Hidden deep inside Eric Kohn’s latest piece on the debacle surrounding the production of “The Idol” is some Cannes intel.
There’s another movie expected in the lineup that won’t enthrall red-carpet gawkers, but should thrill true cinephiles: a 20-minute short directed by the late Jean-Luc Godard. “Funny Wars” marks the last complete cinematic vision by the French New Wave legend before his assisted suicide last year, and sources say it’s locked in the lineup. (He left notes behind for another short, “Scenario,” that his longtime collaborators Fabrice Aragno and Jean-Paul Battagia are working to complete.
Like much of Godard’s late-period work, “Funny Wars” had no need for actors: Godard used a collage-like approach that blended fragments of images and text to convey more abstract ideas than any performer could provide. Expect a wide range of philosophical meditations on the modern world, possibly including some chilling references to suicide as a form of insubordination. Godard didn’t just make movies up until the very end; he lived inside them, better than any actor. Filmmaking was his state of mind.
We know that prior to his death in early fall, Godard was working on two films: “Scénario” and “Funny Wars.” In October, during her MoMA installation, Artist Mitra Farahani was slyly credited as the producer of “Scénario.”
Godard was a God of the medium, having advanced it more than any other person save for the Lumieres brothers or George Melies. He’s always strayed far away from conventional cinema and instead opted to make films in bold, original, and vital fashion.
All the details that we know about these final two JLG films come from Godard’s closest collaborator, cinematographer Fabrice Aragno.
According to Aragno, “Funny Wars” was shot on 35mm, 16mm, and Super 8—35mm shot black-and-white, the other two color—while “Scénario” appears “more in a classic video style with some Super-8 images, not with 35mm.”
Aragno additionally stated that Godard specifically wanted to go back to his origins. “He said you know this Chris Marker film “La Jetée”? Maybe we can do something like that”.
It’s been a long time since traditional or even vaguely conventional “movies” had interested the legendary filmmaker. If anything, his films over the last 20 or so years have been experimental audio/visual collages more interested in pictures, sounds, cuts, and de-saturation, a maddening barrage of dadaist statements.