There’s a single shot in Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye To Language so astonishing that the sold-out crowd I saw the film with gasped in unison. Perhaps a generation of blockbuster entertainment and stock response has deadened the word, but the only way I can think to describe it is “awesome,” in the literal sense. It inspires awe. At the thousand-seat Ryerson Theater, where the film made its North American première this September, the surprise and delight were audible, in the form of exclamations and spontaneous applause. For a moment, it was less like a movie than a magic show. I sat mouth agape, stupefied. I felt like I’d just seen someone levitate.
Here’s what happens: A young woman, Ivitch (Zoé Bruneau), and an older man, Davidson (Christian Gregori), sit together on a park bench near the water, flipping through a book of paintings by French abstract landscapist Nicolas de Staël, when suddenly Ivitch’s husband pounces into the frame and hauls her out. The two cameras that compose the 3-D image diverge, and the shot seems to split into two: one tracks Ivitch as her husband circles her and brandishes a pistol, the other remains fixed on Davidson, until at last Ivitch returns to Davidson’s side and the two images converge into one. Seen in 3-D, each image is relegated to an eye: Ivitch on the right, Davidson on the left, leaving viewers to “cut” between them by keeping one eye closed and the other open. (David Ehrlich, reviewing the film for The Dissolve, called it a “choose your own adventure” device.) It’s montage taken to its logical extreme: in-eye editing.
This isn’t simply a great shot—it’s a new kind of shot altogether.
by Calum Marsh, Dissolve | Read more:
Image: Jean-Luc Godard and Fabrice Aragno
