By 1993, cinema had become a language unto itself; it was a language that was made up of not only words, but also sounds and images. As cinema history continues, the language has expanded time after time due to the talents and experiments of master filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard. All throughout his vast, decade spanning career, Godard has made film upon film, and with each decade of Godard that passes by, the more radical his style becomes. If ever there was a filmmaker that I could say took the cinematic language to Joycean heights, that filmmaker is, without question, Godard. With "Oh, Woe Is Me", Godard practically makes the cinematic equivalent of James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" by crafting a masterpiece that works as a perplexing jigsaw puzzle, one injected with all kinds of clever jokes as well as sections of poetic beauty.
If one digs deep enough into my history of reviews, they will discover that often I use various terms over and over again to describe movies that I love, and one of the terms I have stumbled upon a seemingly ridiculous multitude of times is "poetic". I have labeled many of Godard's films as "cinematic poetry", and such a term may only mildly fit some of his finest work; however, few of Godard's films fit this phrase as well as this one. If one could translate the language of poetry to that of the cinematic language, the result would directly resemble many of Godard's later films, in particular "Oh, Woe Is Me". Certain sequences reached a height of starkly poetic emotion that I could hardly contain myself. I nearly cried as some of the most beautiful images and words were shown and spoken before my tearful eyes. For me, this was a damagingly powerful film watching experience, even when I had no damn clue what was even happening.
Along with exploring much poetic ground, "Oh, Woe Is Me" also covers deep philosophical questions about love and reunion and personality and death and life and mortality and so on. Godard throws around such essential themes like a careless baseball player, the main difference being that Godard is not careless (and I do not think he is highly athletic either, plus, isn't baseball mainly just an American thing? Do they have it in other countries? I don't travel a lot, so...), instead he is casual. He is able to toss so many fiercely important questions into an eighty minute long art film that it soon comes across as highly necessary for one to watch films such as this a few times. Not to mention, various sequences are made disorienting due to the overlapping dialogue, much of which happens with characters that are anonymous and off camera (much of the time these characters are absent from the setting the camera is mounted in, as well).
Although Godard seems to primarily function as a poet and philosopher in films such as these, he still does not entirely lose the essential label of the "entertainer". Without the factor of enjoyment being at least somewhat mixed into films such as these, there is little reason to watch them, and, luckily, Godard's films are some of the most entertaining of all time! Thankfully, despite the story's often heavy subject matter, in "Oh, Woe Is Me" Godard refuses to shy away from his unique sense of humor. Jokes are casually tossed in a familiar manner to the philosophical musings that are sprinkled throughout the densely layered masterpiece. Sight gags occasionally pop with jest, while witty dialogue and the occasional sly wordplay also merge with the film's tones of magic realism, melancholic romance, mythological fantasy, dark philosophical drama, avant garde cine-puzzle, and surrealist poetry. At one point in the film, an offscreen voice even references the film's bending of tragedy and comedy, and then the enigmatic voice goes on to state that they cannot even tell which is which anymore.
While Godard is certainly not the filmmaker flavor for everyone, mainly due to his strong and radical experimentation that often pushes the boundaries of the cinematic artform, his works must still be acknowledged as some of the most daring, provocative, strange, and unique in all of cinema's history and,despite its lack of fame and acclaim, "Oh, Woe Is Me" may very well be among his absolute finest efforts!
