Godard’s “Paradise”

A throwaway observation: The many reviewers who have described act 3 of Notre Musique as “pastoral” and “lyrical” are projecting their own desires onto it. After watching 25 Godard films in the last few weeks, I can think of very few sequences that take place completely in nature. In fact, the only two stand-outs are the interview with Eve Democracy in One Plus One and the final act of Weekend. Godard’s characters often leave the city — see Les Carabiniers, Pierrot Le Fou, and For Ever Mozart — but they always maintain access to a car or some other technological connection to civilization. (Now that I think about it, even Miss Democracy is always accompanied by that interviewer and camera crew.) Weekend, then, is Godard’s paradigmatic expression of nature as revolutionary and savage; Notre Musique‘s “Paradise” is, likewise, a political and ironic space.