JLG/JLG: Self-Portrait in December

JLG/JLG was made the year the enfant terrible turned sixty-four. Twenty-five years earlier Godard declared, "My aesthetic is that of the sniper on the roof"; today his guns are turned toward his own status as a "living legend." JLG/JLG has been described as "an inebriating dialectical diary of words, sounds, images, and landscapes . . . (a) galloping reflection on the filmmaker's rapport with art, nature, politics, philosophy, history, and most of all, cinema." (David Rooney, Variety). It's the kind of list that only Godard could attempt to assimilate, and he does so never leaving the seclusion of his Swiss lake area home. Rather, he delves into it, imbuing a photo of himself as a youth with the qualities of Proust's madeleine, youth that has a sad eye toward death.

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