Before heyday: Richard Linklater presents "New Wave" in Cannes
Richard Linklater, the largest independent American director, the author of the trilogy "Before Dawn", the monumental "Boyhood" and the cult animation "Opacity", brought his first French-language film to the Cannes competition. "New Wave" is a declaration of love for cinema, made in violation of the written and unwritten rules of this art. Izvestia watched the film in Cannes and tells us what Linklater's victory is, even if he does not receive the Palme d'Or.
"New Wave" is now Linklater's film
You have to be a cheeky Texan guy to bring a film about Godard and the entire French "new wave" to the Cannes Film Festival, and even shot in French. Here, on the Croisette, the "new wave" was born, here it lived and thrived until all its representatives, one by one, grew old and died. Every representative of the "new wave" is known by heart here, many viewers were personally acquainted with them, and some even managed to work with these Olympians.
Director Richard Linklater at the premiere of the film "New Wave" at the 78th Cannes Film Festival
And so Linklater, already a rare guest in Cannes, brings here a film not just about Godard or about shooting his debut full-meter "On the last Breath", but at once about the whole "new wave" and even those who were just around. He might as well have brought to Russia a Russian-language film about the poets of the Sixties with a title like Okudzhava. Or something about Vysotsky. You can independently come up with colorful comparisons and metaphors to describe how meticulously the Cannes audience greeted this picture. What emotions she showed quite openly in the very first shots. And then you'll have to work hard to figure out how Linklater made even the most grumpy and ever-nagging critics fall in love with this film.
What did we see? A black-and-white picture shot with an academic frame, that is, the image is almost square, like in old films. Right off the bat, we are thrown into the editorial office of the main French magazine about cinema, Caye du Cinema, whose staff once decided that it was time to stop writing about cinema, because it was time to shoot ourselves. And they created the very "new wave", taking the best from American cinema, Italian neorealism and modern French philosophers.
In the editorial office, the situation is as follows: Claude Chabrol, Louis Mal and Francois Truffaut have already shot their paintings. At the same time, the most ambitious critic, Godard, has not yet released any masterpiece, he is nervous, because he will soon be 30, and he is still not a great director. Therefore, he rushes to accept the offer of a producer's friend to make a crime film based on Truffaut's script. "On my last breath." The one that divides the entire cinema into "before" and "after" will be the most important milestone in the history of cinematography. But first we need to at least start shooting, and Godard has only a very rough idea of what should happen, and the confidence that we need to make a movie that has never been before.
How the "New Wave" was filmed
If the trademark feature of Godard's painting is defiant carelessness, then Richard Linklater, on the contrary, is so meticulous in recreating the era, France at the end of the 50s, that you can't help yourself — sometimes you just fall into the reality he constructed.
For the sake of this effect, Linklater took a number of risky steps. For all the roles, he invited almost unknown artists who are portrayally similar to the prototypes. The only exception, perhaps, is Zoey Deutch, and that is rather intentional, because she plays the only superstar in Godard's film Jean Seberg. Only Godard could not use the stars, and stars of any level and any country would be happy to work with Linklater.
Every time we see a new character, the movie stops and we're presented with another legend over the credits. Here is Agnes Varda, after whom the hall at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes was recently named, here is the great Italian Roberto Rossellini, and here is Jean-Paul Belmondo, Godard's friend, who was just a boxer before the film "On his Last Breath", and after that instantly became the most important actor in French cinema. Everyone is incredibly similar, everyone speaks their own language — English, French, Italian: the sound picture of the "New Wave" should be considered its most important advantage. That is, then you will need to search for a version with subtitles only.
And then we will follow Godard and his team very consistently, with dates, from the beginning of the idea "In the last breath" to viewing the finished picture. It takes about a hundred minutes for everything about everything, a little more than the Godard film itself.
But what hurts the most, and this is Linklater's deliberate provocation, is that the film was shot as a quasi—documentary, and almost all the characters are talking with quotes that are in all books about cinema and are well known. This creates such a strong contrast between the image and the meaning that you feel very uncomfortable for the first half hour of the film. Well, why does Godard have to say all his aphorisms in the frame, starting with the fact that all you need for a good movie is a girl and a gun? Why do his interlocutors not say a word in simplicity, but also completely give out one after another the "sayings of the great"? It's unbelievable!
Agnes Varda also sometimes invited Godard to her films. And in one short film, she made him take off his famous black glasses. But Linklater doesn't do it even once. His author's decision is to leave the legend as a legend, and if Godard wants to wear glasses day and night, let him walk and even sleep in them. Linklater, known for his precision in nuances and ultra-truthfulness, for which he shot "Boyhood" for ten years so that the little actors would grow up with the plot, departs from his rule here. He's not looking for the truth, he's confessing his love. In the expectation that this love will connect with the love of the viewer.
This is exactly the effect we saw in Cannes. The sarcastic, strict, politicized, jaded audience ended up watching this picture with absolutely loving eyes. Read the reviews — it's the same everywhere: you can't make a movie, but it turned out so well, what joy, what happiness! So Linklater will probably leave Cannes without prizes, but when in the end credits he announces that after "With his last breath", one and a half hundred debuts were shot in France in three years, I want to drop everything, grab my smartphone and urgently shoot a movie too. Just because the mood is appropriate.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
