I became a Godard fan in film school when a class showed Weekend. It was so meta with breaking the fourth wall I was on board. Jean-Luc Godard’s prolific filmography can be hit and miss, but I’m always open to watching one for another potential Weekend.
King Lear had me from the beginning when he opens with a phone call from producer Menahem Golem. King Lear could be a precursor to Adaptation making Godard, and briefly Norman Mailer, characters adapting King Lear.
I have no greater understanding of Shakespeare at the end of this, but I got my jones for Godard messing with the format.
The film contains beautiful images on Blu-ray. The man knew how to use a camera photographing rocky shores and waves, closeups of a flower and black voids with Godard himself interacting with the film.
New interviews with Molly Ringwald, Peter Sellars and biographer Richard Brody confirm Godard’s technique was as free-form as it appears. Great anecdotes though.
The Cannes press conference takes me back to what if I’d been a journalist in 1987. I was 10 and another decade away from film school appreciation of Godard.
It is audio only and translated from French but he actually answers questions, more than Paul Thomas Anderson did in 2002. His thoughts on not reading the play and working with Cannon revealed his intentions with avant-garde cinema and ties into his previous films and others at that year’s festival.
And he’s funny.