Les Carabiniers

I like the idea of what Godard is attempting here, but I think he fails at it. And it's so bad (deliberately) that it's impossible to enjoy on any level except the conceptual. If I didn't know it was Godard, and didn't know anything about it, I would have assumed it was just some horrid, pretentious student project.

Godard has succeeded in making an anti-war film. He's also succeeded in making an incredibly dull and lifeless film. It's almost as bad as Tout va Bien.

The famous postcard scene and a few others are Godard at his best, but they only serve to underline how conceptually thin the rest of the movie is. It has those wonderfully ambiguous moments, but they aren't frequent enough to make it a complete success.

One of Godard's most outwardly satirical films, about a couple of guys who agree to go to war because war promises them riches and women from around the world they could violate. It's uneven, shoddily made and assembled, but at its best, its viciously and absurdly hilarious and unsettling in a way that Godard rarely approached. The postcard sequence is a brilliant and grand statement that I can't begin to understand. "A soldier salutes an artist!"

This whole film was a little lame. The filmmaking itself is below par, especially coming from a guy like Godard. The presentation certainly isn't memorable, it's a little sloppy which is understandable for a low budge film but some of it just seemed careless. The film itself didn't evoke much of an emotional response with me either. A great deal of this was obviously done purposefully but it didn't work for me at all, instead it just seemed really simple and almost contentless.

67.500

allegorical anti-war pic. it essentially intersperses dream and reality; the naïve fantasies of wealth and fame against poverty and death. but there's a lot more to it than simple dichotomy due to the freewheeling nature of godard's satirical scythes. this does imply manically bipolar pacing, which both drives the insanity of it all but perhaps also restricts it from reaching further greatness that more disciplined editing could achieve. also my 500th film!

Acho que aqui o Godard dá a primeira grande virada no seu cinema, este que é composto de inúmeras viradas nesses 60 anos de carreira, é quase um anti-Le Mépris em intento e estética. Na Mubi.

66.000

(Rewatch) Not bad, but i think this is still indisputably lesser Godard. It's still sort of fun for what it is, but it just feels pretty tossed off compared to other stuff he was doing at this time, and the political message is unsophisticated compared to what he'd be doing just a few years down the line. It's one of the only Godard films that feels even slightly like it could have merely been made by another, less talented, Godard-influenced director.

One of the most excruciatingly boring war movies I've had the displeasure of seeing. Aside from one or two interesting short scenes at most, Godard's Carabineers is simply too poor in every respect to affect anything other than apathy. The acting, photography and editing compete neck-and-neck for awfulness, the script is extremely banal, and there's an outrageous deal of telling-instead-of-showing.

Not Godard's most engaging work, but I enjoyed the absurdity of it.