Film Socialisme / Film Socialisme
2010, 35 mm, Color (16th Festival on Wheels)
Director(s)
Jean-Luc Godard
Country(s)
İsviçre
Genre(s)
Other
Script
Jean-Luc Godard
Photography
Fabrice Aragno, Paul Grivas
Editing
Jean-Luc Godard
Music
Animation
Cast
Robert Maloubier, Patti Smith, Alain Badiou, Jean-Marc Stehlé, Catherine Tanvier
Production
Vega Film, Ruth Waldburger
Distribution
Wild Bunch, Esther Devos, 99, rue de la Verrerie Paris 75004 France T +33 1 5301 5032 | edevos@wildbunch.eu | www.wildbunch.biz
Awards
Plot
“Ideas Separate Us, Dreams Bring Us Together”
Godard’s latest film, a “symphony in three movements,” is perhaps his most difficult and
troubling in many years. Deliberately thwarting clarity, narrative and exposition, Film Socialisme
functions as a kind of visual scream – in the spirit of Edvard Munch’s famous painting. In the
face of civilization’s madness, Godard questions where meaning can be found. Splinters of the
remnants of the past, quotations from writers and philosophers and visual fragments from other
director’s films form a collage of associative meaning and rumination, ordered by this most
metaphysical of filmmakers.
The film begins on a cruise ship (a metaphor for the rootless, wandering nature of contemporary
society?), where passengers indulge in gambling or disco-dancing in the ship’s nightclub. Brilliant
high-definition cinematography is mixed with degraded cellphone-style shots to create a stunning
kaleidoscope of imagery and sound. The middle section, entitled “Notre Europe” (“Our Europe”),
moves us from the sea to a provincial gas station to examine the domestic politics of the family
that runs it. The final section revisits the cruise ship’s journey around the Mediterranean, intercut
with historic footage from the region and a dizzying montage of clips from key films in Godard’s
encyclopedic catalogue of the cinema.
Godard fearlessly continues to mine his chosen territory with the fierce determination of a wise
sage. Film Socialisme has the immediacy of automatic writing, its scraps and pieces of insight,
aphorisms, word plays and quotations forming a dense canvas of potential meanings. A film of
its times.
Piers Handling