Politics involves both past and present. When you read Churchill’s memoirs, you understand very clearly what is happening today. You think, so that is what he was thinking when he took part in such and such conference; but you only learn this twenty years later. It is more difficult in cinema: you have no time since you are dealing with the present. (Godard on Godard, p.225)
I repeat making a film is an adventure comparable to that of an army advancing through a country and living off the inhabitants. So one is led to talk about those inhabitants. That is what actuality is: it is both what one calls actuality in the cinematographic and journalistic sense, and casual encounters, what one reads, conversations, the business of living in other words. (Godard on Godard, p. 224)
This is basically what Godard means when he says he makes films politically and not political cinema. Although some critics might catalog his inclusion of political themes in his films as a superficial approximation of the subject. Godard’s films are essays on a subject and take form in a film that draws from the construction of characters, to the use of citation and text, and the inclusion of actuality in his films in relation to the story and the subjects. Everything that lies between the event and daily life.
(From: December 21st, 2011 by Natalia Guerrero)
This blog post is pretty confusing (mainly because of all of the typos), but it did remind me of Rancière’s comments about political art in “The Emancipated Spectator.” According to Rancière, political art is a model of stultification. If an artist has a specific message that he wants to communicate in his art, he won’t learn anything while creating it and the viewer won’t learn anything when viewing it. When an artist predetermines what he wants to say with his art, he’ll be more focused on the message and will pay less attention to the experience of creation. As we discussed in class, the most successful art is the kind that is alien to both the student and the master (and acts as a bilingual text). When the creator and the viewer are placed on the same level, they will both learn from one another.
For example, the two films that I examined for my paper, In Praise of Love (2001) and Notre Musique (2004) both contain political ideas but leave it up to the viewer to decide what their significance is. Godard receives a lot of criticism for being confusing and pretentious, but I think that this is just because people aren’t used to watching a film where everything isn’t already connected for them. When I was reading reviews for In Praise of Love, I was shocked to see that so many people hated it and found it unwatchable. Although it is confusing, it’s also beautiful and creates a very specific mood. It also raises many important questions about history, memory, and truth (although it doesn’t provide many answers). To gain any insight into politics, I believe that it is very important to first study history. By providing us with visual explorations of history, Godard is setting us up (but not forcing us) to become more politically aware.