Film socialisme, the farewell of the old French master Jean Luc Godard, is an overwhelming iconoclasm about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, geometry and the shelf-life of Europe; about the Second World War and Hollywood; Islam and ancient Egypt; Franco, bullfighting and football.
The setting is a cruise ship – society in a nutshell – where nobody speaks the same language. The subtitles are by Godard himself, using the English spoken by Indians in old westerns: ‘AIDS good for killing blacks’. And: ‘light because darkness’. Finally, we see the words NO COMMENT appear on the screen.
At the last Cannes Festival, no film divided audiences as much as this one, on which Godard worked for four years with a budget of ‘only’ 600,000 euros. Some people found it humourless and unpoetic; at least as many others regarded it as a profound essay about how morally low Europe has fallen.
Film details
- Countries of production
- France, Switzerland
- Year
- 2010
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2011
- Length
- 101'
- Medium/Format
- DCP
