An Unknowing Polemic

JEAN-LUC Godard is one the less compromising critics of our age, and his severity can undercut his effectiveness. It certainly limits his popularity. Few of us enjoy being made to feel like a Godard character-no one likes getting run over by a car.

Though in Every Man For Himself, Godard has returned to a more digestable narrative framework-after his excursion into Maoist polemicism-he shows few signs of mellowing. It is only a nominal return to an old form. For the first time in years (since Deux ou Trois Choses perhaps), he has done some new and startling things. Few directors of late can make the same claim.

The Godard signature remains: scynicism continues to overrun pathos, and absurdity overpowers both. But if events in Every Man require a suspension of disbelief, Godard forces one to see things his way; with surgical grace the camera constantly reminds us of his insistence. Similarly, by rehearsing actors and dictating every breath to the point of mechanization, he compounds the crime by which an oppressively technocratic society of bankers brackets his characters. The dictatorial directorial net extends outward: "Do you really want to see a movie?" Isabelle Huppert asks, entering the director's landscape for the first time, looking directly into the camera.

Thankfully (at times regretfully) Godard's cast does not seem to bridle at his yoke as much as we do. Huppert plays Isabelle, a relaxed if busy prostitute, capable enough to teach the trade to her sister-for money. She picks out Paul Godard (the mocking association is reinforced by his mogulstatus at a television station) and coaxes him away from a cinema line.

Paul (Jacques Dutranc) has just lost Denise (Nathalie Baye) for those soulful reasons which we and they never quite understand. "There is no love without work," he insists. "I know, but I cannot face the work," she replies. Intellectuals breaking up-there is nothing worse than the burden of an imaginably greater potential. Or perhaps Paul just does not like la compagne enough. His ex-wife, too, finds him self-possessed, and his jaded daughter-a little Godard-can only ask of their monthly meetings, "And where's my gift?"

The trouble with these characters is that we cannot imagine any one of them at age 60. Even Godard's brand of efficient feminism makes for self-absorbed, lonely old women. Denise's bicycle, if it escapes the automobile, will outlast her men; Isabelle's detachment will outlive her looks. Finally we cannot accept the title, and look instead for evidence of the altruism gene. Who can say he has never received a moment of real tenderness? Godard gives us a few among strangers, none among friends.

BUT HE tells the story with such mastery of his craft, and such freshness. Like the capitalist he caricatures, he leaves nothing to chance, but leaves one struggling to plum a multi-layered text whose overtones expand and recede in too many directions. His extensive philosophic dialogues over-whelm the characters who engage in them so earnestly (yet so easily).

His freeze-framing of physical gestures into their component parts traps and frees the subject. The stop-motion of Denise's bike ride locks her into a string of contortions but also celebrates her joy in movement. It prolongs and accents the pain of a woman's beating on a street corner but softens the blows by dissecting and punctuating them-turning the series of hurt faces into studied caricatures. Paul's slow-motion salutory kiss-which finally reaches his daughter's cheek-becomes at once a tortured eternity and a muscle spasm which lands like a hammer. It is clear these two aren't getting along.

Godard offers instant video-replay, without the live original. He reminds us that it's only a movie but completely enthralls us in doing so, generating a symphony out of routine actions one would otherwise barely notice. In his hands, an obvious technical device produces the most memorable moments in the film (which was originally titled Slow Motion).

Unusual camera angles, obstructed views-particularly of conversing pairs-and the division of the work into three tableaux all serve, among other things, to keep us conscious of our voyeur status. The characters themselves tease our distance from the film. "What's that music?" one will ask referring to the soundtrack after a particularly absorbing drama. Finally the improbable conclusion, and one of the film's few hackneyed moments: an elegant string ensemble in an alley-the soundtrack's players taking a bow? -stirs memories of similar Fellini incongruities, satirized here by the moment's harshness.

ONE CANNOT help feeling somewhat duped in the end-exploited, or at least toyed with by an expert. Perhaps the marionette strings pull us in directions we do not wish or deserve to go. The movie does not try to be a polemic, but it is so good it becomes one. "Nobody is independent," Isabelle's pimp yells, spanking her. "Not whores, not typists, not duchesses, not servants, not champion tennis players."

He sounds ridiculous. The scene, like many, is ridiculous. Every Man is a lot to swallow. But how much should we disown from our experience? Can we dismiss it as a possibility? Most of us will try.