Adieu au langage (Jean-Luc Godard, 2014)

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accatone · #26 Post by **accatone** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 10:26 am

http://www.amazon.fr/Adieu-au-langage-B ... au+langage" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
This looks very good plus:
Contenu additionnel
Livret exclusif (28 pages)
Entretien avec Jean-Luc Godard (45')
"Allemagne Neuf Zéro" : moyen métrage (60')

Alan Smithee · #27 Post by **Alan Smithee** » Tue Sep 16, 2014 12:04 pm

Anybody know what the medium length version of Germany Year 90 Nine Zero is all about? Saw it ages ago but remember it being about an hour long.

accatone · #28 Post by **accatone** » Tue Sep 16, 2014 12:35 pm

Is think it just says "medium length film" as opposed to "long- or short film". 60min is medium i guess. Great release - in fact first time outside Japan.

rrenault · #29 Post by **rrenault** » Tue Sep 16, 2014 12:51 pm

Officially, I think 60 minutes is the minimum length a film can be to be classified as a "feature", but in the popular imagination, anything under 80 miunutes or so is seen as "short".

EddieLarkin · #30 Post by **EddieLarkin** » Tue Sep 16, 2014 1:46 pm

40 minutes is the official length for a feature. In the silent era, one, two and three reel films were considered shorts, whereas four reel films were advertised as features. A single reel is around 11 minutes at 24fps. Today, AMPAS, the AFI and the BFI all consider 40 minutes or more a feature film length.

whaleallright · #31 Post by **whaleallright** » Tue Sep 16, 2014 7:04 pm

what is this "official" body you folks are alluding to?

Kirkinson · #32 Post by **Kirkinson** » Wed Sep 17, 2014 5:29 am

One extreme counterexample off the top of my head: Magdana's Donkey won a prize for best fiction short film at Cannes in 1956 even though it's 49 minutes long!

Nowadays, though, it looks as if Cannes considers short films to be less than 15 minutes and features to be more than 60, and they don't accept any films with durations in between. This is not all that uncommon—I worked on a film a couple years ago that ended up being about 45 minutes, and several festivals we looked at simply didn't have a category it could be submitted to.

An hour is still unusually short for a feature, though, so it's not all that strange to refer to Germany Year 90 Nine Zero as being medium-length, especially when Godard's features are almost all around 90 minutes.

#33 Post by **swo17** » Wed Sep 17, 2014 6:21 am

Kirkinson wrote:Nowadays, though, it looks as if Cannes considers short films to be less than 15 minutes and features to be more than 60, and they don't accept any films with durations in between. This is not all that uncommon—I worked on a film a couple years ago that ended up being about 45 minutes, and several festivals we looked at simply didn't have a category it could be submitted to.

Preposterous! Many of the greatest films of all time run between 40 and 70 minutes.

sdyoung · #34 Post by **sdyoung** » Tue Oct 07, 2014 7:03 pm

Huffpo has a piece on Goodbye to Language complete with a 2D example of some of it's innovations.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/0 ... ertainment

Noiretirc · #35 Post by **Noiretirc** » Tue Nov 04, 2014 8:36 pm

DVD and 3D Blu on Dec 3rd.

#36 Post by **domino harvey** » Tue Nov 04, 2014 8:38 pm

Is Adieu au language screening in 3D anywhere on the East Coast besides NYC?

#37 Post by **mfunk9786** » Tue Nov 04, 2014 8:47 pm

Sounds like that's still yet to be determined:

“Finding ‘3D art screens’ has been a challenge for us in many major US markets,” distributor Kino Lorber said in a release. “We’re ecstatic and hoping that these ‘socko’ numbers will catch the attention of our exhibition partners –particularly at Landmark and Pacific Theaters – and lead to additional 3D playtime in major markets, especially LA, in the coming weeks.”

It did play during the Philadelphia Film Festival, but I missed it and hope I'll have another opportunity to see it, so if you find anything out, please update us here!

lefeufollet · #38 Post by **lefeufollet** » Tue Nov 04, 2014 10:00 pm

Adieu is slated to play in Charlottesville, VA on Sunday, November 9, but, as with Philadelphia, it's a one-off festival screening.

The fellow who introduced the recent Philly screening repeatedly stressed how rare a non-NYC 3D engagement of the film would be, but I'm hopeful that those per-screen numbers will improve matters. I'd love to have the chance to see it again.

Raymond Marble · #39 Post by **Raymond Marble** » Wed Nov 05, 2014 12:48 am

Here is a link to its upcoming dates.

Numero Trois · #40 Post by **Numero Trois** » Sat Nov 22, 2014 5:06 am

I could've sworn Adieu had its own thread. Anyway, here's an interview with the lead actress. A few interesting tidbits here and there.

Kirkinson · #41 Post by **Kirkinson** » Sat Nov 29, 2014 8:51 am

Just popping in to say that Kino Lorber's list of playdates for Goodbye to Language is not up-to-date, as the film just opened today in Portland at Cinema 21, in 3D, and will be running for at least a week.

I can only echo the sentiments of others who have praised its total reinvention of the 3D format and how joyful it is to see Godard this late in the game still doing something so provocative and revolutionary with the medium. I can also echo zedz's sentiment that Godard is spreading his intellectual butter very thin in this one, sometimes in ways that border on (and may very well be) self-parody, but it scarcely matters at all when he's showing you something so new.

I feel I should also warn people that although I've never had any physical problems with 3D before, this film left me with eye strain and a headache—all worth it, in my opinion, but if you're more sensitive you might have an even worse time.

I'm wondering, though, if some of this problem might have resulted from projection issues or problems with the way the subtitles are rendered in the DCP Kino Lorber is distributing. There were many, many instances—I would say at least half the time—in which the subtitles themselves seemed to be misaligned in the left and right eyes, or in any case aligned differently than the image, so that it was impossible to see the image correctly and read the subtitles simultaneously. My eyes themselves had to refocus and realign the two fields on the fly (like bringing your finger close to your face and constantly readjusting so that you see either your finger or the background correctly or as a double-image) which was a substantial physical challenge. Granted, that experience is sort of in keeping with the film itself, and given the way Godard has been treating subtitles lately it's not out of the question that it could have been intentional. But I can't recall anyone specifically mentioning it in what I've read, which makes me think it may actually be an error of some sort.

Oedipax · #42 Post by **Oedipax** » Sat Nov 29, 2014 2:21 pm

I don't think it's Kino Lorber-specific - when I saw the film twice in Paris I had the same issues (the copy playing at the Accattone had English subtitles). The first viewing, I made the mistake of sitting much too close to the screen, and that combined with having been awake something like 30 hours (after a full day of work and a 9 hour flight) made it so I literally could not focus my eyes on anything in certain shots. I think it doesn't help also that I do wear glasses anyway, which tends to make wearing 3D glasses and converging an image properly tougher for me. Anyway, I saw the film a second time on a good night's sleep and sat several rows further back and had a much better experience, although that first extremely disorienting one was quite memorable as well. I wouldn't be surprised if Godard had some involvement with the subs that were shown as they certainly didn't cover everything and seemed to assume a basic level of French fluency that would be mostly missing in a general U.S. audience. At the same time, they were definitely more comprehensive and grammatically correct unlike the Navajo subs on Film Socialisme.

#43 Post by **zedz** » Sun Nov 30, 2014 9:36 pm

Kirkinson wrote:I'm wondering, though, if some of this problem might have resulted from projection issues or problems with the way the subtitles are rendered in the DCP Kino Lorber is distributing. There were many, many instances—I would say at least half the time—in which the subtitles themselves seemed to be misaligned in the left and right eyes, or in any case aligned differently than the image, so that it was impossible to see the image correctly and read the subtitles simultaneously. My eyes themselves had to refocus and realign the two fields on the fly (like bringing your finger close to your face and constantly readjusting so that you see either your finger or the background correctly or as a double-image) which was a substantial physical challenge. Granted, that experience is sort of in keeping with the film itself, and given the way Godard has been treating subtitles lately it's not out of the question that it could have been intentional. But I can't recall anyone specifically mentioning it in what I've read, which makes me think it may actually be an error of some sort.

I think a lot of that is Godard's deliberate doing. Many of the compositions are built around things that the 3D process has extreme difficulty resolving (e.g. extreme depth of field), and there are shots which I'm sure are deliberately unresolvable, and with which you have to choose which field of the image you will focus on and work to resolve, then change your focus radically with the very next shot. Because the subtitles are their own field in the midst of all this chaos, they're also a casualty, and can be thrown out of focus by the extreme 3D business happening in front of or behind them. I think all of this is indeed an 'error' when it comes to standard 3D protocol, but that's precisely what Godard is exploring. Back in 1960, jump cuts were a technical error that didn't belong in a feature film too.

At the end of the screening, my eyes felt kind of super-charged like they'd just had a workout (which they had) and I felt fresher then ever seeing the remaining two films that day, but I can certainly understand how somebody would come away from the film with eyestrain and a thumping headache.

accatone · #44 Post by **accatone** » Mon Dec 01, 2014 10:13 am

http://www.filmsdocumentaires.com/films ... nt-gervais" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

DVD available with engl. subtitles.
A transcript has been published before in an interview book i think. I have read the book but not the seen the DVD yet but will certainly purchase.

Oedipax · #45 Post by **Oedipax** » Fri Dec 05, 2014 7:15 pm

In case it's useful to anyone, the bluray copy of Adieu au langage out this week in France is region-free despite having a region B logo on the artwork. The feature itself is available in 3D or 2D flavors, and the 2D version (which is all I'm equipped to watch on my setup) is 1080p24. There are optional SDH subtitles in French as well as a French-language description track that (attempts to) describe everything happening visually onscreen.

Unfortunately, the copy of Allemagne 90 neuf zéro is standard def 1.33 PAL, and not a particularly good-looking transfer of the film. I haven't compared directly but if memory serves the Japanese DVD looked better... Also, no subs of any kind on this.

The Canon Europe interview with Godard is in 1080i50, and has hardcoded English subtitles.

Souvenir d'utopie by Anne-Marie Miéville is also 1.33 PAL SD, consisting of a montage of static shots of miniatures from Godard's Pompidou exhibition set to various music and natural sounds. It runs about 6 minutes, no dialogue.

accatone · #46 Post by **accatone** » Fri Dec 05, 2014 10:08 pm

Useful, thanks. Interesting what the UK disc will offer - bonus or malus...

Noiretirc · #47 Post by **Noiretirc** » Thu Dec 18, 2014 10:17 pm

Oedipax wrote:In case it's useful to anyone, the bluray copy of Adieu au langage out this week in France is region-free despite having a region B logo on the artwork. The feature itself is available in 3D or 2D flavors, and the 2D version (which is all I'm equipped to watch on my setup) is 1080p24. There are optional SDH subtitles in French as well as a French-language description track that (attempts to) describe everything happening visually onscreen.

How satisfying is it to watch this film in 2D? I wonder what Mr Godard's opinion is on this matter.

Oedipax · #48 Post by **Oedipax** » Fri Dec 19, 2014 2:26 am

Noiretirc wrote:
Oedipax wrote:In case it's useful to anyone, the bluray copy of Adieu au langage out this week in France is region-free despite having a region B logo on the artwork. The feature itself is available in 3D or 2D flavors, and the 2D version (which is all I'm equipped to watch on my setup) is 1080p24. There are optional SDH subtitles in French as well as a French-language description track that (attempts to) describe everything happening visually onscreen.
How satisfying is it to watch this film in 2D? I wonder what Mr Godard's opinion is on this matter.

I would say it's satisfying only insofar as you've already seen the film a few times in 3D; then, seeing it in 2D clarifies quite a bit by way of everything you miss out on. But I would also add different shots stood out to me more in 2D than in 3D, and some shots even look totally different in 2D.

As for Godard, according to a recent interview with his cinematographer & collaborator Fabrice Aragno, Godard looked at the film in 3D and then again in 2D, and immediately declared that the film would be in 3D (there was a question of maybe showing 2D at Cannes for time reasons).

And as for myself, I have to somewhat sheepishly admit part of the reason I upgraded my TV last week to a Sony 4K set was because it featured passive 3D. So now the 2D question is academic for me, I am thrilled to say.

Noiretirc · #49 Post by **Noiretirc** » Fri Dec 19, 2014 6:53 am

Thanks for that.

tenia · #50 Post by **tenia** » Wed Dec 24, 2014 1:26 pm

Watched L'adieu au langage 2 days ago and god what a drag.

Artistically speaking, why not ? It looks like an impressionistic movie, with collages, juxtapositions, ruptures and other editing tricks (both on picture and sound). But as a movie, it's indeed pretty hard to grasp the aim of this all and i'm not sure at all these techniques which work well in painting work as well for a movie. Anyway, I understand now the Cannes' reaction to it.

But apart from this, the film feels bloated and more self-conscious than anything. Godard's philosophical punch lines and intertitles now feels obsolote and simplistic, and its humor out of place.
Do you want to see a man shitting in 3D with the sound of its farts in glorious 5.1 ? Yep, that's all there, because toilets are the place for true egality.

For what ? God(ard) only knows, but hell, it feels like a never ending mess (right from its opening credits) while it actually only is 70 min.

German-speaking people come and go, the main characters change their names every 10 min, a dog walks and plays in blown-out red flowers shot on low rez, the man leaves the wife for the whore, actors gets naked for no reason, Metropolis plays in the background then Only Angels Have Wings then Piranha 3D, then Mary Sheilley writes Frankenstein and it ends.

Michael Bay plays with $400M CGI and explosions, while Godard plays with 3D, Go Pro and smartphones camera.
But both ends up leaving you with only your visual cortex on, and all the rest off.

Fortunately, I watched it only in 2D, and I'm not sure I want to try it in 3D.

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