Page - 101 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 04/02

100 | Vuk Uskoković www.jrfm.eu 2018, 4/2, 83–113 CEASELESS CONTRADICTION OF ONESELF AS THE ANARCHISTIC ROUTE TO FREEDOM Godard would not be Godard if he did not contradict all, even his dearest, convictions, including the postmodern idea that the role of art is to abolish art in order to point at the infinite beauty of being. This is why he opens his lat- est movie, Adieu au Langage, with the claim that “those lacking imagination take refuge in reality”.41 Rewind the loop of time to almost half a century ear- lier and you will find two nerds named Bouvard and Pécuchet as a reference to Flaubert’s eponymous novel sitting in a café in 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle, randomly pulling sentences from a towering pile of books and find- ing the long-sought moment of enlightenment in Heidegger’s thought that “thought is not merely a quest for non-thought; thought as such is bound to the birth of being; being has always been destined for thought, but also for being as the destiny of thought”,42 suggesting the inextricable connected- ness between beautiful being as the birthplace of illuminative thought and illuminative thought as the road leading to the doorsteps of beautiful be- ing. Whether thought precedes being or the other way around we no longer know, but by finding ourselves in this insolvable circle, all rules have become 41 Adieu au Langage (Jean-Luc Godard, FR 2014), 00:00:05. 42 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle (Jean-Luc Godard, FR/IT 1967), 01:01:20. Fig. 9. Le Mépris (Jean-Luc Godard, FR/IT 1963): The perplexed artist, the image of a muse, and the wall between them. Characters looking away, distancing themselves mentally and emotionally from one another, is a perpetual motif in Godard’s film. Is it a sign of contempt, i.e. le mépris, for the society that, as Godard must have deemed, is necessary to elicit the qualities of enlightened being? Does it stem from the belief that one must reject society if one is to find one’s true self and deliver the highest potential of one’s being to the world?