by Meseret Haddis
Looking back at Godard’s career, 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her comes at a pivotal transitional period for the filmmaker. The film follows a Parisian woman, Juliette, as she works as a prostitute and mother over the course of a day. Godard’s previous two films (Made in U.S.A. and Masculine Feminin) as well as those that followed (La Chinoise and Weekend) moved away from the “theatrics” of Pierrot Le Fou and towards political theater, which absorbed his later work. In certain points in Godard’s career, he is able to show that political and philosophical understanding almost have no differences, as they are linked toward social and emotional progress.
Alienation of Character and Content
The alienation effect is a tool pioneered by the German playwright Bertolt Brecht to insure that the audience doesn’t relate or empathize with a play’s characters. This can be achieved through disjointed scenes, self-aware characters and broken fourth walls. The audience is drawn away from a sense of emotional investment and, instead, focuses on the ideas being expressed in the play. Godard, a self-proclaimed student of Brecht, uses many of the playwright’s techniques in achieving this effect.
As the film begins, Juliette (Marina Vlady) is introduced. The woman is first described as Marina and then as Juliette; this break of the fourth wall continues throughout the film, as Juliette narrates her emotions and thoughts, often in the midst of conversation with another person. There isn’t much room for the audience to identify with Juliette, often because she seems cold and mechanical (a result, she admits, of the life she lives).
Other characters share the self-awareness that Juliette expresses, as well. During certain points in Juliette’s day, a store clerk or a bar fly will look into the camera and say two or three things about her self (“I come to the city twice a month,” “I have hazel eyes,” etc). As we follow Juliette, we are reminded of the invisible wall that separates her and us, and when we look to other characters we hope to find a connection or situation that is able to help us fall into the fantasy of the film, but it’s never there.
There seems to be a consistent attempt by Godard to keep the viewer aware, at all times, of his film’s fabrication, to continue to look critically at the expanding city of Paris that is being quietly destroyed by capitalism. Godard whispers in the final scene, “Thanks to Esso, I drive safely to the land of my dreams and I forget the rest. I forget Hiroshima, I forget Auschwitz, I forget Budapest, I forget Vietnam, I forget the S.M.I.G., I forget the housing shortage, I forget the famine in India. I’ve forgotten everything except that, as I’m going back to zero, I’ll have to use that as my point of departure.” Godard is warning us of the intended effects of a capitalist society, something that he mocks unabashedly later in the film Weekend. The quite citizen is what they want and their control has become so great that Godard himself has to whisper his thoughts to the audience, because what he is saying is creating new consciousness, new beginnings, essentially; destroying the old.
Modernization: Creating New Consciousness
2 or 3 Things is littered with shots of a growing “Paris Region,” as it is referred to in the film. Transition scenes are cut with shots of cranes and trucks at constructions sites, over which Godard’s narration is heard, attempting to draw connections between Juliette and the city’s modernization.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Brecht’s alienation technique and Marx’s theory of alienated labor are similar in what they express. They both speak to the disconnection between product and production. With Brecht, we are shown the idea or meaning behind the dialogue separating the audience from the play or film; with Marx, we are shown the consequences of capitalism as workers becomes disconnected with the objects he’s producing. Marx explains, “The externalization of the worker in his product means not only that his work becomes an object, an external existence, but also that it exists outside him independently, alien, an autonomous power, opposed to him. The life he has give to the object confronts him as hostile and alien.”[1]
Juliette is a character who’s aware of this disconnection, but seems incapable of doing anything about it. In one of the last scenes, she asks her husband, Robert, about their evening plans:
Robert: We’ll sleep… What’s the matter with you?
Juliette: And after that?
Robert: We’ll wake up.
Juliette: And after that?
Robert: The same. All over again. We’ll work. We’ll eat.
Juliette: And after that?
Robert: I don’t know. We’ll die.
Juliette: And after that?
Godard is making the point clear and how this can be related to a factory worker, of this disconnection from what we are doing. Juliette is aware of the monotony, but Robert is not. He’s confused as to why she would ask him these questions in the first place. Juliette later states, “I’ve changed and yet I’ve gone back to being myself, so what does that mean?” Whether or not this means that she’s done commodifying herself to her husband and other men is unclear, but the statement is posed to the audience. Will you make the change? Or have you not even realized the situation you are in?
[1] From Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
“Language alone cannot accurately define an image,” Godard proclaims. But it’s also clear that both are being pushed together in our society. As Godard adds, “Words and images intermingle constantly. You can almost say that living in today’s world is rather like living in the middle of a big comic strip.” Godard continues to examine the scenes and questions if they’re being described effectively and accurately with images.
Godard wants to show the audience that a new language has to be created, that our language has a set of limitations. Even in 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, we must be wary of words, particularly so when they come from Juliette (“Words never say what I’m really saying”). In one scene Juliette is getting her nails and hair done, and she’s being asked questions by the woman doing her nails, but before Juliette answer the questions she makes a comment for the audience (that the woman doesn’t hear) and then answers the question. At one point when she’s asked about her kids she says, “Words never say what I’m really saying.” And answers the woman by saying their fine, but very naughty, you know.” Godard continues this expression of what we say can’t always capture what we mean, that (as it is said in Le Petit Soldat) the only truth is photography.
By the end, as the title perhaps alludes to, the film feels intentionally incomplete. You can’t whittle down a woman to two or three things, because more is required to complete the picture. Godard isolates information and asks that we use it to better understand the picture and, more importantly, to change it. For the people of Paris to change the bad things that were happening they had to understand modernization, what its effect is on the people, economically and psychologically and by examining two or three things is a great way to get started.
2 Or 3 Things I Know About Her is playing at the Film Forum until February 24th.
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