In the midst of the summer movie season, it might feel like your brain is beginning to atrophy after a blitzkrieg of blockbusters. However, if you’re looking to exercise your intellect, Jean Luc-Godard‘s “Le Gai Savoir” should do the trick.
Given a beautiful, 2K restoration, the film stars Jean-Pierre Leaud and Juliet Berto, and follows two young militants as they deconstruct the language of revolution, politics, culture, and more. It’s a marriage of Godard’s new wave sensibilities with his emphasis on discourse, and it’s pretty wonderful pairing. Here’s the official synopsis:
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While alone in an abandoned television studio, two militants, Emile Rousseau (Jean-Pierre Leaud) and Patricia Lumumba (Juliet Berto), have a discourse on language. Referring to spoken word as “the enemy” — the weapon used by the establishment to confuse liberation movements–the two deconstruct the meanings of sounds and images in an attempt to “return to zero” and truly experience the joy of learning.
“Le Gai Savoir” opens today at the Quad Cinema in New York City, with dates across the country to follow.