Sauve Qui Peut (La Vie)

Jean-Luc Godard - 1980
This film is really pretty brutal. A world marked by power and violence, constantly. Going to the countryside marks an idiotic, naive retreat; there is not going back to 'zero', an extension of Godard's thinking. And staying in town leaves one compromised, of course, subject to the brutality of making a film (the prostitute's image and sound put together), and pretty blatant stuff about child abuse. The crossing of street footage with this is especially disquieting. That is what the disjunction of sound and image seems to work at here, largely.
Notice, also, how later Godard's spectacular images are often due to saturated, let me say strong colours, in very strong natural light (dark interiors). There are the industrial carparks, but also often Southern European direct sunlight.
And we have the character of M. Godard. Why make a film? Because one is terrified of doing nothing. There is a real condemnation of the countryside militancy here, working on its own equally fantastic and brutal power games. Everything seems soiled.
And yet, I would regard this as in many ways one of Godard's most sentimental films. Sentimental, yes, but not tragic. What is slow motion? It is of life continuing, being unable to stop, even when one tries to freeze it, to look around. It is the ability to see life, see it more clearly, yet it is not a fantastic still, because it continues to move, that is the damn thing about it. Then the train or the bus rushes past (a women's whisper, says the unseen Duras) life flies over, but the effect has been thrown. Even the end is tough, the inability to feel la tendresse; but we are left with a modern tragedy, which isn't even a tragedy.