Page - 107 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 04/02

106 | Vuk Uskoković www.jrfm.eu 2018, 4/2, 83–113 anti-plot message of the movie served as a major inspiration for the French New Wave directors, who went on to either completely reject or heavily distort plots in their subsequent movies. Still, from his earliest to his latest works, Godard’s movies, even when they have a story, have no plot whatsoever, if we were to employ the distinction be- tween the two terms proposed by E. M. Forster.60 In his later works in particular, Godard deconstructed the plot and the dialogue to the point of impossibility of predicting or insinuating what will be said or done by a character next. In such a manner, as in Film Socialisme (FR/CH 2010), he portrayed a brighter future of ver- bal communication, while immersing the viewer into a magical space of anarchic freedoms that liberates the spirit as no cinematic expression revolving around a narrative thread can do, alongside creating an authentic Brechtian experience, which may be boring, painful, or perplexing to the audience but will have the viewers leave the cinema hall enriched with a sprinkling of divine sense to be dis- seminated into the world, influencing them deeper and more lastingly than the most captivating, amusing, and mouthwatering plots are able to achieve. One could argue that Richard Linklater’s switch from one central character to the next in the Austin, Texas, classic Slacker (US 1990) would have been a natural pro- gression in Godard’s rejection of storytelling in the 1960s, as implied by his aver- sion to character development and erasure of any traces of central threads in his plots. This, however, raises some questions: for one, aren’t all pieces of art analo- gous to trees or rivers or cities, to whose central lines and avenues one could al- ways return after roaming around little passageways? Yes, freedom is being won and burdens vanish like charms from the back of the minds carrying visions of monumental constructs on their shoulders, but wouldn’t it all be reduced to the chaotic arrangement of stars of the night sky and be drowned into an eternal en- tropy of things had we abandoned the detailed structuration of our works? Argu- ments could be, of course, given in favor (a) of life’s not having a distinct classical storyline intrinsic to it, (b) of Godard’s making sense when he noticed that “life is so different from books”61 in Pierrot le fou and rejected the Aristotelian division into the sacred triad composed of the opening, the climax, and the resolution, and (c) of the fact that a Godard or a Cassavetes movie, always plotless, evolving unpredictably, reflects life more veritably than any preconceived dramaturgical wholes. Godard could be accused of being megalomaniacal at times as well. “I wanted to include everything: sports, politics, even groceries. Everything should be put in a film”, he says, echoing Gustav Mahler’s aspiration to compose sym- phonies that are “like the world – they must embrace everything”.62 Whether 60 Forster 1927. 61 Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard, FR/IT 1965), 00:14:00. 62 Hefling 2002.