Seite - 108 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Band 04/02

Revisiting the Relevance of Conceptualism of Godard’s Film | 107www.jrfm.eu 2018, 4/2, 83–113 that was an honest aim, especially in view of the limitations of cinema that God- ard strived to explicate in his cinematic expression, we know not, but we could endlessly talk about. Whether that was also a goal that could be proven passé in view of (a) the pending shifts to punk and electro minimalism that many pop arts were to undergo shortly after the pretentious, prog-rock, Sgt. Pepperish trends paralleling the peak of La Nouvelle Vague were over, and (b) the minimalism that the European cinema had to embrace to differentiate itself from the pageantry of Hollywood, we know not either. With all these things changed, maybe everything in Godard’s art that resonated solely with the 1960s generation would have been made timeless and maybe even Week-end (FR/IT 1967), that parody of almost eve- ry single feature of the Hollywood blockbusters of the 1960s, would be a more relevant movie today than it is. As it stands now, understanding Godard requires perceiving him from a stance well familiarized with the history of cinema. Even more importantly, it requires focusing on the invisibles, on that implicit message hidden at the conceptual, not plainly visible, level of expression. The subtlety of such an approach to communication, of course, presents beauty in itself. ART FOR THE DIMINISHMENT OF THE ART’S SAKE Still, wonder remains if all these drawbacks were deliberate, serving the pur- pose of annihilating oneself for the sake of becoming One with all that there is; destroying the cinema for the sake of pulling the dreamers away from its darkened rooms and into the daylight of life, the destination of every dreamer’s dream. In his most recent movie, Adieu au Langage, Godard toys with the ety- Fig. 12: Week-end (Jean-Luc Godard, FR/IT 1967). The epic final screenshot drawing the curtain on cinema in Godard’s eyes and on the entire La Nouvelle Vague era. The carpet bomb was detonated, everything that made cinema what it was lay deconstructed and demolished, and the end of cinema as we had known it could be announced. Would all other social spheres be revitalized, fostered to evolve at an unprecedented rate or simply be sentenced to permanent desertion and infertility had everybody’s aim been to create something similar to what Godard strived to create under this “the end of cinema” banner, that is, to shatter the paradigm, to get rid of the old, to erase the standards and, effectively, abolish the need for the given sphere to exist under the Sun?