Rating: 
Summary: / A film to be seen rather than discussed \
Review: "Éloge De L'Amour" ("In Praise Of Love") is a film to be seen rather than discussed. Yet, critics do discuss it. I have read reviews by critics whom I have respected, but whose sanity I am now beginning to doubt. Comments have ranged from finding the film confused, disorganized and unclear to judging it to be anti-American and simplistic. My opinion is that it is a beautiful film - photographically, observationally and philosophically. I would compare it to "Mon Oncle D'Amèrique", "Trois Couleurs", "Zerkalo" ("Mirror"), "Der Himmel Über Berlin" ("Wings Of Desire") and "Chelsea Walls".
Rating:
Summary: / A film to be seen rather than discussed \
Review: "Éloge De L'Amour" ("In Praise Of Love") is a film to be seen rather than discussed. Yet, critics do discuss it. I have read reviews by critics whom I have respected, but whose sanity I am now beginning to doubt. Comments have ranged from finding the film confused, disorganized and unclear to judging it to be anti-American and simplistic. My opinion is that it is a beautiful film - photographically, observationally and philosophically. I would compare it to "Mon Oncle D'Amèrique", "Trois Couleurs", "Zerkalo" ("Mirror"), "Der Himmel Über Berlin" ("Wings Of Desire") and "Chelsea Walls".
Rating:
Summary: Melancholy
Review: An incredibly melancholy movie by Godard. Interesting experimental use of digital video too.
Rating: 
Summary: Jean-Luc Cinema God-Art
Review: Bertolucci said ambiguity, Proust said memory, Marx said gold, Pasolini said human suffering, Fellini said images, Ferreri said alienation, Godard said....cinema. To understand Godard one must understand cinema, the true apocalyptic nature of the art deemed as Lumiere as 'without a future'. Godard is the messiah of the cinema and 'Eloge De L'amour' is a hymn fir an art-form dying since its birth, torn between film and video, color and black and white, collective and personal memory, a century passed and a century about to begin, Godard resents logic and lets the images speak for themselves: images of death, of emptiness, he uses video as a symbol for his own anti-classical way of making films and black and white film as a symbol for the classical cinema of Hitchcock, Ray, Bresson or Mieville that he idolized as a young writer of the Cahiers Du Cinema (symbolized by a torn poster of 'Pickpocket' on a wall). A prophet for the dying age of cinema, Godard has made a film that self-consciously unconscious, his stylized anti-classicalism, his style is more ripe than ever before, melancholic and rebellious, the anarchist's screams have grown to melancholic observations, interrupted by a bit of Beethoven or a question or perhaps even a quotation from the prophet of the Nouvelle Vague, Andre Bazin (who was movingly quoted in the beginning of 'Contempt'). He is the film, he is film, he is the bande a part running with life, cinema, poetry and art and his eye is eternal like that of an immortal saint that cannot be destroyed by the fires of the outside world.
Rating: 
Summary: Admirable Attempt
Review: Godard once again attempts to capture the retro-smitten flower of youth, only to run into a Cinematic Guajardian blockade. If not for the visuals (suspect in that they seem "borrowed" from previous pioneering visual techniques), this film would lend a mistaken hint of pseudo-parody, blemished by an over eager desire to recapture past glory."In Praise of Love" returns us to that intriguing "End To Beginning" tactic often utilized in cinema masterpieces like "Betrayal," but this artistry overrides the plot in an attempt to parody American film czars. By dividing this work into two parts, and subdividing the first part into contrived Buddhist expressionism (The Four Noble Truths), Godard seems to be trying to impress us with pseudo-archetypes, Gestruist-Symbolism, and subtle Guajardian "surprises." The result will leave even the most infantile film student shaking his head, wondering if Godard based the entire film on the cliffnotes of "Siddhartha." There are bright spots, however, in this Wonderland of Mediocrity. This intense shining of chalky yet solid color-wheel effect known as "Speedcolor," was used in American cinema for one brief shining moment, by director Bill McGaha, in the 1967 art house classic "The Speed Lovers". McGaha, whose final directing credit was in a 1972 Norse epic "Iron Horsemen," seems humble enough not to flaunt his laurels. If Godard can express the "horror toppled by commercial sellout" embodied by the old couple trying to make sense of lives after the war, power to him. All in all, am admirable attempt at recapturing glory days, but missing the mark completely.
Rating:
Summary: The best film of 2001...another great Godard film
Review: I really love this film. Like most of Godard's best work, it yields itself to repeated viewings (I have seen it now 4 times) because it is such a rich work, including so many ideas (on language, love, memory, Paris, America, poverty, and of course cinema). The film is very much like a novel in that each scene is imbued with more and more layers one on top of the other. Highly complex, original, and intelligent cinema is hard to come by nowadays, so thank you Jean-Luc for making movies for INTELLIGENT people.
Rating:
Summary: A Poetic Essay
Review: If you only know Godard from his 1960's films this late phase masterpiece will come as a surprise. In Praise of Love could just as well be titled In Praise of French Culture as this film is like a testament to all of the things Godard loves most about his countries cultural traditions. We know Godards taste in philosophy, music, literature, painting and most importantly film because his favorite sources decorate every frame of the film. References abound within the film to Robert Bresson -- who I think could well be called the patron saint of French Cinema. The New Wave film makers were always fond of Bresson but here Godard not only shows a young man standing in front of a movie poster for Pickpocket but he also quotes from Notes of a Cinematographer-- this book provides wonderful insights into Bressons mind set but also Godards who obviously reveres him . There is also a moving reference to Vigo's L'Atalante. The Godard of the 90's is a much matured artist less concerned with shaking things up than with learning how and teaching us how we must look backward and remember in order to move forward. The view of an aging artist yes but also the view of a mature artist. The first half of In Praise of Love is shot in black and white and the most memorable shots are of Paris at night -- the cinematography is achingly romantic which is fitting for the first halfs main theme is the search for romantic love. It is misleading to say this is the only theme though as while that theme is explored Godard also speaks of the current state of France and through his actors offers his insights into the modern state of French public life and politics which obviously leave him cold -- ie the state has no love for its people, and, anyone who makes over 10,000 francs a month in France no longer has a political conscience. As he films his young actors you can tell Godard is reminiscing about his own youth and own first love Anna Karina. For Godard politics are never far from love -- the two seem to go hand in hand for him -- because the search for love is intimately connected with our search for an ideal. Love will always fail, Godard seems to say, because we can never achieve our ideal of it -- or, searching for the ideal we cease to see the object that we love. In support of this examination of the early stages of love by a young man he offers an older gentlemans memory of his first love and how the memory of it still stings him. The film has a decidedly documentary feeling and a decidedly somber tone which is reinforced by the elegiac piano music. Though the narrative is not strictly linear it is fairly easy to follow. In addition each time Godard quotes one of his cherished sources (Chateubriand, Balzaz, Bataille's Blue Noon) the book is usually in the frame. The Godardian methods will be familiar to someone who has only seen his sixties work but you will also notice that those methods have mellowed, deepened, and become more intimate, and furthermore the pace of his films has slowed considerably reflecting the directors age and this is actually a welcome nuance as it allows one to absorb the content of each sequence. I am tempted to say I prefer this late phase of Godards career to his early phase but of course one would not exist without the other. In the second part the main theme shifts away from love, although that continues to be a minor theme, and towards history -- in truth the two themes are interrelated and comments made about one topic invariably have significance for the other. Memory becomes an obsesion for the aging artist and Henri Bergson is a major reference point in this section of the film. Godard argues that until nations are willing to confess their crimes and own up to them and allow for open discourse they will remain in a kind of infancy. National identity and growth is dependent on memory and thus America is ridiculed for failing to have any kind of memory. In fact in the funniest part of the film a representative for an American film company is in France trying to purchase the rights to a resistance fighters memoirs. Godard has a character comment that America has no memories of its own and thus must buy them from other countries. America is seen to be suffering from the worst case of arrested development but France is also seen to be guilty of it as well. The film is a rich essay with many themes which complement each other in unusual ways. I found it moving and thoughtful and infinitely rich -- at any given moment you will find yourself contemplating a particularly evocative reference which connects the past to the present. This is the kind of film you like immediately and the kind of film that invites you back to it. There is much here and I've only hinted at some of the things I noticed on a single viewing but I plan on watching this many more times.
Rating:
Summary: Europe uber Alles
Review: It is important that "In Praise of Love" is watched by many ordinary intellectuals in US, for it is a beautifully stated manifesto. "We are all tricksters" states Godard, and here he tricks the cinema lovers into the formalist heresy of acknowledging his "masterful" technique, his "outstanding" cinematography.
However, the supposedy profound content of this film is actually nothing other than a set of actions, thoughts, and presumptions usually found in a teenager who is well read, lives in Europe, and never lived in US: extensive citations from unpopular books by the great (French) philosophers, paranoidal hate of the Americans, and the constant mention of death...
Has the great European film director Jean-Luc Godard become wiser and better with age, or the most horrible is true? That he has finally shown us the true face of his and of European intellectualism in general: an adolescent burdened by his own thoughts of love and death.
Aside from it all, this film has moments for which the author could get punched in the face. There is a mention of the "fact" that most Albanian "refugees" were in their home at the time of the Serbian army attack. Mr. Godard ommits the fact that they were not refugees at that precise moment yet.
It is neccessary to see and look deep into what Godard is saying and what he is showing us. The great repository of culture (Europe = France) has History on its side, and that makes all of US population - an inferior breed of humans. It is all very "profound" indeed!!!
Rating:
Summary: Philosophically, Metaphorically , Visually Beautiful Film
Review: Jean-Luc Godard has once again created a wholly unique cinematic experience in his IN PRAISE OF LOVE. The film requires participation (yes, even work) on the part of the viewer, but the contents of this art piece are so refined and so significant that it begs for repeated viewings, much like the major novels of history. His technique of telling his 'story' is idiosyncratic: there is a narrator who is at the end of a ten-year love affair and wondering why it ended. He states at both the beginning and end of the film that a love afair is in four stages: meeting, sexual passion, separation, and rediscovery. And in exploring the impact of the miracle of love he proceeds to investigate memory and history and how they are inextricably bound in our perception of the world both past and present. To present his case the narrator begins to cast a film to explain his story and selects at least one young girl to play the lover, only to have her blend into the fabric of the remaining of the film just the way glimpses become pieces of memory - distorted, illuminated, altered, reinvented by our present and our past. Much of the film is shot in luminous black and white and then the latter portion is altered by the introduction of color. But in the color portion the fields of color are manipulated into bands of brilliance that are at times artificial, at times precise. An elderly couple is interviewed, homeless people populate portions, making derisive comments on society and especially capitalism, the streets of Paris are there for wandering: Godard free associates visually and philosophically and leaves us with so many beautiful thoughts and phrases and images that one viewing of this film simply cannot suffice to capture them all. Our 'present' as a viewer will be altered by our 'history' of having watched the film before. "When I see a new landscape, it is not really 'new'(it has been there forever) but it is new to us because we relate it to landscapes and places that compose our past". IN PRAISE OF LOVE is a journey inside the mind of Godard and as such it only whets the appetite for more. A beautiful, if difficult, film for people willing to engage.
Rating:
Summary: Eloge De L'Amour
Review: Of all films, those of Jean-Luc Godard seem to be the remotest from the practise of actual film-making. When I say "film-making", I mean the conventional practise of "telling a story", of having that story as a beginning, middle and end; and having that sequence of events conspire to make the viewer feel fulfilled -whether the story is about singing in the rain or the end of the world.
Godard, on the other hand, makes films about both singing in the rain (the Gene Kelly film, that is) -such as "Une Femme Est Une Femme"- AND the end of the world -such as "Eloge De L'Amour". In an age when films genuinely seem bereft of any sort of deep thought -"deep thought" being the asking of "tough questions" which don't necessarily have "easy answers"- "Eloge..." is truly an arresting film. Even for someone such as Godard, whose films ARE thought (a ragtag collection of thrilling scenes and dialogues going nowhere in particular and everywhere in general) this film astounds -if only with its timeliness.
Released in 2001, "Eloge..." deals with the tricky issue of the Americanization of not only commodities but also of culture (if ever the two were not linked!) -in an age when both seemed under threat because of the 9/11 attacks. Yet Godard does not hold back from criticising America. Loosely based around the efforts of a film-maker, who aims to make a film with an actress who now cleans trains, the film is really a sort of collection of scenes dealing with such problematic and slippery concepts as "memory" and "remembrance". Yet behind all this evanascence of (and for) times past is a real and burning desire by Godard -through the lead characters, seemingly disillusioned leftists- to explore the disillusionament of a world apparently run by (and for?) America. The tide indeed seems to have gone out on his admiration for some American phenomena, to be left with the negative impressions of that country's arrogance. What is the way ahead for Europe? Can America come to integrate people within its sphere of influence in the way that Britain did in the past? Will America ever stop -in Godard's opinion- seeing itself as the centre of the world?
Godard asks tough questions, even though he offers no glib solutions. But, then again, he was never very good at endings.
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