King Lear directed by Jean-Luc Godard (never released) (***)
review by Kevin Bewersdorf

I wouldn’t be writing a review of this film (its not new) if it were not for two important reasons. Firstly, I saw its first public showing ever - previously only press at Cannes in 1987 had seen it. And secondly because I happened to meet the lead actor of the film, Peter Sellars, at the Romaeuropa festival here in Rome. An amazing night to be a Film Brat.

I entered the crowded euro-trashy theater with the appropriate caution for viewing a Godard film, took my seat, and noticed a mysterious little man milling around like a creepy David Lynch (if that’s not redundant). The director of the festival began her speech in proper Italian and eventually introduced this man to be Peter Sellars. Sellars stood and said a few words about the film and his involvement with Godard. His honest unwavering English broken only by the Italian translation gave me a new appreciation for Godard as well as insights available only by talking to someone who knew him, someone who was there. Once you have this kind of insight, once you see a man in the room with you and then the next moment on screen, the experience of cinema becomes even more surreal.

According to Sellars (who is hilarious by the way) Godard signed the contract for this film in 1986 on a napkin, and when that ran out of space, the corner of a table cloth. As always he had worked out all the finances but had no idea what the film was going to be about. Cannon Films had the sole stipulation that Godard finish it in time for Cannes. Norman Mailer had an idea to do Shakespeare’s King Lear (strangely at the same moment Akira Kurosawa was writing a deal to make Ran, his own adaptation of King Lear). Mailer was to play King Lear but walked off the set during the first week (the shot of this happening is left in the film). Godard decided to hire Sellars to replace him since he had performed King Lear many times. Ironically enough Sellars plays a character named “William Shakespeare Jr. the 5th” who has nothing to do with the original play. In fact, Godard’s King Lear has almost no similarity to Shakespeare’s. I would have thought that there was something I was missing if Sellars had not told me that Godard had in fact never read King Lear. Godard had read the first three pages and the last three pages only, and, I quote Sellars as directly as I can, “this entire film is Godard trying to get to page four of King Lear.”

Isn’t that just some kind of pretentious apathy, that Godard hadn’t even read the play? As enraging as his artsy French schmaltz can be, I will assert here that it is not. The first few scenes are cut in odd repetition, some multiple takes of the same scene, then repeated voice-overs of Godard’s garbled nearly inaudible narration. These are some of the only actual lines from the play because this opening represents Godard reading and re-reading those first three pages, trying to understand. As the film moves forward it is distracted from Shakespeare into insane noises and senseless Monty-Python style antics. Godard is saying
that we can re-read and re-read these pages but we cannot understand them. While everyone else is trying to grasp Act five, Godard is still on page three. So reflects the narrative on screen. The middle of the
film goes into a bit about the perception of cinema, throws around more wild editing and lots more schizophrenic sounds of seagulls and pigs eating and Godard spouting muffled possibly Shakespearean words (the soundtrack is by far the most interesting part of this piece). This free use of the text so infuriated the people at Cannon that the film was never released - understandably so. It is an assault on the senses, is
almost not watchable at times and in fact defies that you could possibly “enjoy” it.

Had I not spoken with Peter I would have made a more suspended judgment of taste on this film. It was too much to digest. But he assured me, “Godard has made a total piece of shit.” And that he wanted it to be that way, that he wanted to turn the camera away from the beautiful vista and shoot something that could not be understood, something irritating but with moments of intense and undeniable beauty. And that’s what he made. Godard shot the film in five days and sent the other actors (Woody Allen and Molly Ringwald among them) back home. He completed the film with only himself and Sellars. Woody Allen plays the editor of the film and is named “Mr. Alien.” He has two lines, then Godard comes into the editing room with plugs and wires and strips of film in his hair and falls onto a pile of film. Why is that good? I can’t explain it just like Godard can’t explain Shakespeare. But some of the imagery is just so beautiful. - it’s more a painting than it is a film. Christ, you want to hate this film so bad, call it boring and pompous, but you just can’t. Not if you have eyes and a love for cinema. It’s too beautiful.

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