Page - 109 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 04/02

108 | Vuk Uskoković www.jrfm.eu 2018, 4/2, 83–113 mological curiosity that the Russian word for camera was derived from the word for prison. This is a natural addition to the question Roland receives in Week- end, “Are you in a film or in reality?”,63 hinting at this blurring of the boundary between art and life that presents the central goal of Godard’s filmmaking. To shatter the camera and symbolically erase the distinction between art and life is thus an act analogous to crushing the prison walls and allowing the prisoner, a metaphor for the moviegoer, to escape into freedom. One could perceive the proposition of this analogy as a culmination of the artist’s working towards self- annihilation as the most sublime act on his spiritual quest, the act that uses art to destroy the very art in question and point at life as art itself, an art more artis- tic than any of the formally presented pieces of art in museums, galleries, music halls, and cinemas. The ultimate point of this anarchic endeavor is, of course, for an artist to disappear and make way for life, the beauty of which all arts have been pointing out anyway. Pierrot le fou, for example, the personification of an artist in this postmodern cinematic milestone and an archetypical post- modernist anti-film, first leaves society behind to run away with his muse, only eventually to sacrifice her and then, in an effort to show us the beauty of life untainted by human petties and sinful spirits, commit suicide, killing himself, the artist and the art, ending it all with a view of the endless sea, the symbol of the utmost spiritual fulfillment that is the death of one’s ego and the merging of the self with the omnipresent ocean of transcendental being encompassing every- thing. ’Tis the blissful moment in which everything becomes the emanation of the most wonderful art conceivable and in which we could repeat after Juliette from 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle: “I am the world”.64 ’Tis the moment at which we enter the state of utmost spiritual poverty and become blessed in an instant (Matthew 5:3). Freed from corporeal bonds and artificial attractors, we become tied to it all and, like Joseph from Je vous salue, Marie, able to touch the most precious of natural details without touching them physically. ’Tis also the painful moment in which art, as a concept, along with the artist, a conscious creator of something more sublime than the all-pervading beauties of the com- monest of things surrounding us, ceases to exist. If we disobey this call and delay the death of our ego and of the formal artist, the creator in us, the chance is that we might find ourselves in the shoes of the painter from Vivre sa vie, he who zealously portrayed muses and, as the last tint on his painting was drawn, stood up, marveled over his accomplishment, and concluded that “this is Life itself”.65 However, when he turned his eyes away from the canvas to look at the living muses walking next to him, muses whom he had painted so devotedly, he 63 Week-End (Jean-Luc Godard, FR/IT 1967), 01:03:40. 64 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle (Jean-Luc Godard, FR/IT 1967), 00:30:40. 65 Vivre sa vie (Jean-Luc Godard, FR 1962), 01:18:30.