Seite - 86 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Band 04/02

Revisiting the Relevance of Conceptualism of Godard’s Film | 85www.jrfm.eu 2018, 4/2, 83–113 that3is, by coming up with a dozen-page draft a week before the talk, though only to shorten it gradually, ending up with one page only on the morning of the lecture, a single paragraph an hour before it, a single sentence while wait- ing behind the curtain to be called and then tossing even that single sentence into the garbage can when stepping out onto the podium? The answer is, un- doubtedly, Yes, but sometimes. For, sometimes the right structure of the whole can make up for a rather trivial content and make it timelessly beautiful. Think, for example, of Powell and Pressburger’s A Canterbury Tale (GB 1944), whose unique structure is the key to its quality: quiet and sweetly mysterious for the majority of the movie and then exploding into a fantastic finale in its last mo- ments, reflecting life more veritably than the classical twist-climax-resolution form. Henceforth, the conception of an overarching structure wherein begin- nings and ends would reconnect and fit into each other like a hand into a glove is desirable, so long as each moment, each brick in it is infused with the spirit of the moment and given a dose of imperfection that would make it appear always fresh and new, like a well-improvised jazz tune. For, an utterly perfect structure is also an utterly lifeless structure, resembling a peak from which one could only tumble down, when only structures that contain cracks of imperfec- tions can transmit light through them, bedazzle the viewer and act as a stairway to the stars, leading to the top exactly because of never aspiring to be on the top. “Don’t show every aspect of things; allow yourself the margin of indefinite- ness” was Godard’s explicit precept,4 reflecting his belief in the liberation from the shackles of ostensible perfectness and the unleashing of infinitely potent creative powers through the renouncement of the strivings to reach absolute exactness in expression. At this point, already, Godard, that relentless breaker of conventions, flirter with the paradox and master in directing digression and a loss of focus from the 3 Histoire(s) du cinéma: Le Contrôle de l’univers (Jean-Luc Godard, FR/CH 1998), 00:07:00. 4 Histoire(s) du cinéma: Toutes les histoires (Jean-Luc Godard, FR/CH 1988), 00:00:48. Fig. 1: Histoire(s) du cinema: Une Vague Nouvelle (Jean-Luc Godard, FR/CH 1998)  – “It’s about time that the thought becomes once again what it really is: dangerous for the thinker.”3