TMAR Blog #13: 'Comment ça va?' - Godard & Miéville

Or more generally, a consideration of poststructuralism and its heritage

I’ve seen just about every major film by Jean-Luc Godard, a good handful the minor/short ones, and probably pretty close to everything he put out in the ‘80s, although his filmography is a death trap for completionists. The major exception is his ‘70s work, which I’ve mostly avoided. I like to put him, not entirely jokingly, in the category of late-bloomer artists that only hit their stride solidly into middle age: if his work reached maturity in the ‘80s, his ‘60s work is his juvenilia (in his 30s), and his militantly political ‘70s work is, ironically, sort of an escapist incubator, hiding out in the Marxist trenches to stave off post-May 68 disillusionment. It’s only as he turns 50 that he reconciles the ‘60s hipster cinephile with the ‘70s intransient Leftist, dialing back the moral purity that made his political work so harsh and devoid of pleasure to allow an element of “commercial filmmaking” back in, albeit with a very large dose of satirical ambivalence.