| GODARD'S `BAND' IS STILL A DREAM OF A FILM |
| Boston Globe |
| Friday, September 7, 2001 |
| by Chris Fujiwara, Globe Correspondent |
|
Band of Outsiders Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard Starring: Anna Karina, Sami Frey, Claude Brasseur At: Brattle Theatre Running time: 95 minutes |
| Two young men conspire with a girl to steal a lot of money from the house of the girl's aunt: That's the story of Jean-Luc Godard's marvelous "Band of Outsiders." Godard's casual handling of this story, as if it were a formality and an excuse to refer to past movies, is no longer startling, since that's how most directors treat their stories now. But the rerelease of this 1964 film is a reminder that for all Godard's purported influence on later filmmakers, his more profound lesson has gone unheeded: how to make a film that's less about what the characters do and say than about the space between them. |
| It's apparent early on that "Band of Outsiders" (Bande a Part)
is set in this space. During the hilarious scene of an English class, the
camera, panning back and forth, links up the faces of the dispersed lead
trio - sleek, melancholy Franz (Sami Frey), thuggish Arthur (Claude Brasseur),
and sweet Odile (Anna Karina).
In this scene, as throughout the film, their looks at one another turn the screen into a syncopated switchboard of desires and hopes. Godard's hurried, toneless narration gives voice to the characters' thoughts, which are more romantic and complex than one might have expected. At one point, Odile imagines that Arthur is seeing her "as if the young man and the young girl had already been separated by an ocean of indifference." This ocean is the world around them - a world that cinematographer Raoul Coutard films, as if mourning it, in images of milky skies, streaming traffic, and buildings and faces washed in what Godard calls "a cold light, far away like that of a star." The characteristic playfulness of early-'60s Godard highlights how far his people are from living up to their roles as pulp protagonists. Riding a bicycle, Odile arm-signals for the benefit of nonexistent cars. Franz and Arthur shoot at each other with imaginary guns. Killing time before the heist, the three beat the record for doing the Louvre. Already way past the discovery that the French can't make movies like the Americans do, Godard makes this inability a theme of his film. Two sequences sum up what's great about "Band of Outsiders." One is the brutal and lyrical sequence in the subway where Odile recites Louis Aragon's "Les Poetes" as an ode to the "used" and "broken" people around her. From shot to shot, Karina's voice changes in quality, becoming graver and more naked. She ceases to be a touching, fairy-tale icon of innocence, and becomes a modern prophetess of disaster. The other sequence is the famous cafe scene, in which Franz, Arthur, and Odile play a game of switching glasses and seats. They agree to have "a minute of silence," and Godard cooperates by removing all the sound. Then the three do an impromptu dance routine to a mentholated soul-jazz blues on the jukebox. At the end, Odile is left dancing by herself, keeping the Hollywood-esque dream going, even as it collapses around her. During the dance, Godard tells us that Franz "doesn't know if it's the world that's becoming a dream or the dream a world." This uncertain transformation is Godard's real subject. "Band of Outsiders" is not just a time capsule of Paris 1964, nor just the portrait of a certain nostalgia for older films and lost certainties; it's an inexhaustible meditation on how the world is formed by desire. |