Oh, Woe is Me (Hélas pour moi) (Jean-Luc Godard, 1993)

This felt like a different Godard film - I think the first one I’ve watched that explores the issue of faith and God in such detail. The (minor) plot is about how the spirit of God may have entered the body of Simon (Depardieu) to experience a more carnal love and desire for his wife Rachel. Meanwhile, we see a book publisher arrive to try and investigate whether this happened.

The film features some great lines, clearly hinting at the artificiality of the situation in that they are not people but actors: “We’re not some characters in a novel”, and when Simon and Rachel are talking about break-up, Simon says “we didn’t act out that scene very well… No one bought it. Ask them.“ “we need to redo the scene”. As per usual, Godard comments on the nature of cinema itself: “Cinema language is imperfect” and quotes literary references: “Do not go gently into that good night” (said twice).

It also features some more amusing lines such as, “Did u know the Communist Manifesto was published in the same year as Alice in Wonderland?” and the intertitle: “Thus, gradually the past returns to the present through the imaginary stage of a visual experience which always draws attention”, before we hear a voice-over say “Wild Orgy”, which turns out is the name of a video that we then see, as we discover the voice is coming from a woman in a video rental shop. I can never just get used to the fact of how clever Godard is, and this film just makes me want to see a comedy film by Godard, if he ever has made one. There were some really weird sounds, such as when we hear an American voice-over saying “quit talking and start talking”, which turns out is a pinball machine which the character walks past. There’s also this weird bird noise, as well as what sounds like a French Stephen Hawking type robotic voice-over, which actually made me laugh (as well as consider whether there was a problem with my computer’s sound). Like he does in a lot of his films, the sounds often started before we saw the scene, or sometimes overlapped into the next

Onto the visuals, well the whole film was divided into sections called “books”, they weren’t very clear-cut parts and with the often multiple voice-overs at once (meaning heaps of quick subtitles to read), I didn’t have a lot of time to take in what was being said. I think maybe a dubbed version would be better. Also, I don’t know if it’s a homage to his Swiss background, but on the boat that went past neat the start, it read “italie” yet there was a little Swiss flag attached to its rear. I really liked the long shots, such as Angelique and her boyfriend (?) when the publisher (?) is spying on them from behind a tree − we see them walk past and then the shot lingers there until the spying man finally comes into the foreground. Also, some brilliant shots of Anne, where it starts of as blurry but then slowly she comes into focus as she comes closer. Those were wonderful to watch. Not to mention the amazing use of lighting, sometimes that’s all I was focused on: lights reflecting off book pages, people, etc. A big bonus of this Godard collection (made up of Passion, Prenom:Carmen, Detective and Oh, Woe is Me) is the bonus half-hour feature: “Jean-Luc Godard: a riddle wrapped in an enigma” which I discuss below.

An interesting film, not his best but some of the technical camerawork made up for any confusion in narrative (which it ends up I did comprehend, as I wasn’t sure if I was meant to think there was god in Depardieu?). Turns out that is the general consensus, added to the fact that Depardieu’s name is a play on the word God (“dieu”).

3.5/5

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 1) (David Yates, 2010)

Many people have praised the latest Harry Potter film as one of the best in the series and I agree. It is quite different from the earlier films, particularly the first. We see less Hogwarts students (and hardly any Hogwarts itself) and more of the wider magical community. Harry, Ron and Hermoine are out in the real world (well, ‘real’ magical world) and on the quest to defeat the darkest wizard, Lord Voldemort.

Another way this film differs is its darkness and violence − there are fewer light-hearted moments and more dramatic, intense, life and death situations. It definitely seems like the Harry Potter series is growing along with its audience. Those early fans of the books and first films are now older and this film caters to the evolving audience.

So most of this film we see the three friends try and track down the Horcruxes in order to destroy Lord Voldemort (actually it’s mainly Harry and Hermoine, as Ron is a bit more temperamental). This group of young wizards has grown and now they’re taking on huge responsibilities. While they pretty much have the future of the wizarding world relying on them to help defeat the Dark Lord, they are quite alone in this film, both physically, as they stay in quite isolated environments, and emotionally, as now with Dumbledore dead, they don’t really have any powerful adults they can trust and who understand their “mission”.

So all these elements combined into a quite entertainment film. Though I was a fan of the books and thus, would have slightly different expectations than someone unfamiliar with them, I found that I had actually forgotten of the details in the later books. So I roughly knew the story but all the same I was surprised and engaged in the story. Definitely one of the best films in the Harry Potter series − looking forward to the final one.

4.5/5