Le Redoutable (Michel Hazanavicius, 2017)

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domino harvey
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Re: Le Redoutable (Michel Hazanavicius, 2017)

#51 Post by domino harvey » Tue May 15, 2018 1:01 pm

whaleallright wrote:this
Hazanavicius has the right to his tastes, but I get the vague sense that the film, or at least its admirers, are using the portrayal of Godard as a means of validating their dismissal of his body of post-1960s work.
is not the same as
the insistence that a fan of this film must align oneself against Godard's later period incorrect.
(emphasis mine)
I recognize that there's rhetorical value in lowering the target.
Well, what you said is: If you are a fan of this film, it is evidence of validating a lesser opinion of Godard's later work. So, if you want to base your defense on one word, consider that you didn't say "some" or even "most" admirers of this film, thus "must" is apt

I'm not sure why you are even going so hard on this, considering you haven't seen the movie and yet feel comfortable casting aspersions on it and its audience regardless

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whaleallright
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Re: Le Redoutable (Michel Hazanavicius, 2017)

#52 Post by whaleallright » Tue May 15, 2018 6:54 pm

Not really going hard, just feel that you often offer uncharitable readings of other people's arguments here, and I got a little annoyed about it. I wasn't casting aspersions so much as drawing on some of the reviews (amateur and professional) I've read about the film. The guy/gal who posted above me clearly has some critical distance toward the film's understanding of Godard and his work, while still enjoying the film (perhaps with some irony in there), and you seem much the same, so I wouldn't presume anything of /all/ or even /most/ of its fans. But there does seem to be an element of philistinism in what the director has said about Godard, the view the film seems (emphasis on "seems," since I haven't seen it) to be taking of his work, and what at least some folks are drawing from it. (That kind of gives me the same vibe as that awful "eat your vegetables cinema" thinkpiece from a few years back, in which the author simply couldn't imagine anyone but pretentious phonies enjoying Hou Hsiao-Hsien or whatever.) That's all. /finis



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Never Cursed
Such is life on board the Redoutable
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Re: Le Redoutable (Michel Hazanavicius, 2017)

#55 Post by Never Cursed » Mon Jul 23, 2018 3:45 am

I'm completely with domino here - this was such a joy, which is especially impressive given that the main themes (the disintegration of a marriage, Godard's frantic and self-conflicted attempts to reinvent himself) could very easily have made a movie such as this humorless. Godard is a ridiculously self-centered prick here, the kind of guy who would and does pick such moments as cunnilingus or a screening of The Passion Of Joan Of Arc to have heart-to-hearts not because he has bad timing, but because he's totally unwilling to stop speaking, to stop expressing himself. Godard is ultimately too conflicted to effectively engage in the zeitgeist because he can't reconcile the idea of creation-by-committee with his own egotistical nature. The final image of Godard defeated and rendered silent by his own Dziga Vertov Committee is the perfect denouement to this story of Godard's contrariness causing self-destruction.

All this would be dull and perhaps even depressing if it were presented with total seriousness, but thankfully Hazanavicius side-steps the temptation to play the drama and especially Godard's egotism deadly straight and instead gives the audience lots to laugh at in the form of Godard's bluster juxtaposed with the ineffectiveness of his own actions (the numerous press conferences and university lectures that go wrong, Godard's failed attempt to sell La Chinoise to, uh, the Chinese, the endless and unresolved car ride argument), but in such a way that the movie never feels mean-spirited, even when engaging in subtle or not-so-subtle parody of Godard or his early movies. I especially appreciated the jabs at British Sounds late in the movie, though the absolute funniest part has to be the insane second lecture scene, where Godard takes the suggestion from his wife that he should be more assertive with university students far too far and goes on a pseudo pro-Palestinian tangent describing Jews as Nazis, Nazis as Jews, and yesterday's Jews today as yesterday's Nazis (today).

I liked this movie so much that it's almost a shame that it's so specific in its subject matter and humor, because I know several people who would appreciate the movie's aesthetic, message, and overall tone if they were only familiar with Godard or anything that he made. As it is, Le Redoutable will just have to be one of those great movies that one can only appreciate with a surplus of context.

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domino harvey
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Re: Le Redoutable (Michel Hazanavicius, 2017)

#56 Post by domino harvey » Sun Aug 26, 2018 8:40 pm

Any word on the extras for the UK Blu-ray?

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JamesF
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Re: Le Redoutable (Michel Hazanavicius, 2017)

#57 Post by JamesF » Mon Aug 27, 2018 12:55 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Sun Aug 26, 2018 8:40 pm
Any word on the extras for the UK Blu-ray?
A Q&A with cast and crew from London Film Festival last year. I believe the Cohen BD has interviews with Michel and Stacy filmed in NY - so there’s no real benefit to getting the UK disc over the US one.

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domino harvey
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Re: Le Redoutable (Michel Hazanavicius, 2017)

#58 Post by domino harvey » Wed Aug 29, 2018 12:17 pm

Thanks James. I'll still be picking up the UK edition since I imagine you all won't be changing the title card like Cohen sometimes does (especially since instead of just English-izing the ship pun, they made a completely new title)

Also, I neglected to say thanks to Never Cursed for his spirited defense. There are now, uh, still single digits of us who see the light!

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Red Screamer
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Re: Le Redoutable (Michel Hazanavicius, 2017)

#59 Post by Red Screamer » Fri Feb 15, 2019 9:03 pm

Caught up with this after the discussion here made me curious. If you think it's clever to have one character tell another, "Life isn't like movies, there isn't a voiceover that says 'Anne loved Jean-Luc'" followed by a voiceover that says "Anne loved Jean-Luc" or to have your leads criticize nude scenes while standing in the nude, you'll think this is a funny movie. If you think it's smart to film a sex scene between the Godard character and the Wiazemsky character combining references to the nude Bardot inserts from Le mepris and the Macha Méril body part montage from Une femme mariée, treating these three women, two sequences and two films as interchangeable, you could also just watch the Selena Gomez video that references Pierrot le fou.

I found this to be competently made bullshit, mostly interested in scoring easy points on the Godard character (like one scene where he can't define "fascism" or another where he starts an argument with the Wiazemsky character, she kisses him, and then he turns to the camera and says "Marxist-Leninist rhetoric, it gets you out of anything"), telling the audience just what to think and feel about him at every moment, whether it's with crowds who scream at him in response to his political opinions and the disowning of his earlier films or ham-fisted reaction shots of the other "reasonable" characters in the scene, usually the responsibility of Stacy Martin. In this way, and throughout the film, Hazanavicius collapses the complaints against Godard from Wiazemsky's character and his fans into one (during their last fight in the film she says to him, "You no longer seduce me...or anyone else", presumably a reference to his unsexy post-Pierrot work, speaking for all of us who are supposed to hate La chinoise).

Le redoubtable seems to gain the favor of the other people in this thread by making the Godard character an asshole—no doubt the real JLG is difficult and can be downright cruel, but you don't have to look much further than his films or Visages, villages or interviews with him etc etc for more interesting takes on that—but, having just watched Tout va bien and the interview included on the Arrow disc where Godard thoughtfully and self-critically speaks about how to represent the working class struggle in cinema and the role he plays in that as an intellectual, the idea of oppressed people being silenced and having trouble expressing themselves etc, I find it much harder to swallow the superficial sarcasm of Hazanavicius' film ("Watch Bertolucci Destroy Godard by Saying He Knows Nothing About the Working Class"). Its mockery of the interest, commitment, and subsequent response to May '68 in Godard's life and work, its meaningless homages to his early films, and its lip service criticism of Godard's interpersonal cruelty, while itself condescending to the Wiazemsky character and ogling her body at every turn, make everything into a reactionary sitcom, not saying anything new about the filmmaker, the period, the films. It's also just not funny.

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knives
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Re: Le Redoutable (Michel Hazanavicius, 2017)

#60 Post by knives » Sun Nov 17, 2019 6:16 pm

Finally got to this great film, but I have to admit there was something that bugged me the whole way through. Garrel speaks with a very thick lisp throughout which I've never noticed in any of the recordings of Godard I've heard. Am I just deaf or is there something else going on with that choice?

As to why I think this is a great film, in essence the film supposes him a tragic hero worthy of Sophocles whose fundamental flaws undermine his equally fundamental greatness and leave him lost, for a time. On one hand we see Godard as a sympathetic figure aiming to do the right thing and taking in criticism as it comes along. The response to La chinoise is one of disappointment that hopes to do better next time. On the other hand though his ego and, as the film puts it, Swiss Calvinistic insecurities cause him to self destruct. At the second lecture you can see he's taken to heart all the criticism he's received and is trying to show right, but delivers it in a way to only alienate himself all the more so. While the film is very funny it is also essentially sad because of how this admirable man shoots himself in the foot before taking a bite.

Also this short spoilerific piece by Kim Newman on the film while a bit more extreme on the DV films then I am I think hits on a couple of reasons why this is such a successful film while also being understandably difficult to appreciate.

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