Filme Socialismo

Film socialisme (2010)

BOMB (out of 4)

How does one go about explaining Jean-Luc Godard's FILM SOCIALISME? I guess you could say that the director just throws at us various film clips. Some take place on a ship. Some take place in Egypt. Some just seem to be random shots of people walking around. Some are film in beautiful HD while others are filmed on what appears to be a very old cell phone. The subtitles are often full of mistakes. It could be that the words are put together to where it's hard to read them. It could be that the subtitles aren't really telling us what the characters are saying. Was there a point to this madness? I think there are two possibilities. One is that Godard wanted to drive people to suicide so he made this film. The other theory of mine is that he wanted to make a film so horrid that his followers would still rave about how great it was. Either way this here is a pretty worthless film and it's not that it's horrible because of a horrible filmmaker. No, it's horrible because the filmmaker knows he's making something that is nothing but a waste of time. The reason Godard does this is beyond me but sitting through this film is quite unpleasant and it makes one realize that this film is so bad that you couldn't even recommend it to those who love bad movies. I'm not going to lie and say Godard is one of my favorite filmmakers because he isn't. There have been highly respected films of his (like ALPHAVILLE) that I simply hated. With that said, I could see why some would be drawn to it. With this movie it's just pure garbage and I must admit that I find it funny reading so many reviews that call this a piece of art and one of the greatest films of the decade. Reading Roger Ebert's review states that Godard showed this film in a four-minute version by playing it with the fast-forward button on high. This here might have been the greatest idea the director ever had.