For Ever Mozart

'Late Godard' movies, referring to the explicitly political films French auteur Jean-Luc Godard made in the decades following his legendary 15-films-in-7-years run he had from 1960 through 1967, aren't so much an acquired taste as they are an incredibly specific one. They're jaggedly edited and politically minded beasts. They use unfulfilled narrative strands, inexplicable and unexplained sound cues, and other devices to distance you from the events on screen. But they're not puzzle boxes waiting to be solved. You don't need to study up to appreciate them; you don't need to "acquire the taste." It's just that they're simply so overflowing with ideas that they couldn't possibly fit into a more conventional structure.

"For Ever Mozart" is certainly a 'Late Godard' entry in terms of both its period of production (the '90s) and its aesthetic. The film depicts the vain attempts of a theater troupe to create a work of mindless entertainment to take the minds of the public off of a then-contemporary Bosnian conflict. Brechtian distancing devices abound: Godard's film is split distinctly into different acts, and though they link, there is no overarching narrative connecting all moments from the first act to those in the second, and so on. Sometimes this is a film about POWs tormented by off-screen gunfire, other times it's about the work of a politically na�ve theater-director aiming to create a diversionary masterpiece. Other times its about something else entirely, and you're running a fool's errand if you think that these disconnected pieces are meant to be "solved." Most films flow from plot-beat-to-plot-beat - these Late Godard's flow from idea-to-idea, suggesting that narrative logic and audience ingratiation are outdated aims, relics of commercial cinema he needs not engage with.

The extra features offered by Cohen discs expound on this approach; most helpful is an audio commentary with film critic James Quandt, who points out the many cinematic, literary and political references that influenced Godard to make the film. The rest of the extras are made up of an hour's worth of interviews, some with individuals directly related to "For Ever Mozart" (sound technician Francois Musy, biographer Antoine de Baecque,) as well as with some who were not (Jean-Claude Sussfeld, who worked on Godard's brilliant "La Chinoise," and Wily Kurant, "Masculin-Feminin.")

That lack of discernment is telling, and bolsters the feeling that few - if any - filmmakers have crafted their own cinematic language in the way that Godard has. It doesn't matter that some of the interviews are with people who didn't work on "For Ever Mozart." When you talk about one Godard film, you talk about them all. If any living filmmaker is deserving of the term "singular," he is undoubtedly the one.

"For Ever Mozart"
Blu-ray
Cohenfilmcollection.com
$39.95