Dauntingly Complex ‘Mozart’ Looks at Cinema, War

What a smart move the Nuart has made in presenting each night a different major Jean-Luc Godard film as a second feature to his latest, “For Ever Mozart,� which opens a one-week run today. That’s because “For Ever Mozart�--pared down and elliptical to the utmost--is the most impenetrable picture in his current cycle of work.

Those who find it difficult to get a purchase on this picture might well welcome another chance to see such Godard classics as “Breathless� (the second feature tonight) or even less familiar films such as “Tout Va Bien� (Tuesday’s second feature).

Visually, “For Ever Mozart� is typically ravishing, and it has Godard’s usual barrage of aphorisms, declarations and pronouncements as well as inspired use of music. Invariably, Godard lets us make connections for ourselves, but here that task is more daunting than usual. The one--and overriding--connection that is clear enough is that Godard is contrasting warfare--specifically the war in Bosnia--and filmmaking. He discovers them both to be cruel, calamitous and often darkly comical enterprises, fraught with peril from the outset.

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The film opens, probably in Switzerland, with a veteran film director, Vicky Vitalis (Vicky Messica), finding it impossible to cast his newest project. It is a war film inspired by Spanish novelist Juan Goytisolo’s observation that “the history of the 1990s in Europe is a rehearsal, with slight symphonic variations, of the cowardice and chaos of the 1930s.�

Vitalis then agrees to help his daughter Camille (Madeleine Assas) and her lover (Frederic Pierrot) in their attempt to stage Alfred de Musset’s comedy “One Must Not Play at Love� to cheer up the citizens of Sarajevo.

The well-intentioned but naive and innocently condescending members of this enterprise, including Camille and Vicky’s Arab maid Dzamilla (Ghalya Lacroix), get caught up in the cross-fire of the war in Bosnia with tragic results.

Vitalis, however, had already departed and revives his project, his politically critical “The Fatal Bolero,� which allows Godard to satirize the ignominy of trying to make serious movies in the era of the American mega-blockbusters. While Vitalis is clearly Godard’s alter ego, he physically more closely resembles Fritz Lang as he appeared in Godard’s “Contempt.�

(Intriguingly, the difficulty Vitalis has in getting his “Bolero� actress to utter a single word of dialogue is identical to a struggle Lang had with Marilyn Monroe while making “Clash by Night�; only the word is different.)

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What makes “For Ever Mozart� worth grappling with, beyond the incontestable stature of its relentlessly uncompromising maker, are Godard’s doubts as to whether film truly possesses the redemptive power of art when it comes to dealing with the horrors of war. (Significantly, Godard publicly expressed his wish that Steven Spielberg had not made “Schindler’s List.�)

“Knowledge of the possibility of representation consoles us for being enslaved to life. Knowledge of life consoles us for the fact that representation [i.e., cinema] is but shadow,� Godard says. When it comes to redemption, Godard, at the end of this densest of films, leaves that to the music of Mozart.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: It includes fatal wartime skirmishes, brief nudity.

‘For Ever Mozart’

Vicky Messica: Vicky Vitalis, the Director

Madeleine Assas: Camille, the Director’s daughter

Frederic Pierrot: Jerome, Camille’s lover

Ghalya Lacroix: Camille and Vicky’s Arab maid

Berangere Allaux: The actress in “The Fatal Bolero�

A New Yorker Films release of a Franco-Swiss co-production: Aventura Films/Peripheria Vega Film AG in collaboration with France 2 Cinema, Cec Rho^ne-Alpes Films with the participation of France 3 cinema, Canal Plus, Cnc, Tsr, Dfi, Eurimages, Ecm Records. Writer-director-editor Jean-Luc Godard. Producers Alain Sarde, Ruth Waldburger. Cinematographers Christophe Pollock, Katell Djian, Jean-Pierre Fedrizzi. Editors Michael Ripps and James Mitchell. Costumes Marina Zuliani, Nadine Butin. Music David Darling, Ketil Bjornstad, Jon Christensen, Ben Harper, Gyorgy Kurtag, Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Mozart. Art director Ivan Niclass. In French and Serbo-Croatian, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 24 minutes.

* Exclusively at the Nuart, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 478-6379.