Film Socialisme

Jean-Luc Godard - 2010
Godard doesn't really ram us with literary ideas; there is certainly a lot, a thousand more times thinking in languga than other films, but it isn't a complete overload, trying to confuse one at all. Much of it is simply looking at the image, recognising that the figure is listening to music.
The montage is, also, not non-sequiter; there is an associative train of thought, obviously very loose, prone to digressions (the wonderful little look at Egypt, in silence, for example, the Odessa Steps sequence), but it is often quite clearly there. Why do we follow the editor's train of thought? Or are we really following our own, making connections?
And one more technical point; Godard manipulates focus a lot, using it quite shallow at times (along with at others video's deep capacity) to imbue his images.
The first half here seemed to me less straightforward mocking, much more complicit in the hell it presents. Yeah, its hateful, but mockery isn't really the point; this is what we are. The second section may have given me the most this time around. Tender, absolutely full of ideas, shot in a coldly elegiac way, if that is possible. The final section, when we now know images are lost, texts but imitations, had the few single moments (not whole parts, which is alot) that really brought the house down. Godard is clearly uncomfortable with cinema's ability to have these great emotional, intellectual moments, but he gets away with one in particular- when I say 'get away' it usually means they haven't really, but here it does- where a smile destroys the universe, a smile not even seen. Montage, cinema, mis-en-scene. This is a film. Because it's not a thing. But it is a thing (Les Choses Comme Ca).