Dance And Love A Little

Neil Jones juxtaposes Malik’s Days of Heaven and Godard’s Une Femme est une femme and draws lines to modern indiepop  

It’s on far too few occasions that I’ve sat down to watch a movie lately, but prompted by Pop Miwsig’s Paul Griffiths to catch Terrence Malik’s Days of Heaven, being screened on Film4, and having little else I could do after a visit to the dentist (this might account for the later drowsy ramblings – beware, I tend to complicate things when writing about film), I tuned in, and as always for me it opened a kind of Pandora’s Box of dissent. I enjoyed the film for sure, but in essential parts I found it quite melodramatic and over-sentimental, not having the easy edge that I so love about cinema, an edge that may be considered as quintessentially “Pop”, which I'll proceed to elaborate on further, and afterwards I felt compelled to re-address the balance...

“The essence of rebellion."

Not to get too mystic, but I think we can contrast Malik’s Days of Heaven and Jean-Luc Godard’s Une Femme est une femme in terms of “present moments” and “future promises”. Both are innovative romantic stories, but it’s the difference between “Being” and “Becoming” in the stories purveyed that creates the essential split, and while time kind of drags in Days of Heaven, during Une Femme est une femme the imagination runs free in the joyful complicity of the moment.

Days of Heaven is an epic, painterly depiction of a life of labour in the Texas Panhandle, grand and ambitious in its conception, its three protagonists involved in a fierce love triangle that gives the film a Shakespearian sense of tragedy, while Une Femme est une femme is a lo-fi romantic story in the best tradition of 60s-era Godard, where he turned his critical thoughts into cutting edge artistic creations that lived and breathed a quintessential quirky soul. Godard’s film also features a love triangle that moves with a slightly more fluent air than Malik’s, and indeed while Days of Heaven undoubtedly tends to sag in places with the weight of its ambition, Une Femme est une femme kind of moves in rhythm with its exultant subjects like poetry in motion .

Right from the romance of the flashing neon light opening of Une Femme est une femme, all the way through the highly-original soundtrack through Angela (Ana Karina’s) wink at the camera in an early scene where she crosses the road a picture of light-hearted beauty, the movie is totally driven by Moments.

New trails of thought are always thrown up when sitting through a piece of art you’re particularly passionate about, and sitting down again to this, I’m reminded that beauty is always in the light-hearted treatment, the capturing of a moment quite untouched by dreary old pre-conception. I’m also reminded of the fact that the same goes for all art forms, which is why I love modern indiepop so much and which is why there’s this magic creative thread linking it all up with other art-forms.

I remember coming to a certain point a few years ago when I realised that innovation can really only take place the Now, when one is totally caught heart and soul in the moment, and as Angela says “exit Angela” to sparkly jazz backing and again flits off across the road, a picture of colour and pure femininity, it’s another observation re-enforced.

The backing music in Malik’s film is one of its big disappointments (classical music sadly is used in a slightly clich・d manner to enhance emotional scenarios rather than form a subtle counterpoint), while in Godard’s work when it’s used it sparkles and shines along with his characters in a depth of happy complicity, swirling with cinematic romance. Godard used real people as well, and where Richard Gere (though this was early in his career) as Bill in Days of Heaven is never really convincing (far too much of a coquettish frat-boy to hold our sympathies), Karina, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean-Claude Brialy in Une Femme est une femme are naturalistic and fantastic, actually living the roles without any apparent effort. It was what they were, and what Godard tapped into so well, which was the beauty of the French New Wave, a graceful, naturalistic, intelligent phenomenon.

In the Godard film the relationship tensions are not ham-fisted and sentimental and desperately trying to grab a tear, but light and complex (the title of coarse translates into English as A Woman is a Woman!), the two adjectives working off on one another to create a poetic cinematic magic and a certain purity. Where Malik’s Bill and Abbey (Brooke Adams) are tragic lovers with nothing new to say, Godard’s Angela and Emile say it falling over themselves in easy expression.

I increasingly think you need to forget or overcome yourself to get the true thrill of cinema, and it is always a deeply personal journey getting there. For me Bergman provided the unceasing self-examination and Godard the ultimate liberation, and if you forget yourself for the duration of Une Femme est une femme you get the true thrill of the cinema, an uplifting kind of wave that edifies your brain and makes it dance and love a little. It’s a multi-layered film in spite of itself. Tragedy is always inherent in its most profound sense (in comedy done well), and modern cinema with its ambition and strivings for “scope” (the easiest and often most mundane thing to achieve), often forgets the fundamental fact.

Godard’s use of historical quotations and wisdom to deepen the effect of a scene was legendary, and the scene in the strip joint where Angela throws a tantrum at her lover is beautiful, crowned with the following – “’In both comedies and tragedies the heroine hesitates at the end of the third act, her fate at risk,’ Corneille and young Moliore called it suspense.” It makes me ask, aside from Lucas Moodyson, where are today’s arch cinematic Pop pillagers? They must all be making Unpopular music, which of coarse is an easier thing to do than Unpopular cinema. This is not a direct criticism of Malik as I’m not familiar at all with his wider work, but most modern film-makers seem too obsessed with themselves to even approach being innovative in the manner Godard pioneered. They’re nowhere near in touch with the Now. The French master, in delving into his deep artistic lineage with terrifically knowing mischief, was the essence of Pop in motion.

Politics is represented in Une Femme est une femme as much as it needs to be, in a two-minute scene where cops burst in on Angela and Emile to sniff around their flat after an apparent bomb scare, commenting slyly on Emile’s reading of L'Humanite and, in a great bit of parody, sniffing the cheese on the table. Again it’s the essence of Pop, saying more in twenty seconds than Oliver Stone did in his entire career.

An intrinsic characteristic of Pop, smart and chivalric, is that it delivers a constant hatchet to pre-conceptions, is totally free in itself to do so, totally ungoverned to love! “Idiot! If you don’t love me, I’ll still love you,” shouts Angela at Emile towards the end of Une Femme est une femme, as he still refuses to give her a baby, the poignant heroine in her pure hope, which sits wondrous in Godard's Pop framing. Malik is undoubtedly a technical, painterly master, but where I’m ultimately forced to rate movies like Days of Heaven on a purely intellectual level, Godard’s work is still an absolute modern blast, the after-effects of which continue to reverberate within.

© 2007 Neil Jones

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