Passion (1982) - film review

A Polish film director, Jerzy Radziwilowicz, is making a film in France during the political upheaval in Poland of the early 1980s.  The director’s lack of inspiration is reflected in the film he is trying to make, “Passion”, which appears lifeless and dull.  The film crew are staying at a hotel owned by Hanna, whose husband runs a factory where a young woman, Isabelle works.  Both Hanna and Isabelle are attracted to Jerzy, who ultimately wonders why a film must have a story.

Depending on your predisposition towards Jean-Luc Godard, or your stamina, this is either an intriguing development of Godard’s art form, challenging the fundamentals of film making, or an absolutely appalling piece of cinema.

In a sense, this film illustrates a logical continuation of Godard’s cinema and is no less radical than some of his early New Wave masterpieces, such as Pierrot le Fou or La Chinoise.  Over the 1970s and 1980s, the Swiss director’s approach becomes increasingly attracted towards an abstract concept of the cinematographic art, and the necessity to adhere to the principle of narrative form becomes less and less important - at least in Godard’s mind.  What Godard appears to be seeking is something akin to the Impressionist movement of late nineteenth century art – to capture the essence of life with imagery and form, without having to tell a story.

Unfortunately, however noble this objective might appear, it just doesn’t seem to work - and certainly not in the cinema of the 1980s.  Unlike another medium, film places very severe limitations on what can be achieved and what an audience will tolerate.  This is because film, like a novel, is a medium which requires a great investment, in terms of time and concentration, from its intended target.  If a film-maker strays too far into the abstract, he risks alienating himself from his audience – which is more or less what happened to Jean-Luc Godard in the 1980s.  The great director was so overwhelmed by his creative impulse that he lost the ability to communicate to his audience - a tragic mistake.

Passion is a film that illustrates this point very well, and it is interesting how self-conscious Godard is about what he is doing. Jerzy’s thoughts about the necessity to tell a coherent story are clearly Godard’s own thoughts, and the film is really nothing more than an overly self-indulgent examination of Godard’s philosophy about film-making at the time.

© James Travers 1999


Passion, like the other 1980s movies of the enigmatic film maker Jean-Luc Godard, is undoubtedly another masterpiece of cinema so far as cinema as an art form is concerned.  However, if we talk of cinema as a medium it hardly meets the needs of both the viewer’s demands as well as the notion of film as a projection of life and beyond.  It is a completely personalised film which in order to appreciate one must keep in mind the history of cinema up to the 80s and Godard’s place in it, which as everybody knows is and will always remain a topic of enjoyable controversy.  

In Passion it seems Godard on one hand has criticised himself in a free mind through the protagonist Jerzy, while on another hand, through this veiled self-criticism, he has attempted to attract the viewer toward the abstract cinematic concept which in particular is his element to criticise through Jerzy.   This very style of juxtaposing two completely opposite concepts and viewpoints of cinematic truth and art form adds humour to the film.  But even this can easily be said to be a rather far fetched idea, as nothing in the film is conveyed quite clearly.  Here lies Godard’s twist.   It seems that he is adamantly as well as humbly trying to do away with people’s yearning for comprehension.   

In his films of the 80s and some of the early 90s, like Hélas pour moi, Godard is keen to unveil the mysteries and truths of life through such an approach and style that dictates the audience to be in at a loss and understand nothing. Being in the dark and thereby unbiased, the viewer will slowly fall in love with the imageries and sounds of Godard just like a child falls in love with almost everything he sees and hears without understanding anything. As a child understands life in his own but exciting and bizarre ways, Godard’s films can be appreciated in his style only, or rather the way he wants us to look at life.  Godard’s films portray the way he looks at life and cinema and hence fail to attract a large section of audience who seeks universal truths in films.

© Yudhajit Basu (India) 2011

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