Film socialisme

Jean-Luc Godard - 2010
The end of discourses, even challneging the supremacy of the text; of course whatever I say here is an imitation, that can be contradicted. Godard has a stunning appetite for destruction, anything that can be destroyed will be. But that doesn't mean its not beautiful.
The first part on the boat again uses that hard late Godardian lighting. Also some deep, deep blues and the still camera. People captured on it, maybe looking. Everyone has images, they are everywhere, which means cinema is dead. Images for the sake of images are dead. Tracking shots, creating emotion through images, goes. All we have left are those incredible movements across the sea, 'tracks' past the waves. This section is remarkably pessimistic. Tjis might just be hell; all images degraded. It is the floating shift of dead Europe, the different methods of filming mean a thousand views, but only one thing, that boat moving. All is incredibly ugly, as what was beautiful, the age of cinema, is now used for the most vile reasons. But Godard has created the first, maybe, film that is dialectical in its images, not just in the descriptions of its images. Crahing wind on the soundtrack, crappy images, it smashes against each other, and it is beautiful, deliriously so, never self-consciously so, as we realise the second we had of that was false. The beauty is truly in the montage; the Soviet's dream.
From this incredible pessimism we have, the move from the abstract vote of a dead Europe (always an abstract dream of some artist) to the personal (take THAT, Malick). Hard light, less visceral sound and image, contemplation. Yet it, of course, can't help but reflect the totality. Understanding each other. Tell television to piss off. Massive optimism, the children, the child in the red t-shirt finding himself able to conduct. We realise we have to listen to music again, though compromised, art is damn well there. Always the chance to move back to zero, but what is zero? Sublime moments with the Renoir painting. I want to learn more, so many words, return, learn how to read; this is optimism, the sheer enthusiasm and energy, but mediated by pessimism, to see the world. Ypu don't need to feel stupid; just ready, and willing.
And the essay of the end. Some clear political messages; common ground. Thinking in images. Godard pretty much gives a history of the twentieth century. The past as a collection of texts that are oddly unreal, modern attempts to read them are imitations. Images everywhere.
This is more intelligent, maximalist, truly beautiful, than pretty much anything else.