Movies We Like
Tout Va Bien
French founders of the politically active filmmaking Dziga Vertov Group, Jean-Luc Godard and Jean Pierre Gorin, made Tout Va Bien in1972, their 2nd to last collaboration together.
This film certainly falls far from the category of escapism. You, the viewer, are going to have to examine not only the constructs of filmmaking itself, but also the economy of contemporary society and the political ideologies behind it. Sound like a handful? You can be assured that every movement within the frame, every insert, every cut, is deliberate and Brechtian in every formal quality. The staging shows people moving from one room to another through a cross-section of the building, emphasizing the strike at a sausage factory that is observed by an American reporter (Jane Fonda) and her husband, a has-been, French New Wave film director (Yves Montand).
These elements – the American perspective, the fall of the French New Wave, consumer capitalism, ineffective leftists – can only seem to erupt into chaos. In this film, they culminate into a criticism of society that questions individualism in context of the collective.
Not exactly your light-hearted-grab-the-bowl-of-popcorn-fun, but if you feel like being in close scrutiny – or being closely scrutinized –this may be the think-hard-film that will prompt you to re-evaluate your own politics. As Jean-Luc Godard says, "The problem is not to make POLITICAL films but to make films POLITICALLY."