Page - 111 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 04/02

110 | Vuk Uskoković www.jrfm.eu 2018, 4/2, 83–113 Indeed, this space outside the verbal and the cinematic frames is where the world begins. And ends too. So I leave you here. Beyond words, at the entrance to life lived to its fullest. It is in a moment like this that Apu tosses his treasured notes into the wind (Apur Sansar, IND 1959) and Kurosawa’s woodcutter Kikori leaves behind the inextricably looped and labyrinthine lines drawn by the men- tal pen (Rashomon, JPN 1950), and they both lift a child up into the air. At the same moment, on the opposite, darker side of the globe, as Godard’s heroine becomes liberated from the city of Alphaville and is on her way to the Outlands, where she could afford to be an outsider and a beautiful spirit once again, she forgets language and comes up with all the words she would need on this new, celestial plane of reality whereon life is lived, not only vainly discussed: “I … You … Love … I Love You.”69 It is then that we realize that no Word could save the world. Only life can save life. It is then that silhouettes begin to dance on the walls, with shadows of eucalyptus trees and swaying snowdrop wildflowers. It is then that we wave a soft goodbye to language, that good old corruptor of feeling and the source of hypocrisies that have plagued humanity and sickened human spirits ever since its dawn. It is then that firmaments begin to shake with love and the wonder of a child, untainted and infinitely pure, born to this world. Hence the sound of a baby crying in the dying moments of Godard’s most re- cent movie, his characteristically convoluted farewell to language. Or, as put forth by Godard himself in Histoire(s) du cinéma: La Monnaie de l’absolu: Squabbling about public indignation, nothing more pathetic. Toning down makes things worse. Subtlety pleads for barbarism. Let’s call things by their name. Killing a man in the Bondy Forest or Black Forest is a crime. Killing a coun- try in the other forest called diplomacy is a crime as well, but just bigger. Where will it stop? When will the martyr of this heroic small nation end? So they tell us, “You forget there are some questions”. Killing a man is a crime. Killing a country is a question. Each government has its question. We answer, “Humanity also has a question”. And here is the question, it’s bigger than India, England or Rus- sia, it’s the small child inside the mother’s womb.70 Hence the reduction of the consciousness to that of a preverbal child, Taoist in nature, aware that “arguing is unwise” (Tao Te Ching 81), feeling all the way through “as if I were the world and the world were me”,71 presents the last and the final step of our walking in Godard’s anarchic footsteps through this entic- ing cinematic forest, in search of a flower here, a balloon there, and the whisper of Je vous aime everywhere. 69 Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard, FR/IT 1965), 01:38:20. 70 Histoire(s) du cinéma: La Monnaie de l’absolu (Jean-Luc Godard, FR/CH 1998), 00:04:00. 71 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle (Jean-Luc Godard, FR/IT 1967), 01:04:00.