious and longs to be mimicked. While there is a voice-over describing what the characters are thinking, the dancing itself doesn’t really serve any purpose in the film’s narrative. It is simply there for its own sake and for the audience to take pleasure in, which is what makes it so great.
Safe and sound
0I really liked this song by Capital Cities when it first came out, but I only recently discovered the music video. I always love period pieces, and having just taken a class on the silent film era, I appreciate the few allusions to silent film, and I like its originality and blending of time periods.
gooollysandra 