Film buffs in Kerala will have their own personal favourites to pick from the extensive oeuvre of legendary French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard who passed away on Tuesday at the age of 91. But one enduring personal memory for all of them perhaps would be the image of him speaking directly to them through a video conference from his home at the opening ceremony of the 25th International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) in 2021.
The filmmaker, who famously refused to accept an honorary Oscar some years ago, made the appearance to accept the Lifetime Achievement award conferred on him by the IFFK.
Lighting up a cigar on screen, he thanked the IFFK for screening good and sensible films and expressed joy at the fact that five of his films are being screened too. “I am sorry for speaking in the tongue of the dominators (English)," he said, amid loud cheers.
Filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan, who received the award in his absence, remembered Godard as someone who rewrote the grammar of cinema.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had after presenting the award recollected the filmmaker’s part in raising voice against the Vietnam war, the attacks on Palestine and in lending support to the May 1968 protests in Paris. In his condolence note on Tuesday, Mr. Vijayan wrote that the filmmaker had played a key role in bringing Left progressive ideas on to the screen.
Film editor Bina Paul, former festival director of the IFFK, remembers the several attempts made to bring Godard to Kerala, with COVID-19 spoiling the plans in 2021. During his 75th birthday, the IFFK had a special package titled 'Happy Birthday Monsieur Godard'.
The adulation he has been receiving here is a reflection of the kind of influence he has had on film viewers as well as a generation of filmmakers. One might not be able to draw a straight line from the French new wave, pioneered by Godard, François Truffaut and others to the Malayalam new wave of the 1960s and 70s, but there certainly have been influences.
"When the film society movement started in Kerala in the 1970s, it had a radical Left character. Godard was its biggest icon during that period, with strident critiques of the existing filmmaking paradigms as well as film criticism. There used to be a saying – 'In cinema, there is no god, only Godard'. It is not a surprise that he has such wide acceptance in a society such as Kerala," says film critic G.P. Ramachandran who wrote the book Godard Pala Yathrakal (Many Journeys of Godard).
Godard's politics was not in his film's content alone, but in the form too, which he constantly reinvented. "The problem is not to make political films, but to make films politically," he had once said.
His debut film Breathless itself is marked by the pioneering use of jump cuts and a minimalist style. In Alphaville, his science fiction film on an all-powerful technology which snuffs out literature and art and keeps everyone under a tight leash, he used everyday objects to tell a futuristic story.
Cinema was for Godard one of the tools which he used to express his philosophy and politics. Films such as Masculin Feminin, which portrayed youngsters breaking away from an older set of norms, became examples of his perceptive understanding of the changes around him. The 1972 film Tout va bien (Everything's Fine), made as part of the Dziga Vertov Group, had class politics as its focus, just like quite a few other of his works. Les Petit Soldat faced ban for some years in France due to its portrayal of French torture of Algerians. Les Carabiniers made his anti-war philosophy clearer.
Though his influence did wane in the later decades, he continued to make cinema in his own way. The 266-minute video project Histoire(s) du cinema showed his enduring love for the medium. When he made a foray into 3D filmmaking with Goodbye to Language in his 80s, he would keep on experimenting as long as he made films, which was till the fag end of his long, fruitful life.
