Re Lear

1998 Godard
Certainly the work of his we’ve got the most out of from the 80’s
A film fascinated with the close-up; mixture of straight, angled and side close ups, on the often white faces
Affecting, lack of shadow on the ‘real’ faces, compared to the montage of artworks
Whiteness throughout; against an aqua sea, genuinely painterly in an otherworldy manner
Use of long shots at times (always long takes), creating that Godardian absurd tableau, with its neat pans, on this occasion often from a low level
Mixture of levels this film works at; the sound at once is with the image, often in monolohues, but drifts away to tell its own story, or to overlay and overdetermine (difficult questions of sound/image identity/primacy). Very much helped for us by being in English...
At once we do have the ‘Lear’ story, told in a nearly linear manner, as though trying to burst through the (deeply affecting) lines that keep breaking through at the ‘wrong’ time
This perfect piece of classic narrative almost untellable; trying to be rewritten (after nuclear disaster?)
Attempt to discover how to write something worthwhile; directly commented on at times
This piece is also frequently very funny, especially in Godard’s self-portrait (who probably has some of the weaker scenes too, but is still riotous)
The kind of deep sadness and, while at once with the intensity and creativity of pretty much the rest of cinema put together, the inability to act that we also saw in ‘L’Elogie Par L’Amour’
Not completely flawless (few not great scenes), but a work that can shift into the spectacular. Hopefully a guide for becoming more involved with Godard’s later work, and in itself a terrific artwork.