Monthly Film Challenge Part 5: La Chinoise (1967)

La Chinoise is a 1967 film made by Jean-Luc Godard at the beginning of his political phase. It is commonly considered a classic because of its apparent prophetic nature since it is supposed to have predicted the May 1968 student revolt in Paris. It is commonly, and too easily, dismissed as socialist propaganda, ineffective because of the near incomprehension of its artistic sensibilities. There is no real plot, the film jumps between dramatic scenes, political speeches, intertitles, images and a variety of Brechtian devices intended to confuse the audience, force them out of their comfort zone of passive watching and actually engage with the film’s debate. Hence the key line comes at the beginning: “A film in the making.” As much as this may suggest that the film is an improvisation – Godard was never one for extensive planning – it also suggest that the film begins on screen but finishes inside the active viewer’s mind, where opinions are formed and the film’s message is finally chosen.

In this sense, the second key line in the film comes later, in a speech by Kirilov (Lex de Bruijn): “We demand the unity of politics and art. The unity of content and form…Works lacking artistic value, no matter how politically advanced are ineffective. In literature and in art we must fight on two fronts.” Here, Godard explains his methodology – a political film is only effective if it marries its message with revolutionary aesthetics. A truly political film is a film that cannot be used by the marketplace dominated by Hollywood, which promotes passivity and uncritical identification. The ways of viewing a political film must be different from the ways of viewing Hollywood films - later Godard would reject the means of production and exhibition of mainstream cinema entirely, making esoteric, homemade films on video. As an example of a political film usurped by Hollywood, Godard would point to the acclaimed The Battle of Algiers – a fantastic faux-documentary about the Algerian war, which shows the violence on both sides. Though the film is certainly educational, the viewer might leave without their opinions changed, much less radically altered, since the film can be viewed, or consumed, just like any other less politically-orientated Hollywood blockbuster. A more recent example might be Tarantino’s latest, Django Unchained. Though Tarantino uses the horrors of slavery as a backdrop, the audience will get less of an impression of the evil of slavery, their outrage softened by a busy plot, likable characters and a happy ending.

The reason this introduction is so long is because La Chinoise is the kind of film that needs to be approached with an awareness of certain ideas already in place. A viewer must be ready for the film in a way that they don’t have to prepare for a Hollywood blockbuster – which, too often, you don’t even have to pay attention to. It is not really an emotional film; any thrills one might get from it are purely those of ideas. Similarly, the film does not provide any answers, instead insisting that one comes up with one’s own. The viewer has to engage with the film, actively watch and deconstruct and think about the film. The joy of La Chinoise, or any film like it, and possibly the reason why some many would dismiss it, claiming incomprehension, is that it is a film that is alive with invention. Godard’s love of the medium comes through via the range of aesthetic devices that he includes, but also because of his willingness to question our very definition of what constitutes a film. To dismiss La Chinoise as mere propaganda, as a result, is to deny that film can be more than what Hollywood thinks it should be.

La Chinoise takes its slight plot from Dostoevsky’s fantastic novel “Demons”, in which five amateur revolutionaries fill themselves with political dogma, chose an enemy and murder him. Dostoevsky’s target was the growing idea of nihilism; Godard’s, tackled much more ambiguously, is Maoism, best represented by Mao Tse-tung’s “Little Red Book.” La Chinoise follows five students, lead by Veronique (Anne Wiazemsky, then Godard’s wife), as they live in an empty apartment during the summer holidays, trying to apply Maoist teachings to their lives and possibly create the conditions to start a revolution. The film is divided into three movements. The first deals with the education of the students, showing them reading, attending lectures and being interviewed by Godard himself on their beliefs. The second movement is the shortest and deals with arguments about the applications of the theory that the students have now taken on board. Some advocate a new form of political art – providing the film’s manifesto – whilst others speak of the need for violence. The final movement is, hence, their plan of action once terrorist activity is decided upon.

As a film about left-wing terrorism, La Chinoise is seem rather sinister, or at least highly naïve, to some. However, Godard is a lot less didactic as he may initially appear. He is open to all of the divergent opinions within the group and can even be quite critical. Early in the film, we hear Veronique reciting some political dictum to the amusement of her boyfriend Guillaume (Jean Pierre Léaud, the child actor from The 400 Blows) – his later extremism suggesting a form of indoctrination or, simply, insincerity. Perhaps. Godard does not wish to make anything too easy for his audience, preferring instead that they listen to each of the characters as they present their arguments, then decide for themselves. The most sympathetic character is Henri (Michel Semeniako), but then he is the least hard-line and the one who promotes peaceful co-existence. He is called a reactionary and expelled from the group. Yvonne (Juliet Berto) is the working class member of the group and, despite the group’s supposed socialist values, she is frequently seen tidying up around them. We also frequently see her education – or, if you want, indoctrination - Berto’s performance moving from wide-eyed innocence to unblinking devotion to the cause. Most ambiguous of all, and possibly the best scene in the film, is Veronique’s encounter with Francis Jeanson, a real-life revolutionary. They meet on a train and discuss her right to commit terrorist acts, Godard filming the conversation from a fixed position, the frame balanced between Veronique and Jeanson – in other words, neutral. Here, Godard’s key desire comes to fruition. We sit and listen to the points being made by both characters, without sympathetic or biased editing or camerawork, and then, at its conclusion, make up our own minds.

La Chinoise is very much a true essay film, with imagery and text inserted into the onscreen action just as one would place a citation in a thesis. It is politically charged cinema, thoroughly in love with dialectical thinking and committed to engaging with an audience. La Chinoise does not wish to educate, or even convince; it merely wishes to communicate. Its key flaw may be that it is too daunting for most viewers, especially now that it is somewhat dated, but it remains a unique form of cinema that cannot be ignored by anyone who is truly interested in what cinema can do.

So give it a go and tell us what you think.

Next month: The Tree of Life

La Jetee

Un Chien Andalou

The Seventh Continent

F For Fake

REVIEW: Rocky Road To Dublin (1968)

  Rocky Road To Dublin is a hard-hitting documentary about post-revolution Ireland and its drawbacks. Made in 1967 by journalist Peter Lennon and shot by famed French New Wave cinematographer Raoul Coutard, the film was deeply controversial in Ireland. It played better in other countries, such as France, where it was selected for the Cannes film festival. It was one of the few films to play at Cannes in 1968 before Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Lelouch broke in and closed the festival in order to show solidarity for the events in France at that time. The film went on to play in the Sorbonne and was adopted by the rebelling students. It gained a reputation around Europe and in America. Despite all of this, it was virtually forgotten in Ireland for over a quarter of a century.

  The documentary is a loose film essay, not unlike some of Jean-Luc Godard’s work of the same period, though without the taste for obfuscation. With a few interviews and musical interludes and a lot of observational style camerawork, the film paints a portrait of 1960’s Ireland, one that, as the film posits, shows a country caught by its own revolutionary heroes and clergy. The film looks at and often criticizes the control of the clergy in government, in the classroom and in the bedroom, the depoliticised universities and the misplaced nationalistic fervour of the GAA. At one moment, a list is shown, naming all the writers that have had work banned in Ireland, which looks instead like a list of some of the world’s best known writers such as Hemingway, Gide, Salinger, Capote, Orwell, Wells and Irish writers such as Beckett, Shaw, O’Connor and Behan. The stagnancy of post-revolution Ireland is addressed, with Irish politician and academic Conor Cruise O'Brien critical of Ireland’s following American foreign policy instead of carving a place for themselves on the world stage like Sweden. Similarly, film director John Huston reflects on the fact that an Irish film made by the Irsh would be more effective than a foreign film using Irish locations in establishing a true Irish cinema, then practically non-existant.

  Despite being a tough critical essay on where Ireland has gone since the revolution, the film is rather affectionate. Lennon commentates frequently, positioning the film within his own political pre-occupations, but the film is also remarkably balanced. Towards the film’s end, we return to Professor Liam Ó Briain, a member of the censorship board, following a previous interview in which Ó Briain’s religious beliefs are revealed and addressed critically. He holds himself up as maintaining the sanctity of Ireland and the church in the face of philosophical and scientific developments. In this second interview at the film’s conclusion, however, Lennon reveals Ó Briain’s awareness that a new Ireland is coming and that there is nothing he can do about it. He wishes it well, blithely aware that he will never see it (he died in 1974) and Lennon follows this with a Herzogian moment in which Ó Briain sits quietly and the camera watches him in close up with respect, if not affection. The film also follows a day in the life of Father Michael Cleary, a modern priest, who sings secular songs and emphasises the more helpful side of the Catholic Church. A scene in which Cleary converses with three gravediggers is very funny and resembles the earthy and often hilarious barroom banter scenes of Ken Loach.

  The film is a fascinating insight into Ireland in the 1960s, but it is also of interest of a piece of political film. Lennon’s commentary is informed by the question of what do you do with a revolution once you have got it. His answer may not be very comforting as the film points to the continued domination of the bourgeoisie and the clergy, while writer Seán Ó Faoláin wonders what those that died during and after the 1916 Easter Rising would think of the Ireland of the 1960s. The film focusses on the activities of the Irish landed gentry and looks at the story of the Abbey Theatre and of the Catholic Church’s campaign against a socialist Ireland. As the film progresses, it offers many telling examples of a revolution betrayed.

  Rocky Road To Dublin is a rather convincing political cinematic essay and a fascinating portrait of an Ireland that barely exists today, one that is searching for its own place in the world. Far from the existentialist and hate-mongering diatribe that it was characterized as during its stalled release, the film is deeply affectionate and lyrical, though it is hardly a typical tourist’s idea of Ireland. It also stands as one of the earliest and most important contributions to Irish cinema.

REVIEW: The Angels' Share (2012)

 

  The Angels’ Share is the latest of Ken Loach’s Scottish set films and his tenth collaboration with writer Paul Laverty. Loach is a filmmaker who has proven to be one of the most prolific and consistent advocates of political cinema. Though The Angels’ Share is, for the most part, a light work, in the vein of 2009’s enjoyable Looking For Eric, it does retain a political value.

  The film follows Robbie Emerson (Paul Brannigan) as he narrowly avoids a prison sentence for assault. Instead given 300 hours of community service, he ultimately falls under the wing of Harry (John Henshaw), who heads the community service team to which Robbie has been assigned. Robbie is desperate to start over with his girlfriend and his recently born child, though an old feud and a lack of opportunities threaten to keep Robbie stuck in a violent and dangerous rut.

  The Angels’ Share is best summed up as a comedy-parable about using your resilience and creativity to dig yourself out of the hole of youth unemployment and gang culture. It bares comparison to Loach’s similar, though much darker, classic Kes in its story of a young man’s attempts to escape his bleak present and even bleaker future via a newfound talent, Robbie’s being a surprisingly sensitive talent for expensive whisky. The film is often disturbing. Loach’s films never shy away from the ugly side of whatever world he is portraying and there are many uncomfortable and even harrowing scenes, particularly a moving scene in which Robbie is faced with a former victim. Ultimately, however, the film is a passionate and honest portrayal of the lives and experiences of those who are too often marginalized in our society. However, Loach’s adherence to realism and to the presentation of a political message does not preclude a strong sense of humour.

  Most of Loach’s films are often very funny and, though it steps very close to farce at some points, The Angels’ Share is primarily an ensemble comedy. Many of the characters exist primarily as comic fools, though they are never straitjacketed into one-note characterizations. The film brilliantly maintains a mix of comedy and drama and will often move from one to the other shockingly quick. The most interesting example occurs in the courtroom sequence in the first few minutes of the film. Comedy is created through the juxtaposition of the character of the crimes committed with the highly formalized language used in the courtroom. A series of such crimes are given, though they suddenly stop being funny, catching the audience as they are ready to laugh and confronting them with the less comic side of life in inner city Glasgow.

  In comparison to Loach’s more angry works, of which his preceding film, Route Irish, was certainly a number, The Angels’ Share is slightly atypical – especially in the very surprising though tonally fitting use of that well-known hit by The Proclaimers. The jury is still out has to whether political cinema is more successful (if success is possible by any standard) harrowing and pessimistic or comic and optimistic, but The Angels’ Share, though unrealistic and throwaway at the level of narrative, is ultimately an engrossing and valuable film.

  Ken Loach has made greater films than The Angels’ Share, but it does counter the misleading impression that Loach’s cinema is dogmatic and depressing. As well as this, the film sees Loach continue with his preoccupation with those whom are too often misrepresented, if not totally ignored, in our society. The Angels’ Share might hopefully bring a new audience to the work of one of the most challenging and exciting of living filmmakers.

REVIEW: The Ides of March (2011)

  The Ides of March displays a sense of recent post-Obama disillusionment and largely deals with the loss of a young political advisor’s ideals and the impossibility of making worthwhile change in the current political system. It also pleasingly harks back to the brilliant The Best Man and Advise and Consent.

  Ryan Gosling plays Stephen Meyers, press secretary to Governor Mike Morris (played by George Clooney, who also directs), an apparently sincere Democratic and Obama surrogate.  Meyers believes that Morris is the best man to run the country, precisely because he is honest and committed to doing the right thing. However, as the race for a presidential nomination heats up, Meyers’ beliefs and ideals blow up in his face as he comes across dirty secrets and corrupt backroom deals.

  To the wary eye, trained on Armando Iannucci’s scathing and hilarious The Thick of It and its spin-off In The Loop, Meyers’ idealism seems entirely naïve and Gosling’s performance slightly unbelievable. The Ides of March initially seems like it might be a silly though sincere attempt to persuade a jaded audience that politics is good and that it works. Which is why it is really rather effective when it becomes a bleak movie about the impossibility of good coming from within the current system. Though it doesn’t go to the extremes of Iannucci, who can get a bit depressing at his most powerful, The Ides of March is surprisingly glum, especially for a Hollywood movie, and even has moments of wry satire. Unlike The Rum Diary, there is no third-act redemption to undercut the power of its critique.

  That said, it remains a Hollywood movie. The film is saddled with a few creaky plot manoeuvres and constantly threatens to wrong-foot itself, most awkwardly in the figure of Evan Rachel Wood. Her character becomes little more than a plot point after a rather good start, something the film’s odd conclusion seems to apologize for. At the film’s end, an intern is introduced with the aim of exposing their casual exploitation during a political campaign. This is an odd criticism in a film that deals with much more serious forms of corruption and much more so in a film that also exploits the intern to develop its convoluted plot.

  Another problem lies in the film’s rather disappointing move from sober political drama into a somewhat overblown political thriller. After a confident though befuddled beginning, Gosling reverts to The Driver and is given to brooding and walking down corridors with a stone face. The thriller elements are what threaten a descent into silliness, which, admittedly, the film does manage to largely avoid. However, it is hard to believe that politics can be this exciting and devious in the real world. Iannucci gets away with it because he uses exaggeration for the purposes of comedy. A seemingly realistic film like The Ides of March can’t help but look over the top if it exaggerates.

  It is a mark of a film having worked when, if it stumbles, you are genuinely worried for it. The Ides of March, despite its flaws, manages to create enough good will to see it through to the end. Though it may be unsure about what tone to take, it remains a surprisingly biting, if not angry, film with mostly great performances, especially Paul Giamatti and Philip Seymour Hoffman. As well as that, it has a point to make and, for once, it makes it well.