Just by coincidence last night I re-read Jonathan Rosenbaum's essay "A Cinema of Uncertainty: Films by Michelangelo Antonioni" (1993). At the beginning of this piece, Rosenbaum names the twelve greatest directors in the world, "not so much personal favorites as individuals who, in [his] estimation, have done the most to change the way we perceive the world and are likeliest to be remembered and valued half a century from now." It struck me that of the dozen men cited twenty-nine nears ago only two remained living.
And now, sadly, just one (Hou Hsiao-hsien).
When, nineteen years ago, I created this blog, I chose Jean-Luc Godard as half its namesake not because he was my personal favourite director, but rather because – apart from sharing two-thirds of my initials – Godard seemed to me the quintessential brilliant, prickly, serious, artistic filmmaker. I had sought out aggressively every Godard movie I could find (then, mostly through Ebay, snatching up VHS tapes and bootleg discs), seen probably 15 or so, and just read Colin MacCabe's Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at Seventy, which cemented my impression of this iconoclastic giant of post-war European art. I was an admirer and a convert.
For still younger generations who regard cinema/cinephilia as much as a religion (encompassing art, politics, history, philosophy, almost all facets of life) as did Godard's Nouvelle Vague peers, JLG was something of a mythic high priest. Yet, unlike many revered elderly figureheads, Godard remained utterly vital to the last, creating a series of astonishing films in the twenty-first century that rival or surpass his more famous '60s heyday. 2001's Éloge de l'amour, the first in that late-career renaissance, was one of the first movies I ever wrote about at length – a review that, evidently, has mercifully vanished from the memory of the Internet.
While I don't necessarily agree with the logic of Rosenbaum's above-quoted criteria for defining the world's greatest filmmakers, it certainly fits for Godard. He has genuinely and significantly impacted the way that I, and many other people, perceive the world; and there is no doubt at all that his name, reputation, and oeuvre will endure –– far beyond a mere half-century.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
