Godard was one year away from the May ’68 uprising and his fall into whole-hog Marxism (and anonymity within the Dziga Vertov Group). But in 2 ou 3 choses, life and truth are what matters, not dogma — Godard’s whispering narration notes the time (“It’s 4:45”) because that’s what time it was. (He has explained the moment in 1980’s Sauve qui peut|Every Man for Himself in which Jacques Dutronc tells his class that the unseen Marguerite Duras is in the next room by saying she was in the next room — indeed, why would he lie?) The famous swirl of coffee and sugar prompts one of cinema’s most personal and moving existential discourses. 2 ou 3 choses could comprise a postmodern analysis of contemporary culture — a filmic expression of sociological cryptology à la McLuhan, Baudrillard, and Mike Davis — if in fact Godard were a scholar instead of a fellow human being and a textual voyager, seeking out a cinema that awakens us to our surroundings instead of anesthetizes us with sensation. The late ’60s are gone, but Godard’s concerns remain electrically pertinent.
