My thoughts about movies and TV shows I've been watching

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Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Why not to watch Godard's Every Man for Himself

I've watched all but the alst 10 minutes of Godard's 1980 film, Every Man for Himself (Sauve Qui Peut), and probably won't watch the final segment, "thanks" to the Filmstruck decision to end its services (which has probably led to thousands of subscribers jamming the streaming service yesterday - I was unable to connect), but that's no great loss. This movie at one time drew a lot of attention as the "rebirth" of Godard's career, and it still may draw attention in that one of the stars is a young and beautiful Isabelle Hupert - but really the film today seems sadly dated (jammed up with postmodern trickery, such as disconnected narrative strands, actors cast in roles using their actual first names, a lead character called Godard, which I don't think is Godard himself but who knows?, I'll look it up)and by today's measures even offensive. Godard was and still is a radical progressive, and part of what he wants to document here I think is the oppression of women, but in doing so he comes dangerously close, too close, to exploitation himself: Isabelle, for example, plays a high-end prostitute, which actually has the effect of glorifying the profession, and in one long segment she and another woman are put in various humiliating postures by the man who hires them; the scene verges on humor at few points, as the various participants, on the patron's orders, make a chorus of grunting and gasping noises - but it we take this kind of scene serious at all, and there are others across this film, the effect is one of treating a really nasty and horrible guy with benign neglect or even sympathy. Other strands of the film make no sense to me at all, including a painful scene in which a girls' soccer coach expresses to the dad of one of his players he desires to have sex with the teenage players - and dad nods dispassionately. Come on! This is not the world we live in, even in 1980, even in France. There may be some lame attempts to ascribe these bizarre attitudes as the result of living in a capitalist society, etc. - but to me those are cheap assertions, unfounded and not validated. Maybe I'm missing something, maybe I'm missing the whole point, but to me it's a film gone awry that scores political points in unsubtle ways while missing the obvious.

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