Mrk'smassivehands wrote:Am I right in thinking the guy who writes: http://seul-le-cinema.blogspot.com/ boards here? Pretty sure I picked it up from someone's sig in the past. I've been reading The Conversations via instapaper at work recently, really enjoy them.
I'm also more than a little appalled at A.O. Scott (whom I once admired a little) essentially singling out two of my favorite movies of all time—Juventude em marcha and L'annee dernière à Marienbad—as examples of where this totally reactionary viewpoint actually has value.
Mrk'smassivehands wrote:Am I right in thinking the guy who writes: http://seul-le-cinema.blogspot.com/ boards here? Pretty sure I picked it up from someone's sig in the past. I've been reading The Conversations via instapaper at work recently, really enjoy them.
Yeah that's sevenarts.
What became of her? She lived, as she liked to say, off the kindness of gentlemen. I assume she’s dead.
Mrk'smassivehands wrote:Am I right in thinking the guy who writes: http://seul-le-cinema.blogspot.com/ boards here? Pretty sure I picked it up from someone's sig in the past. I've been reading The Conversations via instapaper at work recently, really enjoy them.
Glad you're enjoying the conversations! Thanks.
quilty wrote:It depresses me that this sort of discussion goes on in the New York Times.
Agreed. What depresses me more than anything about this whole affair is how seriously some people are taking Kois. I mean, his argument, such as it is, basically amounts to an admission that if he had his choice, he'd rather not challenge himself with "difficult" art, and that he does so occasionally only because he thinks it's what he ought to do as a paid film critic. It was a totally silly piece and everyone should have said so and promptly went back to ignoring him. Instead, Dargis and Scott both more or less accept his assumptions as givens, and offer only the weakest possible counters. I would have told the guy in no uncertain terms that a big part of the critic's work is and should be to engage with precisely the most difficult art, to dig for its meanings and its merits, or to explore its failings and limits. What else is a critic good for if not to provide a way of thinking about art? Kois' way of thinking about art seems to be as homework.
Mrk'smassivehands wrote:Am I right in thinking the guy who writes: http://seul-le-cinema.blogspot.com/ boards here? Pretty sure I picked it up from someone's sig in the past. I've been reading The Conversations via instapaper at work recently, really enjoy them.
The subtitles are a kind of passive-aggressive joke on American audiences, because America and its influence is the film's subtext — for the most part, Godard avoids explicitly mentioning America so assiduously that it becomes the unspoken ghost within the film, the driving force for everything that happens, the hidden target of so many of the film's satirical jabs.
The fragmentary dialogue of the film's first part is replaced by lengthier dialogues, which makes the incomplete "Navajo" translation more of an issue: during the cruise ship passage, the Navajo subtitles mirrored the jumpy editing and the collaging of hi-definition digital images with grainy video footage. Here, the subtitles really do feel like out-of-context fragments ripped out of a larger whole, and it becomes even more apparent that Godard intends for language-deficient Americans to understand only incompletely, to be denied the full meaning of the dialogues.
Last edited by Mesh on Tue Jun 21, 2011 11:44 am, edited 1 time in total.
Everybody's got a ticket to ride 'cept for me and my lightning.
Mesh wrote:So, wait, is there a way to see Film Socialisme with all the words translated, or is that just not done? Is it on KG somewhere?
Yeah, pretty sure I got them off KG. Wish I hadn't watched it with full translations first time round, looking forward to seeing it with Navajo subs second time round (and in a cinema)
Mesh wrote:So, wait, is there a way to see Film Socialisme with all the words translated, or is that just not done? Is it on KG somewhere?
Yeah, pretty sure I got them off KG. Wish I hadn't watched it with full translations first time round, looking forward to seeing it with Navajo subs second time round (and in a cinema)
The full subs should be on KG. If you can't find them, Mesh or anyone else who wants them, I'll upload the SRT file later tonight when I get home.
I definitely recommend seeing the film with both the Navajo subs and the full subs. The Navajo subs provide their own layer of meaning to the film, if only in the way they frustrate attempts at understanding and feed into Godard's commentary on Americans, but there's no doubt that it's much easier to get more out of the film after seeing it with a more complete translation.
Mesh wrote:So, wait, is there a way to see Film Socialisme with all the words translated, or is that just not done? Is it on KG somewhere?
Yeah, pretty sure I got them off KG. Wish I hadn't watched it with full translations first time round, looking forward to seeing it with Navajo subs second time round (and in a cinema)
The full subs should be on KG. If you can't find them, Mesh or anyone else who wants them, I'll upload the SRT file later tonight when I get home.
I definitely recommend seeing the film with both the Navajo subs and the full subs. The Navajo subs provide their own layer of meaning to the film, if only in the way they frustrate attempts at understanding and feed into Godard's commentary on Americans, but there's no doubt that it's much easier to get more out of the film after seeing it with a more complete translation.
ifear wrote:would you recommend seeing with navajo subs before full subs, then?
Despite how much the incomplete subtitling annoyed me and detracted from my experience, I'm sure it'd do the complete opposite for others. It's part of the Godard project anyways. So yeah. Navajo subs first is what I'd vote.
Everybody's got a ticket to ride 'cept for me and my lightning.
ifear wrote:would you recommend seeing with navajo subs before full subs, then?
That's what I did. The first viewing I was dazzled by the imagery but obviously missed a lot, the second viewing (with full subs), things started opening up more and I followed more of the ideas. It's such a dense, baffling film anyway, the first viewing is probably going to be pretty inconclusive no matter which subs you use.
And Mesh, those look like the same full subs that I have.
ifear wrote:would you recommend seeing with navajo subs before full subs, then?
Despite how much the incomplete subtitling annoyed me and detracted from my experience, I'm sure it'd do the complete opposite for others. It's part of the Godard project anyways. So yeah. Navajo subs first is what I'd vote.
ha, well i expect to hate it anyway, so i'm not worrying too much about avoiding annoyance. thanks both.
hi there how are you i will be your hexahedron for today
The Navajo subs strike me more as a statement that stands alongside the film rather than within it. I find it difficult to defend as anything more than a spiteful caprice on Godard's part.
And I can't think of a worse idea than seeing a Godard film that you expect to hate. Viewing-related idea, anyway.
I don't know - the choice of words and the way they're arranged is specific enough that I think calling them a caprice seems unfair. Regardless of how helpful or unhelpful they might be to an English-speaking audience - and making a movie that isn't accommodating to English-speaking audiences is a pretty clear ideological move in and of itself - they frequently work as standalone ideas; off the top of my head there's one where "all movement on a plain surface that is not driven by physical necessity is a spatial affirmation of oneself, be it building an Empire, or tourism" is rendered as "ortourism" (no space), which is an obvious pun and adds another connection to what the actual dialogue is saying.
I think we can level on the fact that they are categorically unhelpful for an English-language audience. They're purposefully alienating and obscuring, first and foremost. The question of whether they bring something new to the film for a bilingual audience, I think, has to be secondary. Of course it's something to talk about, and from a certain perspective it brings something interesting to light (though, for my money and middling French, I'd say it does little more but sheath Godard's thematic hand in an iron glove...); Godard wouldn't be the greatest living artist if he wasn't constantly providing some irritant or other to challenge assumptions about his work. But it's a classic example of something that, for a major portion of Godard's audience, has more interesting implications for conversation about the film that for actually watching the film.
Ignatiy's simpering rebuttals in the ATM clip pretty much sum it up for me: it's a gesture of profound closedness.
Films currently saved on my DVR (swag): Autumn Sonanta Dune Eraserhead Husbands and Wives Jackie Brown The Long Good Friday Marie Antoinette The Phantom Carriage Rancho Notorious Spirit of the Beehive Stromboli Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song The Secret of the Grain
Because of this setup I've watched: The Deer Hunter Wild at Heart Minnie and Moskowitz Coffee and Cigarettes
I usually kill one of these a night. What should I watch next?
quilty wrote:Films currently saved on my DVR (swag): Autumn Sonanta Dune Eraserhead Husbands and Wives Jackie Brown The Long Good Friday Marie Antoinette The Phantom Carriage Rancho Notorious Spirit of the Beehive Stromboli Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song The Secret of the Grain
Because of this setup I've watched: The Deer Hunter Wild at Heart Minnie and Moskowitz Coffee and Cigarettes
I usually kill one of these a night. What should I watch next?
God dude Jackie Brown is a fucking must if you've never.
Everybody's got a ticket to ride 'cept for me and my lightning.