JLG/JLG: Self-Portrait in December

Director Jean-Luc Godard reflects in this movie about his place in film history, the interaction of film industry and film as art, as well as the act of creating art.

Stephen Holden describes the film as "fascinating but often impenetrable collages of densely packed images and poetic musings woven with wrenchingly beautiful fragments of classical music." Indeed, that is very much what this amounts to, a mixture of sounds and images, not necessarily in any real narrative form.

What is striking is how the film has a title suggesting it is Godard looking back on his career at the end of his life. And yet, he was only 64, which generally is not considered too terrible old. Those in the movie business often work much later. In fact, as now (2016), Godard is 85 and still very much alive, not to mention still actively making films. His role in the business is not quite finished.

Will you take seriously what is before you in the present moment or will you see it merely as fitting into the scheme of things?

The colors you see are just in your mind. You feel like you are looking through glass at the exterior world, but all the colors are just a result of a message from you optic nerve. Goddard is a dualist; he believes that there is an outward reality that corresponds to the inner representations. He vows to love that reality, to take it seriously. You do not invade Iraq when you take your present situation seriously. When you invade Iraq you are relating to your scheme of things; you would like to make some alterations in the scheme. That children will be frightened by your bombs seems insignificant in comparison to the grander scheme of thing, if it even crosses your mind.

The end of the movie corresponds to the reference to Being and Time near the beginning. We need to move beyond thinking about how we are judged by others (either as being up there or down there). The Dick Cheneys of the world would be trapped in this concern for THEM as they rearrange the scheme of things. This could be seen quite clearly in the first President Bush.

Our minds present us with 24 or so different still pictures every second. Our lives (apart from satori or nirvana) are like a flip book.

If I am all there in the present moment won't I end up on welfare? Don't I have to look out for number one? Godard will take his chances. This is not because there is something great about being natural, and it is not because there is something awful about being artificial. It is because he loves. And then when we care about something we build up a predisposition to care about the same sort of thing. At Republic 485d Plato illustrates this phenomenon by talking of channels in our souls. The more water goes down one channel and makes it deeper, the less water will flow down the other channels. Sainthood would come at the end of this process, but the key moments are at the beginning and in the subsequent reaffirmations. If you try to be pure in the present often enough (and with real passion, Kierkegaard would add) you'll end up with an inclination to be that way in the future. It will be easier once you've got the inclination. Then what other people think of you will not be such a deep channel. The real struggle is now.

This is not exactly the kind of film one would ever, ever, ever see in any multiplex on the planet- or for that matter in most of the art-house theaters. It's a home movie/essay/rumination/poetic ramble-on from the cranky crane of the French New Wave, Jean-Luc Godard, who filmed the bulk of this his Autoportrait in December in his home. We see him look over photos, write, pontificate about the disconnect of art in society, the nature of semantics, and so on and so on. Needless to say it isn't a complete waste of time from a filmmaker who's as equally talented and daring in his attacks on film style and method as he is a celluloid masturbating wild-man. I did find many of Godard's personally supervised camera set-ups, the tone of the shots, how long each one rests on himself in full ego-bound and ego-questioning glory, at least watchable and at best interesting in how there is some kind of form to the puzzle that Godard presents the audience.

And yet it is, of course, a lot of times impenetrable because of his fervent disavowal of film as something that should be in the slightest bit conventional. I don't mind the central idea behind this approach to film-making, certainly from someone as confident- or at worst arrogant- as the bad boy of French cinema. But try as I might, what one ends up with is still more frustration than anything that can be easily taken away from it. Long gone are the trips into satirizing genre or deconstructing the narrative (yet keeping it) with philosophical and poetic tangents often from books. There is something worthwhile going on in JLG/JLG, but your guess is as good as mine. May be a masterpiece to the most stuck-up film buffs (not that one needs to be, per-say, but I'd imagine mostly snobs who push aside all other conventional product as pure waste), yet there is a reason it's mostly in obscurity as opposed to one of the Criterion releases.

This was the movie I wish I had made. To watch it in a theater was quite an experience and I was so moved by it that I stayed seated and watched it for a second time. The movie is, as the title says, a self portrait. Images of places the author loves, music that moves him, pieces of films' dialogs, quotes, objects, all put together. It is like looking into one's soul through what he loves. I was lucky because I have a similar taste in literature, art, cinema and music, and overall the experience was one of self exploring. Otherwise I don't think I would have found it the least interesting. It is a film about the author himself, and should be regarded as a film and as an audio-visual self portrait.

A poet is a man who is a master of words. He uses them to express life in an artistic way, basically. A filmmaker is a man who seeks to express life artistically in a visual manner through certain techniques specific to film. There is a man, "A man, nothing but a man, no better than any other, but no other better than he" who is a double poet, a master of the words and a master of the moving images. His poetry is both literary and visual. His cinema is a double poetry. JLG/JLG Self-portrait of December made in 1995 is a work of double poetry. Jean Luc Godard is raising several questions about art, culture and life. He seeks his place in this world. It is not an autobiography but a self-portrait as he states. A new type of self-portrait which is like mixing a self-portrait by Van Gogh and a poem by Walt Whitman. I have the image of Van Gogh's blue tones peasant-like self -portraits with yellow straw-hat and Song of Myself by Walt Whitman. What is art after all? "Art is like fire: it lives from what it burns answers" Godard.

"Now, I have to sacrifice myself so that trough me the word "love" means something, so that love exists on earth."