La Chinoise

Godard has a penchant for spouting off half baked ideas, something that often aggravates me, yet here the film is pretty much nothing but a group of people exploring those ideas and I found it to be incredibly revelatory. Because the film contains actual discussions, differing viewpoints on Marxism, avowed hypocrisies, artificial divisions and more, it becomes an insightful study into the philosophy and the thought processes of some of its proponents. Great ending too.

Godard'ın sosyalizm hakkında bir fikir sunmaması hoşuma gitmedi. Zıt sosyalist tabanlı gençleri bulup tartıştıralım ve suya sabuna dokunmayalım gibi olmuş. Trendeki elemanın ise Godard'ın iç sesi olduğunu söyleyebilirim. Zaten açık ara en iyi kısım da orasıydı. 77-80 verip favori listeme de atabilirim ancak biraz filmi kafamda toplamam gerek.

i'll mention the bits i found better than average: the mao-mao song was fun, the conversation on the train was intense and critical (and the best part of the movie by far), and that which followed the train was mostly okay. otherwise filled with blandly presented didactics. the idea of the young petit bourgeois naively exploring revolutionary marxism is something that could be great, but it just wasn't bold or transparent enough.

Smart, biting, and visually striking. Godard at his best.

The watermark between Godard's good period as an innovating and interesting filmmaker and between his descent ever since into politically blind, mostly pointless, meandering essay-films.

rewatch necessary

Possibly the best essay in existence on the dilemmas confronting The Left in the middle 1960s. It's a loving satire of the revolutionary students who would hit the headlines in 1968, and transform the Left forever.

Had you bet me that there's a love story to the Little Red Book as a 100 minute movie, I'd have said no way. So I lost that bet. And I lost 100 minutes. I'm sure I'm missing something in the translation (even that "maho maho" song sounded wrong). The colors were nice, though.

"Comrades and friends. Today is current events. We see them daily at the movies. There's a false idea about current events at the movies. They say Lumiere invented current events. He made documentaries. But there was also Méliès, who made fiction. He was a dreamer filming fantasies. I think just the opposite."

seems prophetic

No doubt infected by the cult of Mao and fantasies of the Cultural Revolution (like many other French intellectuals), but this seems directed to the youth movement more than about them, as a warning: taking up Mao's idea of fighting on two fronts, Godard uses Dostoyevsky to point out the perpetual risk of becoming absurd, and uses Brecht to show that the question of political or revolutionary art is highly complex. A director struggling internally and externally to take steps on a long march.

Revisionism! Revisionism!

Suprisingly, it's the first Godard movie I have liked on my first try.

The scene on the train is excellent and to-the-point.

many films since have attempted this same sort of critique, perhaps influenced by this one, yet fail to measure up

utterly uninteresting nonesense.

Jokes of the communistic youth and the critique are actually really really great. The way how this film discusses with the events of the spring 68 even before it came is really baffling.

The defining moment occurs when Francis Jeanson, a supporter of the Algerian FLN, dismantles the cartoonish thinking of a young Parisian Maoist who wishes to commit violence FOR THE REVOLUTION. The central problem with her thinking, Jeanson points out, is that she doesn't have "the people" behind her. She only has 3 friends. Revolution with a capital R isn't something that's invented through an isolated act of violence. It requires a mass movement. Note: Boring at times, but a fun parody.

Plays out as a political statement more than anything, and that's fair coming from the film's setup and content.

Artistically this is one of Godard's best. Visually pleasing and overall very thought-provoking. The overtly political side of it is in parts entertaining and amusing but gets boring as it becomes the ultimate driving force of the film.

proto-hipster maoist hucre evi, ne guzel

85.000

Young people behaving badly. I remember liking this, but I think it might have been a little preachy and ridiculous.

As these pretentious didactic films from Godard go, this is one of the more tolerable. I may not give a fuck about the politics, but at least this is more coherent than, say, 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her. But still, for being a film about such heated sentiments, it's strangely flat and alienating. It's boring. Godard deprives the film of character, but I suppose he's more interested in making statements.

84.250

Oh, ma belle Wiazemsky. If this film was nothing but the closeups of her, it would be 96-99

Marked by a playful sense of humor, unusual editing technique, and a bold palette of primary colors. But good lord, the rhetoric. People constantly spewing didactic slogans at you straight from a book in a monotone voice. The best part is that he's poking fun at these young, bourgeois Marxists. But this is also the worst part, because he himself is a wealthy, privileged guy playing Commie, sneering at everyone else. I liked this more than most of his political films, but that's not saying much.

The best part are the quotations and the song. Overall it's not very bad, but certainly disappointing to a degree.

It's shocking to see Godard bite the hand that admires him, but this is what makes the movie relevant and timeless.

'Le napalm coule et moi je roule MAO MAO!'

Difficult even by usual Godard standards, bordering interminable at times. However strangely impressive at the same time. An endurance test, but a very, very smart one.

Godard's celebration of the "beauties of capitalism" is hard to stomach, but it's not nearly as morally repelling as his fierce support of the Vietnam War. There's only so much right-wing propaganda one can take.

I may have been too hard on this. There's some captivating areas, and even some really fun ones, but you will have to take the usual helping of annoying Godard tactics that seems to have taken over his late 60s work.

Good Movie

Visually good. Some interesting quotes. But it's damn boring most of the time, and I didn't get if he was supporting terrorism or not.

Claude Channes chorus line for the films theme song: "Maooo, Maoo..." Guess, what the film is about?

Em honra do maio de 68 filme #2. Filme citado por Wiazemsky em Un an après #1. Filme conhecido por ter iniciado a crise de meia idade do Godard e preconizado maio de 68, não é um dos meus preferidos dessa fase que se inicia justamente por ser mais didático do que o cinema precisa. DVD Versátil O Cinema de Jean-Luc Godard.