Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
helas pour moi, June 15, 2005
Godard begins by filming, searching, observing things, movements, colors, people, gestures, dialogues, filming a man, filming a woman, a bicycle, a lake, the world around him, and then something appears: there is a myth from long ago, a god, the question of love, the film begins. In a world where the history of civilization has been the history of man trying to incarnate god, Godard shows us a god taking the place of a man and raises questions about the origin of love, how can we truly consider love asks Godard, if our conceptions about it are purely physical? Even the film itself is proof of this, Godard has Depardieu as Simon, the man, but once the man leaves and the god enters, it is still Depardieu we see, so how can we truly determine something if we haven't yet learned how to understand it? Questions, mystery as cinema said Godard, the image and the `void beside it' that he would speak of in Notre Musique. And with the image comes, once again, the idea of cinema, and the mystery of a representation, and our entire way of thinking things. In Helas Pour Moi as in all of his recent works Godard has the wisdom to let the cinema speak for itself, to believe so much in the power of his images that they should be able to provide a dialogue, the sole dialogue, the only source of communication between the Man and the God.
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6 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Just like a film", February 8, 2000
Answer: Nobody can tell and nobody gives a damn. Images and sounds of "Helas pour moi" didn't receive a warm audience in mexican cinemas but rather giggles and misunderstanding. But, is there something really to understand about Godard's film? The plot is an excuse to explore the director's familiar manias about the nature of movies. Always, as in "Pierrot le fou", we are not in front of the conventional film, but in front of some kind of puzzle that the viewer must solve in his own. Cinema isn't the social event that it appears to be when confronted with a personal silence, with an interrogation. What did it mean? Warm and graceful. Godard's film is an entertaining intellectual offering that doesn't insist on being understood (as with ready to take classics like "Barton Fink", "Reservoir Dogs" and recent David Lynch failures) but on, simply, being watched. Cinema is a dead word. That is why Godard said to think in terms of sounds and images. The result: an interrogation, but in a quiet, inspired manner. It's a pleasure to watch a film that isn't uncomfortable on being simply... a film.
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3 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
De la difficulté de faire une image (a review in french), June 23, 2000
"Hélas pour moi" est un mauvais film, Godard lui-même le reconnaît. Mais enfin, comment le critiquer, avoir les mots face à lui et face aux autres, qui éjaculent à son simple nom. Peut-être juste une image, une voix et une posture. Celle du Dieu godardien, qui rappelle les faux dieux du film et de la série "Stargate": cette même façon de parler, d'avoir un cancer de la gorge. Alors que dire, comment être constructif: comparer, encore et toujours, se dire surtout que Godard n'a pas fait que des bons films, qu'il a même fait quelques navets -sans doute une foi déclinante dans le cinéma, quand le sujet est moins bon. Conclusion: un des meilleurs critiques français, Louis Skorecki, a écrit à propos de "Je vous salue Marie", que la vierge de Godard n'était pas assez vierge, pas assez juive. C'est exactement la situation du Dieu de "Hélas pour moi": pas assez juif et trop allemand.
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