Farewell, My Lovely

GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE (B-minus) - God bless Godard. I haven't completely understood a movie of his in decades. But I'm still drawn to his technicolor diatribes.

Here we have another script slathered with philosophical -- or pseudo-philosophical -- mutterings while splashed with mind-altering neon primary colors. (The film was released in theaters in 3-D, and it would be worth the zippy 68 minutes to experience it that way.)

The images are spectacular, thanks to ridiculous color correction (or, more accurately, color distortion). I suspect Godard has been trying for decades to re-create the visual fireworks from an acid trip he had in the '60s. Here, verdant fields turn lime green; a burbling sea is a cauldron of shocking cobalt; fields of geraniums bleed all over the screen. Windshield wipers slosh pale blue goop back and forth while a kaleidoscope of blurred lights dance in the background.

The same day I watched "Goodbye to Language," I read a poem about New York in the summer, by Charles Bukowski. Its ending reminded me of the experience of watching late-period Godard:

it’s like a great colorful
and surprising painting
not hanging anywhere
else.

 The "plot"? Not sure. A couple having an affair walk around an apartment naked a lot. She watches him defecate. There's a shooting in public that we hear off-screen in each of its iterations. A dog gets the most screen time, wandering about (including in a forest carpeted with leaves colored like a bowl of skittles, but of course).

As usual, it's a trip.