soixante-quinze ans
HAPPY BIRTHDAY JEAN-LUC GODARD!
i thought about just leaving my birthday wishes alone in the post, as if the man would ever stray across this little livejournal, but i realize now that i want to say how much i love his work. how much i appreciate his love for cinema and his desire to explore and criticize and create and enjoy film in general. how watching band of outsiders on a crappy vhs tape in my uni's media center, completely unsure of what i was getting into, must have changed my life. even if i couldn't read the subtitles, even if the image was so dark that at times i could barely distinguish the faces, when i first saw anna karina et al. begin dancing in the café, i was overwhelmed with how alive they all seemed, how even in their nonchalance they were clearly excited about that scene, and that film. and i knew that behind the camera, godard was excited, too, just as he must have been with each jump cut in breathless and ever musical outburst in a woman is a woman. even contempt, the one godard film i cannot bring myself to enjoy, seems alive, even in its droll pretentiousness. i don't see such love and excitement enough in most of the films i watch, and even when it does appear, it doesn't have the spark that everything godard touches seems to have. i need to see so much more by him, but if i never could, i'd still feel happy a million times over because of what i have seen. so thanks for the films, you old fart. je les aime.
i thought about just leaving my birthday wishes alone in the post, as if the man would ever stray across this little livejournal, but i realize now that i want to say how much i love his work. how much i appreciate his love for cinema and his desire to explore and criticize and create and enjoy film in general. how watching band of outsiders on a crappy vhs tape in my uni's media center, completely unsure of what i was getting into, must have changed my life. even if i couldn't read the subtitles, even if the image was so dark that at times i could barely distinguish the faces, when i first saw anna karina et al. begin dancing in the café, i was overwhelmed with how alive they all seemed, how even in their nonchalance they were clearly excited about that scene, and that film. and i knew that behind the camera, godard was excited, too, just as he must have been with each jump cut in breathless and ever musical outburst in a woman is a woman. even contempt, the one godard film i cannot bring myself to enjoy, seems alive, even in its droll pretentiousness. i don't see such love and excitement enough in most of the films i watch, and even when it does appear, it doesn't have the spark that everything godard touches seems to have. i need to see so much more by him, but if i never could, i'd still feel happy a million times over because of what i have seen. so thanks for the films, you old fart. je les aime.