Jean-Luc Godard: For Ever Mozart (1996)

Even a few minutes of Jean-Luc Godard's For Ever Mozart (1996) would probably scare most people off. Maybe even more so than "actual" archival footage of the Bosnian War (1992-1995) or the current Syrian Civil War, or fighting in Sudan and South Sudan, or in Kenya, or Iraq. 

Art collides with killing. We know what killing is, but what exactly is art? What does it do? What makes it different? What difference does it make? Is it entertainment, or remembrance, or bearing witness, or something both grounded and transcendent to either, or both, the creator and the beholder? You tell me. Godard asks the questions. Sort of. Maybe. (Does he? What about his answers? Are they provisional?) Does "the average person" care about Bosnia, or Syria, or art? And if not, why not? And if so, why?

Then there's linear time. And looping time. I was intrigued on first look during For Ever Mozart -- which for the most part felt maddening, like a special remix of Godard's Les Carabiniers (1963) and Week-end (1967) in part with dashes of the future-made Notre Musique (2004) -- about an explicit statement illuminating the Bosnian War (and other related post-Yugoslavian slaughter of fellow Europeans) as being the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, a prequel to what followed (World War II). 

As if time is in a reverse loop, with Bosnia first, then Spain, and then WW2. Strange. But true enough, I suppose. 

Maybe we are all The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) -- even though I haven't seen that particular movie version of time yet (nor earlier nor later nor evermore). I have seen Michel Gondry's (and Charlie Kaufman's) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), which may bring up similar musings on time and memory and desire. Can you dig? Could you then or now or in the future? If not, forget all that is here. Maybe the next post will be more spot on, or spotless, or equally spotty. Who can tell until it's done?  

Today's Rune: Signals.