Author: David Bordwell ( http://www.davidbordwell.net )
Translator: csh
The translation was first published in "Iris"
Godard started to cause trouble again. "Goodbye Language" (2014) has performed better in the US market than any film he has produced in the past 30 years. Its average price per show is $13,500, which is roughly double that of "Death Divination" (2014), which was screened last week (Translator's Note: This article was published on November 2, 2014).
However, this average is calculated from two screenings, and it is difficult to increase the number of screenings, because "Goodbye Language" is a 3D movie. Many art theaters are eager to show it, but they lack the funds to upgrade their 3D equipment. After all, they have undergone major digital transformations in recent years. Even in New York, Los Angeles or Chicago, those art theaters with better equipment do not have 3D features installed. We will screen this film at the Madison Film Center (Translator's Note: The University of Wisconsin-Madison is the main academic position of Bourdville, where he has worked for almost his entire career). However, in the future, the future of this work may be even brighter.
At the Vancouver International Film Festival in September, I watched this film again (twice) and I was very excited about some thoughts about it. Christine (translator's note: here refers to Baudwell's wife Christine Thompson) and I will avoid writing journals, but in this article, I may record some scattered observations. Among them, there are two messy comments related to spoilers, but I will warn you in advance.
The power of post-production
As far as I know, Godard did not use a converging lens to create 3D images during the shooting. He didn't let his camera "tilt in", but kept the lens completely parallel. He and his photographic assistant Fabris Aragón obviously used software to generate the shocking 3D images we see on the screen.
This reminds me that post-production is always the core content of Godard's creative process. Of course, he also created incredible shots in the process of shooting, but starting from "Exhausted" (1960), when he got the desired picture through the camera, he always carried out some additional post-production work. It's not just trimming and polishing the images he shoots. He would suddenly wedged into those subtitle cards (sometimes he would insert the same subtitle card several times) to present his interruptive aesthetics. He would interrupt those wonderful shots, use the music casually and suddenly, and then end them before the music stops.
Whether in terms of sound or image, Godard's post-production is a process of transformation, a public statement telling the audience that he has rewritten the picture taken by the camera. He painted full of graffiti on his videos. I pointed out in the book "The Narrative of Fictional Movies" that our perception of Godard's films and our acceptance of what the director "tells" and narrates can go smoothly, to a certain extent, thanks to Godard's A kind of ability, he can create that kind of "movie emperor" impression, he is a sovereign master, he can decide what we should see and hear at any moment. That kind of collage tells us that a person is joining these pieces together behind the scenes. His comments outside the painting (used in a low voice, now hoarse), every lens change, every verse of music and noise, every subtitle card, every gaze at the camera, all let us witness what we did God of God. Once he cut a piece of film; now he turns a knob or pushes a slider. But no matter what, we can feel his humorous and annoying hands.
Godard would radically adjust the nature of the picture and sound during the post-production process, which contributed to his famous collage aesthetics. These adjustments almost ruined the surface of his film. Therefore, it is not surprising that Godard's 3D movies boldly show these surfaces. In his pictures, the aircraft in the distance has sharp edges, and its volume continues to expand in front of our eyes.
However, he will compress the volume of things and fold the airplane like a playing card. At the same time, he will also use superimposed subtitle cards, and sometimes these subtitles will linger among the audience. The 2D title is closer to us-to some extent, this is a joke made by Godard-and the 3D title is under it. But in any case, they are clearer than the fuzzy lights and shadows at the farthest point.
Rules and exceptions
Hollywood will set the rules for plot, filming and editing, and similarly, it has set rules for "appropriate" 3D movies. An informative article by Bryant Fraser ( http://www.studiodaily.com/2014/10/five-ways-jean-luc-godard-breaks-the-3d-rules-in-farewell -to-language/ ), has pointed out some ways Godard can break these rules. However, if you just call him a maverick, it sounds like he is just breaking these rules on purpose. In fact, one of his goals is to explore what will happen if you ignore these rules.
This is the experimental side of Godard: what he considers are those that are excluded by the traditional "exquisite craftsmanship", just as the Cubists believe that viewpoints, finishes, and other characteristics of academic painting will hinder some expressive aspects. possibility. In order to have a positive understanding of what he did, we need to first consider what the purpose of traditional rules is. We only need to consider two purposes.
1. According to the assumptions of traditional rules, 3D should play the same role as pictures, lighting, sound and other technologies: guiding us to pay attention to the most important story points. A lens should be easy to read. When 3D is no longer just arousing our awe of technology, it acquires a technical obligation, which is to allow us to better understand the story. For example, 3D images should use selective focus to ensure that only one person is prominent, and everything else is elegantly turned into a blurred image.
However, 3D allows Godard to destructively present the space in the lens, and he also presents his own scene (his scene is omitted) and narrative (his narrative is tortuous and concise). When we watch traditional deep focus images, we are invited to focus on things other than the main elements. In the same way, these stacked planes in Godard's images also signify additional existence, which invites our eyes to explore them.
2. According to convention, 3D should be relatively realistic. The traditional movie itself is the window of the story world, and 3D practitioners call the 3D picture a "stereoscopic window." People and objects should gently retreat from the surface of that window to the depths of the space. However, "Goodbye Language" provided us with a beautiful, slatted chair, Godard did not put it completely on our laps, nor did it completely blend into the imaginary space. It appeared suddenly and dominated the entire composition, partially obstructing the main activity-a husband bent on rushing out of the car and committing violence.
This chair—and possibly one of its companions—reappears. It is usually more powerful than human characters. These characters are squeezed behind it, and we can barely see them.
All in all, the visual realism of Hollywood is just one mode of filmmaking. Godard told us from the beginning that he was after something else. The first subtitle of the film states: "Those who lack imagination seek refuge in reality." "Goodbye Language" is an imaginative adventure.
Innovation and problems
Godard has been in film for a long time, so much so that some of his innovations-skip cuts, interrupted subtitle cards-have become common in mainstream movies. However, there is still an inexplicable core in his art treasure house, and it is too difficult to assimilate this core. Moreover, compared with those who want to remove his experimental fangs, he is always a few steps ahead.
It is said that Picasso once told Gertrude Stein: "You make something new, and then some people will show up to make it beautiful."
New perspective
For a long time, French thinkers have been thinking about whether language separates us from the world. It lowered a veil so that we could not see the simplest and purest things. I pointed out in an interview with the National Public Radio that the title of this film tells us that Godard uses 3D to allow us to perceive the world away from the existing conceptual structure (language, plot, normal point of view, etc.) . Language has broken the original connection between us and things-personally, this view seems a little unbelievable. But I think this is the central theme of the whole film. This very convincing film exploits a paradox: we must use language to say goodbye to language.
learning curve
I think that critics are lagging behind Godard, and their critical views are too limited. They seem to think that their movie concepts will always be fixed, and they feel that these concepts are the standards that every movie must measure. They especially resist a simple idea: we can learn something from the movie. We can not only learn about life, but also about movies. We can indeed learn something new-we may have never realized that film can do this before.
But how many critics really want to know something about the movie? If we can only understand it through learning, how many people are willing to do it? What if we have to fight something that is difficult to understand that impacts our existing ideas?
There are two spoilers ahead!
When I rewatched the film, I found that two longer, parallel storylines echoed each other, which shocked me: a big bowl of flowers, followed by a fruit; for the "no reason!" Repeat; each major female character is given a strange colorless (or nearly colorless) picture.
As in many other parts of the film, Godard designed a unique and unstable parallel universe plot. These stylized choices strengthen the overall formal structure of the film. In the first prologue, the woman in the first picture above also appeared in the color image. It seems that the division between color and black-and-white images foreshadows the appearance of colorless images to some extent.
The (obvious) deaths of the main male characters in the film are presented in a very ambiguous way, but this is obviously the result of the plot sequence of the story. This kind of chronological adjustment-a common technique in modern movies-is quite rare in Godard's work, at least in my impression.
Obviously, 3D is a problem that we movie lovers need to face. I hesitated at first, but I finally decided to think about this issue. Some important directors like Godard, Herzog and Wenders are all working on 3D movies. It is also important that we have not been able to study 3D movies in detail until now. In the early 1980s, I watched "Africa Adventures" (Translator's Note: the first color 3D movie in history) at the Library of Congress, but if I stop to watch every picture, I can’t tell what 3D is. Effect.
When I was writing the book "Pandora's Digital Magic Box", the victory of digital projection brought me unexpected benefits. When the Blu-ray version of "Telephone Murder" was released in 2012, I realized that I needed to upgrade, so we bought a cheap TV and Blu-ray player. Now our 3D collection is further expanded. In addition to some Hong Kong films, there are also works like "Invincible Destruction King", "Gravity" and "Pig Head Going on the Street 3". The cost of 3D discs is sometimes very low, and you may need a larger screen than our display in order to experience the effect of watching the big screen. However, we can at least study a director's use of 3D materials on a frame-by-frame basis.
Therefore, for those fans who are unable to watch "Goodbye Language" in the theater and have 3D TV, there is a news that may be exciting: Chino Robb will release a 3D version of "Goodbye Language" on CD.
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