Alas for Me (Helas pour moi)

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08/18/2010 “Oh, Woe is me” by Jean-Luc Godard The Return of Ancient Pagan Gods into Today’s World and into Godard’s Cinema “Woe…” is the third film of Godard’s mytho-religious trilogy: “Contempt” (1964), “Hail Mary” (1985), and “Oh, Woe is me” (1993). And it is the second film of the trilogy that deals with pagan imagery – the middle film: “Hail Mary”, is analyzing the Christian belief. In “Contempt” Godard uses Homer’s “Odysseus” as a precious springboard in an attempt to imagine Odysseus/Ulysses’ destiny in the West of the 60s. Godard stylizes the movie-camera and projection-camera as mythological monsters, and personifies the god Poseidon/Neptune as an American film-producer vis-à-vis the main character as modern Odyssey/Ulysses overburdened by the necessity to keep Gods by psychology (including his own wife) on his shoulders. In “Woe…” we have a deal with Zeus/Jupiter as the image of unconscious megalomaniacal identification on part of a small businessman. Godard takes us to the heart of people’s psychology that they blindly project outside them by forming today’s cultural trends. We are overwhelmed with Godard’s endless witty and funny examples of the growing taste for association with and being close to - super-human powers masked as human, and of superstitious worship of technology among today’s population. We observe on the screen people’s irradiating irrationality and how it triggers our prejudices and makes us in 20th – 21st centuries psychologically very close to the ancient creators of Olympus. Godard shows that we react on technological power as ancient Greeks perceived Dragons, Cyclops, Hydras or Centaurs, and that like them, but much less metaphorically and for this reason much more violently we want and are trying to be as powerful as Gods. Read the article about “Oh, Woe is me” – “A New Paganism of the Worship of Technology Intensifies Human Superstitions” (with analysis of shots from the film) at: www.actingoutpolitics.com by Victor Enyutin See more Read all reviews

Alas for Me (Helas pour moi)

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