It’s very important to have a drink or two before watching JLG’s more avant-garde films. It’s all about getting on the right wavelength. There are plenty of reviews of Le Gai Savoir out there (it just was released on DVD) but none of them mention how a lot of this movie is meant to be funny. Remember, Godard likes detective movies. This is a cut-up, and I mean that in multiple ways. If the point is that the medium of film is not to be trusted, or must be re-learned, then it is okay if a lot of it just flies by. Also: there is the very real possibility that he was just fucking around in the editing room trying to make a deadline. A lot of it is audio collage over black leader – a lot of it is just more Leninist rambling – a lot of it is just torn out pages of magazine images with faux revolutionary phrases scrawled over it. And then there’s Jean-Pierre Leaud in a black box room making radio sounds. If you can’t dig on all that, I don’t know what I can do for you.
