The life and death of Jean-Luc Godard: in recent years he became a recluse
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He kept silent, but made a radical movie
On September 13, in Switzerland, at the age of 92, Jean-Luc Godard died – the last great director of our time, an eternally young rebel and a representative of the French New Wave, who made the films Breathless, The Chinese Woman, Mad Pierrot, “Male-female”, “Name: Carmen”, more than a hundred paintings in total. He wasn’t sick, just tired and opted for euthanasia. This was reported by the relatives of the director. His latest films, Goodbye Speech 3D and The Book of Images, participated in 2014 and 2018 at the Cannes Film Festival at a time when Godard had already become a recluse and finally moved to his mother’s homeland in Switzerland.
Jean-Luc Godard spent the last years of his life in a small town between Lausanne and Geneva on the shores of Lake Geneva, where he could easily be found in a local bar, on the street while walking. Tourists and moviegoers rushed there for the sake of it. And Godard did not like intrusions into his life. He did not go to festivals, while continuing to make films. He despised Cannes, any movie fuss. In 2011, he refused to travel for the Oscar, awarded to him for his contribution to world cinema. Its presentation was preceded by a heated public discussion. Then Godard’s statements of different years were shaken up, accusing the classic of anti-Semitism. And he always went across the common line. In 2018, from his Swiss far away, he called on the Cannes Film Festival and the entire Western world to show kindness towards Moscow, quoted Dostoevsky’s words about mercy, and said that there is something in Russia that touches him.
Godard was not given rest even in seclusion. The most amazing story is connected with the French director Michel Hazanavicius, who wrote a letter to the master that he was starting to shoot a film where the master himself would become the main character in his younger years. Chazanavicius stipulated that it would be Godard as he imagines him, and not a documentary narrative. In response, the master asked to send him a script, after which silence reigned. When the picture was ready, Hazanavicius again turned to Godard in order to show it. Again, the answer is silence. Director Philippe Garrel, the father of Louis Garrel, who played the title role, then told Hazanavicius: “Shooting about Godard is like asking a violent Catholic to play Jesus.”
In 2017, Grozny was shown in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Later it was released in the Russian box office under the name “Young Godard”. Jean-Luc Godard was then 86 years old. The picture is based on the autobiographical book “A Year Later” by Godard’s second wife, an actress with Russian roots, Ann Vyazemsky, who came from the princely family of Vyazemsky on her father’s side, granddaughter of the French writer Francois Mauriac on her mother’s side. They met Godard in the 60s, lived for 12 years, worked on six films, including The Chinese Woman and The Wind from the East. Anne later received the Grand Prize of the French Academy for her novel A Handful of People dedicated to the Russian Revolution, and in 2017 she died in Paris after cancer at the age of 70. In the film, Godard appears naked in the most explicit scenes imaginable.
Relatively recently, the team of Fyodor Bondarchuk, who started the project “Bondarchuk. Battle” to the 100th anniversary of the birth of Sergei Bondarchuk, also sent a messenger with a letter to Godard with an offer to take part in the film. In response, the master sent a link to his monologue about cinema. It would seem, why did they turn to him at all? The fact is that at the age of 87, the classic filmmaker shot the “Book of Images” — an installation from frames of his own and other people’s paintings, where he used fragments from Bondarchuk’s “War and Peace”. It was Godard’s freest and wildest film at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. He could afford everything. Interestingly, until the last days he remained a radical, as in the days of his youth. His penultimate film Goodbye Speech, taken at the age of 84, was made in 3D, and the audience had to close the left eye, then the right eye for additional effect.
Jean-Luc Godard was born in 1930 in Paris to a doctor’s family. His mother belonged to a family of Swiss bankers. From the age of 4, the future director lived in Nyon, Switzerland, and in the 1940s he studied in Paris, where he entered the Sorbonne. In France, he became interested in cinema, considered it no less important than bread, saying that thanks to him he discovered the whole world. Godard started out as a film critic. Together with other future directors – Eric Romer and Jacques Rivette – he founded a film magazine, wrote reviews, worked as an editor in the Caye du Cinema magazine. He did not change his first film profession, having released the film anthology “History of Cinema” in the 90s. And in the 60s he became a member of the Dziga Vertov group, adhered to the principles of socialism. By the way, one of his last paintings was called “Film-Socialism”.
Only after shooting a few short films, including documentaries, Godard came to the big cinema. In 1960, his first film, Breathless, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, was released. He wrote the script with François Truffaut just before the start of the shooting day. Dialogues were born right on the set. It was a film that changed the course of cinema, marking the beginning of the French New Wave. The picture received the Silver Bear at the Berlinale for directing, but this is a drop in comparison with what he has become for the history of world cinema. What is happening on the screen is perceived as a documentary, a captured moment, the life of the streets, and not a staged movie. The picture was perceived as a manifesto of the 60s, picking up the idea of gender equality and freedom as such – from everything that can be imagined. So Godard remained for us forever, no matter what later happened, no matter what principles he professed, outraging public peace.
Newspaper headline:
Godard died, keeping silent
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