Jean-Luc Godard’s King Lear: A Movie About No Thing - Summer of Shakespeare Fan Pick #2
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- Опубликовано: 6 окт 2024
- The infamously enigmatic Godard was once foolishly asked to give his take on William Shakespeare. The results are baffling. The second fan-picked film was produced by people who loved film in the worst way, and directed by a man who hates film in the best way.
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I have to admit, at the reveal of "William Shakespeare Junior the fifth" I said "Oh for God's sake" out loud.
From Wikipedia:
Budget: $1 million.
Box office: $61,821.
..... Ouch...
Also fun fact, according to this movies IMDB thing: “When he was starting out, Quentin Tarantino claimed on his CV that he had appeared in this film, as he guessed nobody would have seen it and know that he was lying.”
2:23 AAAAGH IT'S GIANT MARINA ABRAMOVIC! THE CITY IS DOOMED!
Marina Abramovic vs Godzilla...I'd watch it
+Tony Goldmark
Auuuugh! She's going to... Make art that some consider groundbreaking and revolutionary while others will consider it pretentious and weird as hell! Run!
She would just sit down and stare at him... Yeah, I'd watch it!
+Redem10 it's not going to be much of a fight. Either She'll just stand there and take any abuse only to step forward or she'll just stare at Godzilla. Of course maybe she'll try and stab the gaps between Godzilla's hands but that's about as aggressive as she'll get.
Well going by what I remember about her anyway.
It will be seven hours long!
What is crazy about Godard is that throughout his life he continued to disassemble and reassemble cinema. Unlike some directors who are ok with their style of staging, Godard has always continued to innovate. We may not like what we see, but we must recognize this constant revolution.
Agreed. Godard was constantly innovating, constantly on the edge of what was possible. His legacy is worth studying.
An hour and half of a director trolling his clueless producer. A Godard film then.
"William Shakespeare Jr. V," friend of Mr. Dr. Professor Patrick, no doubt.
Esquire.
Seriously Kyle, never stop holding your brows high. We need this kind of film analysis on youtube.
The black title card flashes are giving me very uncomfortable Evangelion vibes. I'd be sitting through the movie and halfway expecting to see "Absolute Terror Field" flash by.
Fitting, considering Evangelion's influence from the French New Wave
"Mime...mime never changes."
That is one of the greatest lines ever written.
Kyle has some of the best lines of all survivors of Channel Awesome, as well as being amongst the actual decent human beings emerging from that hell-hole. Diamanda Hagan and Dominic Noble, too.
Just read Molly Ringwold’s article in The New Yorker about making this film. Definitely worth reading her perspective. Once describing Goddard as “the puzzle I couldn’t finish, but couldn’t put away.”
Godard genuinely did ”i fart in your general direction”
HOLY SHIT YOU PRONOUNCED MENAHEM GOLAN CORRECTLY. YOU HAVE WON MOVIE REVIEWING FOREVER.
To quote the great Herschel Shmoikel Pinchas Yerucham Krustofsky: "What the hell was that?"
Still a better role for Molly Ringwald than Jem and the Holograms.
the fact that we live in a timeline where the arnold schwarzenegger king lear movie is just a poster in jurassic park 2 and not a real thing is a clear evidence that we truly live in the darkest timeline
"It's an hour and a half of a brilliant director trolling his producer." Why yes - Godard is gonna Godard. 🤣🤣🤣
Kinda confirms the theory that Golan and Globus didn't even bother watching Godard's films.
Cannon: "Godard's gonna make King Lear for us!"
Godard: "Lmao Fuck you."
RIP King 1930-2022
Its actually more like
Goddard: "oh yeah, i'll MAKE King Lear, aright"
@@Phished123 cue the wildest Tim Curry laugh you can imagine
Looks like Goddard had a ton of fun doing this
RIP Jean-Luc Godard
5:54 - There are so many reasons I laugh at that. I have this wonderful image of a confused Sound Engineer/Mixer/Recordist being told that Jean Luc Godard wants a fart sound effect for his WIlliam Shakespeare adaptation, the sound itself being so cartoony, the looks on the faces of arthouse film fans as soon as that happens and the simple fact that Golan Globus saw that...and didn't think anything was wrong - they just rolled with it.
This makes me really want to watch this film and be puzzled and frustrated to death. Sounds like the ultimate movie.
Lucas Silva You could say that about a lot of Jean Luc Godard's filmography.
True, but one thing is watching Breathless and another is watching Goodbye to Language.
Now you know we gotta see that King of Texas review.
Ok next year do King of Texas
Actually, the descendants of a famous author (not necessarily Shakespeare) wandering a post-apocalyptic wasteland could be an interesting idea
Godard is a genius and a master. I don't get what's not to like.
Is not so much a matter of genius or mastery. One can appreciate how brilliant his work is, while also not particularly appreciating the act of actually watching his films. Is not even a matter of being "entertain", per se. I'm not "entertain" by Haneke Funny Games, but I´m envolved with the way the film expresses its themes, it makes me ponder about my relationship with the media I consume. It changes my perspectives in many ways. Godard, or any other artists, might be brilliant, but they also might not move me with their brilliance. Is an aspect of art that I find entirerly subjective
Le Chinese is not to like.
2:43 Also during this time, they produced a Dutch movie, ”De anslaag” (”The Assault”), which won both the Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film
I love when Kyle brings up a name like I'm supposed to know who it is, and I, uncultured savage that I am, just stare blankly at the screen while secretly hoping he brings up something I can recognize.
Somehow I think there is a lot in common between Cannon and deLaurentis... Both made most of its money through mainstream "trash"... but wanted desperately to be one of the major studios in all respects. Sinking vast amounts of money into what we call follies... The Bible, King Kong.... they even enlisted a cooky american arthouse director to make an adaptation of a giant best seller of an epic sci fi epos... after it had been shot down whilst in the care of another european cooky arthouse filmmaker...
I hope that one day, just as the builders of Swamp Castle, there comes a crazy italian that actually succeeds in this ambition...
or maybe I have missed out on someone already doing it...
Who were those kooky American/European arthouse filmmakers who attempted to make a sci-fi epic adaptation?
@@AniGreat-fn2dhDino De Laurentis production of David Lynch’s Dune. Not sure what he meant by «cookie europeen arthouse director», but could be he meant Jodorovsky who also attempted Dune adoptation, although Jodorovsky is chilean, not europeen😅
JLG is a legend!
Some time after the greatness of Breathless he took a time-wasting detour into the ultra-experimental and the shrilly political. I guess that is legendary, in its way. He was Jeffrey Cordova, the theater genius in the 1953 The Bandwagon who at first take the show and turns it into a pompous, arty mess, before he gets enlightened and decides he wants to have fun. Oh wait. Bad analogy. Godard never got enlightened.
Kyle, as a Frenchman I have to say, the French at the beginning of the video is extremely poor and hilarious.
I hope it keeps up. Going back to the video.
I've given up on ever trying to type correct French. Fuck it all.
I hope it was better in La Belle et La Bete... aside from pronouncing the t in "et" during part 1
Yeah, but it's Anglofied structure is what makes it funny! To a native English speaker, anyway...
I found this movie on you tube, and I'm kind of digging it. True, it makes no sense, but sometimes you just need to watch a movie full of confused stuff happening, and nothing else.
So it's basically "Daddy, would you like some sausage?" repeated for ninety minutes? AAAARRRT!!!!Btw: I'm working on a revolutionary work of art. It's named "2016" and it's a TV that sprays warm, fresh pig shit into the face of everyone stupid enough to use the remote I leave on top of it.
+Saintly Pants
Now that's what I call true art!
"And that, Monsieur Golan, is why I didn't make your movie. NEHNEHNEHNEHNEHNEH! *fart*"
Maybe it's the editing, the delivering but goddamn does that make me laugh!
so is there an Electric Boogaloo sequel to this film as well?
King Lear 2: Le Boogaloo Electrique de la Mort de la Langue
LMAO The Cannon group does Shakespeare and arthouse in one failed experiment. I love it.
That Electric Boogaloo documentary is fascinating.
I've never before commented on a video such as this before, though I felt your reading of Godard's King Lear warranted my doing so, because you deserve praise for having developed such an analysis via a Derridean template while concurrently presenting an original method of analysis;you've also done an excellent job connecting the aesthetic ideology of Godard and his recent work with Lear, which as you no doubt are aware was made during his return to narrative filmmaking (Godard's style of narrative), which explicates Lear in an original way - this is difficult to do with Godard. I wrote an Article on Week-End, and while it met with success, it did so with New Historcists, and this wasn't terribly surprising, as my work ended up being about Bloom's theory of influence, The Marshall Plan, Post-War Cinema production in France, the link it shared with Post-War automobile production, and economics, which is a way of saying I failed at my intended goal....So then, from the author of a failure to the author of a success, I'd like to say congratulations and thank you for providing such an insightful reading of this Picture.
I feel like movies like this one can only really be worth something to me if a Kyle Kallgren or an art book explains to me what the artist was _trying_ to say. 99.9% of the time I am ill equipped to understand whatever obtuse language the artist is trying to use. I am generally ignorant, I rarely know where to start to correct that with this type of art film. I'm not sure if that's anyone's failure so much that the languages are too specialized.
It's mostly about context, and linking ideas together. In this movie, a man farts at another man. Doesn't say much. But when it's the "director" farting at "Shakespeare", ie when the scene is given proper context, the idea behind it is made clearer, and now you can link that idea with the others sprinkled throughout the movie.
Most mainstream movies try really, really, REALLY hard to make sure context is never needed outside of the movie, so you can watch the movie and have all the context you need to understand what's going on within the movie itself. Not to say you can't gain a deeper understanding by applying context outside of the movie, just that everything you need to understand it is already present, which is an idea that art films like this one don't like much.
They want you to engage with the material at a deeper level, to think about who's behind the making of the film, the legacy involved in the film. Which requires watching the movie with the intent of understanding it, which requires thinking about individual scenes and lines and applying them to the whole to see how it all fits, which is quite simply Way Too Much Work for the majority of movie watchers.
So no, it's nobody's failure, and yes, the languages are very specialized. If you aren't feeding yourself on a diet of French new wave cinema, then this movie is literally speaking a language you can't understand. And requires a lot of work to decode, which our friend Kyle here has done for our viewing pleasure.
If you want to do it, too, then you can, it just requires work, and it'll get easier the more you do it, but it'll still be work even after the thousandth movie.
You really don't need to. Half the time is just the "artist" more concerned about himself and his ego than about telling a story. That's not to say Goddard isn't a fine director it's just that most of these indie directors fall into the trap of trying too force their ideas into the story instead of having the story express its ideas through characters and plot, and often times is because they fail to understand that great directors like Goddard know how to right classic stories, before subverting their structure.
@@SatansBestBuddy1 I know this is years old but I'd just like to thank you for this marvelous explanation.
A lot of the time an artist can appear to have posed a brilliant intellectual puzzle for the audience that, in fact, will have no solution at all, but the audience themselves will be convinced that it has one, and set about trying to solve it, never once questioning the brilliance of the director's vision.
Nicely edited. Well thought out. You know your cinema history, which is quite refreshing. I personally like the film but will admit the first time I saw it I wanted to pull my hair out. Would love to find it on NTSC DVD.
I like the part of the video where the voiceover says “Patrick Stewart”and then there’s just incomprehensible screaming while Professor X cosplays Gandalf
I'd watch the shit of 2 Broke Girls featuring Marina Abramovic
Just as an aside, I'd like to see you discuss some Jodorowsky, Kyle.
I'm still waiting for him to look at The Holy Mountain
You fool, you'll kill us all.
he did in his top 20 movies of 2015
When? I've seen that video a bunch of times and recall no such discussion being done.
Cannon group sounds like a bunch of fun guys who spent most of their time on yachts in the Mediterranean having a ball coming up with stuff. Maybe more to them than meets the wallet. In an interview with Wim Wenders, which Godard tried to run, he admits he was wondering how he was going live in his old age...money wise.
sclogse1 Watch "Electric Boogaloo: The Wild Untold Story of Cannon Films". It's available instantly on Netflix.
Okay BUT the Apple is actually fantastic
When I got the notification that you'd posted a new video, I literally yelled, "YES MY BOY IS BACK!" This was a really fascinating look at an adaptation I didn't really know that much about. Keep it up!
Godard is a cool guy
this is REALLY reminding me of the themes explored in MGS V the phantom pain, and... now I kind of want to see Kyle's take on metal gear's storytelling
Maybe the next "Between the Lines" episode.
Godard is kind known for that sort of bamboozling. He likes to make deals with various groups (even once with Darty, a compagny selling washing machines and the like) and producing something they would never want to distribute to an audience.
RIP Godard.
you're running out of summer, Kyle
oof, don't remind me.
+KyleKallgrenBHH whatever, I'd rather a late video than a rushed one tbh
+KyleKallgrenBHH 6:02 SYMBOLISM! XD
+KyleKallgrenBHH Im in Australia. Its practically summer all year long. Keep making great videos
Thanks. You gave a very clear explanation of a difficult film (not without a few jokes to liven things up!). It makes me want to see the whole film. I like the idea that love is something so emotional that it cannot be expressed in words. Cordelia loves Lear more than words can say.
Oh Canon group, you never fail to be some kind of insane. This is a movie I need to watch now, if only to see Goddard literally dart on Shakespeare.
I'm glad someone agrees on the Cannon Group. While resarch and educated opinions don't seem to be their strong suit, it seems there was no crazy film experiment they weren't willing to get into, and I kind of love them for it.
Sure, Cannon were responsible for a lot of garbage, but they were also responsible for Runaway Train; which is one of the best films I've ever seen.
A real masterpiece, very forgotten when they make lists about the best films of the 80s.
One of my all-time favorite films.
Thank you so much for this.
For as much as I like to pretend I'm classy and sophisticated when it comes to my taste in film, I can't express how disappointed I was when I realized this wasn't a Shakespeare adaptation set in the United Federation of Planets. Although given how much Start Trek likes to go on about the Bard, I imagine that would be somewhat mind-bending in its own right.
Just seeing Molly Ringwald in a Godard film makes this movie something unique
"Mime... Mime never changes" is one of the best jokes you've ever used. It's humor like that, along with the extremely interesting reviews you do overall, that make me love ya, Kyle. Keep up the amazing work.
I'm surprised you didn't mention that Woody Allen is briefly in this movie for no discernible reason whatsoever...
There were a great many moments like that.
Of course Cordelia loved her father. She loved him like meat loves salt.
how in the hell would Chernobyl destroy ALL HUMAN CULTURE WHAT THE FUCK
The death of beauty is also in the eye of the beholder
Well, it wouldn't. It's a mark of a story being banged out with no craft of thought.
So basically Godard working with Cannon is exactly like what would happen if Bowie did collaborate with Coldplay?
By the sound of it, I think that's a good way to put it.
I don't think Bowie was THAT much of a troll and Coldplay is THAT stupid.
rollingstone(.)com/music/news/chris-martin-david-bowie-rejected-coldplay-collaboration-20141214
Hm... Interestingly enough both of their sounds was hugely influenced by Brian Eno.
@@tobi2731 Yeah, but Bowie did it RIGHT. Coldplay did it in the most watered-down, middle-of-the-road, dollarstore-U2 kind of way.
This reminds me of that episode of MASH where the cast hijacked the filming of a propaganda film and turned it into a Groucho Marx production that mocked the idea of propaganda films. Mocking the main character, genre, and the general who commissioned the film. It's called "Yankee Doodle Doctor" and is really worth checking out, especially with this video's context.
fuck this shit, im watching the piccard one RIGHT NOW!
PS: tnx for that one :D
The "nyeah-nyeah" visual at 14:00 made me laugh out loud.
"The company that made 'Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo'." Oh, the horror.
"The company that made 'Death Wish' into a franchise." The monsters.
"The company that made Chuck Norris into an action star." Okay, that's not too bad.
Seriously Kyle, if you wanted to make your point on how incompetent The Cannon Group was even more poignant, you should've said "The company that made 'Superman IV: The Quest for Peace'."
Maybe he was trying to invoke the "Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking" comedy trope, where the last entry on the list of bad things is one that is not as bad compared to everything that preceded it.
And told Carl Macek they wouldn't let "Robotech: The Movie" through without a few more explosions!
jbvader721 | Perhaps he just stresses they are incredibly different, not necessarily that Cannon is terrible.
I feel like it’s more that they’re not making ‘high art’.
Cannon was also the company that promoted a number of great foreign films including one of my favorite films, "Lemon Popsicle." May not be famous in the States, but those who saw it remember it fondly.
"Mime...mime never changes. " Well done.
Thanks. The best review I’ve seen of a Godard film I haven’t seen but I am now very keen.
Aside from all the really interesting ways you made this approchable and informative and the fact that i'm actually into something i never thought i would be into because of you
I gotta say the most important thing i take away from this episode is that your eyes are REALLY striking and i don't know why that mattered so much but i felt like saying it.
I've seen 4 or 5 Godard films, and I can only come to the conclusion that he hates film, films, and filmgoers
(From probably the most unqualified person to discuss this) Maybe it's not film itself he hates, but rather the established formula of a film. As if he aims to create for counter-culture rather than create what he wants to make, or something in between.
EpicBeard815 There is a saying in Hindi: “ How do you expect a monkey to appreciate the taste of ginger”. If you have “seen” 4 Godard films and still have not comprehended his genius, stick to Arnie, Star Wars and “Dumb and Dumber”
@Alex Unknown Why is this wrong idea so prevalent.
La Nouvelle Vague was a bunch of film buffs that started discussing films as the body of work of an "auteur" that they championed on american directors like Hitchcock and Howard Hawks. It was the current french cinema they criticized as being lacking of personality and experimentation as they followed the so called "french tradition of quality" that championed screenwriters adapting famous literature as opposed to directors making original or more personal films.
I know, right?
He’s is a director I respect more than I will ever like.
1:06 really speaks for me.
I’m more of a Truffaut girl myself.
jlg's king lear is the best movie ever
sorry for you being blind
Sitting on a book shelf to my left is an anthology with an interview with JLG in it. In the interview, he says among other things that the film Z is useless because it wasn't made by a director who belonged to a revolutionary organization. This displays the personality type of the people who ran the Cultural Revolution in China.
Did you know 2 Shakespeares worked in Bionicle? Sue Shakespeare as Producer and Terry Shakespeare as Director, maybe Jr is their cousin
This is a very helpful analysis! I would add that Godard's films never make perfect sense (since they cannot be boiled down to a narrative or a thesis). But, if you watch a bunch of his late films (I suggest Nortre Musique and Forever Mozart), then the ideas start to make some sense and, unfortunately, resonate even more strongly in light of recent world events (escalating technology, warfare, nationalism, and so on).
I kind of want to see how The Dom would react to this.
I love the fallout references... in fallout 4, how'd you feel about nick valentine's story, kyle?
Never have I clicked on a notification so quickly! Have you read Eco's The Book of Legendary Lands? I wish I had that book when I was a wee, imaginative lad who played and lived in fantasy worlds more than actual life.
Why do I keep seeing Patrick Stewart as a cowboy lately?
Huh they are few ackward uses of french here
Ennuyeuse is how something that is how you write something feminine and boring , Jean-luc goddard being male, ennuyant would be the correct term
Radical being use to describe Goddard, politic and esthetic doesn't quite work because Esthètique and Politique are two female noms, but you kept Radical male, instead of adding the E they would require "politique radicale"
Life changing as "changement de vie" don't quite work here,can't quite think of the proper equivalent, but basicaly the mistake is "Life changing" can be use to describe something as such while changement de vie would be the act of doing
For the last one I think it be more "Mon Dieu, pourquoi est-ce que ce film de 90 minutes prends cinq heures"
I'd love to see your thoughts on The Bad Sleep Well, Akira Kurosawa's noir adaptation of Hamlet.
This sums up perfectly why I despise Godard! Good video though.
I love this movie.
Holy hell you got a lot thinner from your old videos :D Looking great!
"Trollface: The Motion Picture"
12:42 What is wrong with this line? Why is this used to show the producer as a fool? "Wow, he cares about his company, what an idiot." Is it because he's not an "artist?"
He claimed to want nothing but the improved image of his company, meanwhile doing no research on the man he was expecting to offer it to him on a platter. He cared so little he allowed the contract to be signed on a napkin. This was his error. It's not even that he attempted to throw a bandaid at the problem. He didn't even put the effort to stick it on.
+UltimateKyuubiFox Okay thank you
Godard is so clever that it just pisses me off
This is fucking amazing
The fool! They didn't make a Shakespeare adaptation!
THEY MADE A S.T.A.L.K.E.R ADAPTATION!
Oh yes I remember studying Godard. I'm glad there are people with the talent and inclination to examine these things because... dear god I couldn't bear watching his entire filmography.
This movie is rumored for a Criterion release in the near future
This the sort of film where I'm thrilled that it exists, even though I'll never actually sit down at watch it. Like that RUclips video somebody made entitled, "The Theme Song From Nutshack, But Every Nutshack is Replaced By A Man Reading The Entire Script of The Bee Movie." That video, for those interested, is 13 hours long.
The existence of such a thing just makes the world a better place by virtue of it taking a little bit of sense away from humanity's very existence.
Thank you for explaining this movie! The first time I saw it, the thing really pissed me off. Now at least I know why!
While your analysis of the 'failure to express oneself' in this film makes some sense, it seems to me that, if Godard is using this one theme as his thesis, his 'adaptation' is a shallow piece of work. Lear is about so much more than just this one idea, and to reduce the play down to such a singular message removes the play itself. Thus, Godard's constant quotations and comparisons to Lear can't work because the framework is threadbare.
I think this is probably the kind of film I would hate.
This is a 90 minute film where one guy randomly farts on another and random title cards pop up, so yeah.
You should do the Macbeth movie where they made it "modern "*(like nazi Germany times) and all I remember from that film it had a ridiculous death/ending for Macbeth that my whole senior class was laughing hard at
Basically if this film didn't get made that $1 million could of helped with Superman 4's budget.
Had no idea Sellers acted in a film. Love his opera work. Oh, for me Alphaville is one of the worst films I've ever seen. Good lord!
How did Molly Ringwald get talked into this? No wonder she abandoned her carrier as an actor and fled to France for a decade or two
I have said it before, but this might be the greatest film ever made.
It might also be the worst film ever made.
It is so singular, so completely unlike any other movie (or anything else) ever made, that it’s impossible to know for sure. Calling it “best” or “worst” suggests that it’s comparable to anything else.
2:32
Ohhhhhh!!! That's why Golan's name sounded familiar! Thank goodness for Musical Hell!
Did you do Ran as a King Lear analogy?
I review King of Texas now.
this whole behind the scenes story of this movie reminds me of barton fink