This film will certainly reward further viewings. It was shot in 3D; unfortunately, I can’t watch it in that format, but the 2D version is rather spectacular on its own, so possibly the other dimension won’t be missed? Well, missed a little… Godard specializes in fucking with rules and standards (Breathless, anyone?), so I’m sure the 3D would have been a blast, but I don’t even know what the “standards” are for 3D. The only one I even took seriously was Avatar, which was fine for what it was, an introduction to the format, and I could appreciate there was a genuine attempt at creating a new way of seeing the cinema by cramming “depth” into the picture… but the few 3D movies I saw after that were “bloody awful gimmicks” I guess would be the technical term?… so I never bothered with subsequent 3D releases, and I think the format may even be dead at this point. Do they still put out 3D films these days?

In any case, Goodbye to Language (2014) is not a story so much as a kitchen drawer jumbled with ideas, images, words, emotions, frustrations, fart jokes, and an assortment of quotations from intellectuals, painters, writers, philosophers, you name ’em. And the central figure of the film, by my estimation, is none other than… drum roll… Roxy Miéville, Godard’s dog. I say that mainly because, of the various characters, I sympathized primarily with Roxy, especially when she was being washed away down the river as Godard stood in place filming her, an experience I presume she survived with aplomb, just as she survived every other incident with aplomb, since, as Godard notes (through one of those numerous quotations I won’t possibly here be able to attribute, so solly), a dog is never naked because a dog is always naked, and additionally, according to another sagacious phantom of ancient wisdom, a dog is the only creature to love YOU more than it loves ITSELF.

We learn emphatically in this film that beauty = color. Godard hypersaturates many of the images, especially in Nature, to the degree that you almost have to squint. And it certainly increases the potency of these images. Some are so colorful they seem to pop out into 3D even without the glasses. At one point, Godard has some fun toggling between a natural color scheme and full saturation, but not in a colorful scene; it’s a dark scene, a medium to close shot of black-furred Roxy, in which your main signal that something’s going on is that her red collar switches back and forth between muddy and bright tones (“collar” is wordplay with “color,” it occurs to me, and Godard is known for his multilingual puns, so it’s most likely on purpose).

Gee, I wonder what he’s getting at by hypersaturating Nature scenes while going so far as to undersaturate the interior scenes depicting human relationships. The bodies are often nude—and humans, unlike dogs, are VERY MUCH naked when the clothes are off—but the flesh is pallid, almost gray, and the characters express… diminished vitality, you might say. I’m sure potential future viewings may better illuminate the details of these relationships, which are opaque to me now, but this first encounter instilled me mostly with a sense of weaponized sexuality and desensitized desires. For example, the male partner shits on a toilet while informing the female, who stands directly before him, that poop is the great equalizer… even while he’s clearly exercising some kind of power trip there on his “throne”: performing an intimate animal function unashamedly in front of someone else automatically diminishes their social status below yours. (Just ask anyone who hung out in LBJ’s Oval Office.)

Several couples are depicted in this film, and I really couldn’t make out what their various conflicts were about, but Roxy seems to unify them. She cowers under the table when they fight, absorbing their bad spirits the way laundry absorbs and concentrates odors, then she carries that filthy wash out into the natural world and rinses it in the vivid colors of Godard’s overcranked saturation knob. That’s my initial impression, anyway, of the emotional dynamics…. It’s all so cryptically presented, however, I could be completely off….

Doesn’t bother me in the least! If I watch this film a second or third time and revise my opinions, even years from now, I won’t hesitate to come back and update the post. These writings aren’t intended for anybody else’s gratification, edification, education, or emulation: they’re aimed squarely at my own future self, the one who remembers having watched a particular movie but doesn’t remember either the plot or what he thought of it. Future Yarrow, here is what you thought of Goodbye to Language! And that’s it.

Ah, ok, I’ve just been to Wikipedia; it seems there are INDEED some crazy 3D effects in this film. Among other effects, he literally separates the left and right eye at times, gives them completely divergent images to process simultaneously. Sounds incredible, utterly subversive of what 3D is even supposed to be, and kudos to Godard for that particular middle finger, but I don’t need to witness it personally, methinks. The idea alone is enough to satisfy my curiosity.