Life Without Words

 
    Like a lot of new wave French films made in the 1960’s, Jean-Luc Godard’s film “My Life to Live” was concerned with presenting something radical and new to audiences.  Film was not just entertainment; it was about art and philosophical expression.  This film had Existentialism written all over it, and I loved it!

    At the beginning, the main character, Nana, is “displayed” for us as if she were a three-dimensional portrait of a young woman.  We see her head and shoulders in shadow.  She is still and almost lifeless: a “thing” of beauty.  This “foreshadows” a scene towards the end of the film in which the man she loves is reading a passage from a book he’s found.  The link is made: Nana’s life is a study, a “still life” described in a novel.

    The viewer is introduced to Nana and Raoul in a diner.  We see the backs of their heads as they talk.  It’s almost as if we are overhearing a private conversation.  The audience is voyeur, unnoticed and in the background of Nana’s “real life.”  We spend our time with her in this manner, overhearing her conversations and catching glimpses of her private experiences.  This negation is presented throughout the film through scenes with characters either out of camera view or turned away from us.  It is also reinforced through long moments of silence, breaks in music and street noises that we expect to be included with the film.  We are very aware that this isn’t a story about our lives, it’s a movie about a character called Nana.  Nana’s experiences are hers; they have nothing to do with us.  We’re only there as observers.

    Nana’s life goes from a marginal one to dire quickly.  Her choice of options for survival is the “easy” money made from prostitution.  She takes her life to the streets and the camera follows.  Raoul becomes Nana’s pimp and explains this lifestyle to us in almost antiseptic detachment.   The documentary style of this scene mimics the cool distancing of the profession it describes.

    However, Nana takes responsibility for her choices.  She tells her friend that she is free and responsible for all the decisions she makes, she is the author of her own life story.  She moves about through the streets and alleyways of the seamier side of life and becomes an object of her chosen trade.  What Nana doesn’t seem to realize, though, is how Raoul understands the arrangement.  In her detachment, she believes herself to be independent of him.  Raoul, however, perceives that she “belongs” to him.  He exercises this ownership in the end when he attempts to “sell” her.

    The emotional detachment that pervades the film is reflected in the intervals of sound and silence.  The silence reminds us of a muffled quality: a covered mouth, a hidden secret.  It reinforces the space between the actors and the audience.  It reflects the “inside that is its soul,” as in the story of the child’s bird essay that Raoul tells Nana at the beginning of the film.

    In one pivotal scene in the middle of the film, Nana finds herself sitting next to an old man that seems to be a Jean Paul Sartre look-alike.  He is the “self-taught man” modeled from Sartre’s novel Nausea.  The old man discusses philosophy with Nana in a coffee shop. Nana asks him what good talking is and they discuss the value of words and the truth (or lies) they represent.  This is one of my favorite scenes.  There are few cuts here, but the camera does spend time concentrated on each face as they talk.   (By the way, it’s interesting to note that in Nausea the Self-Taught Man gives the main character a book to read called “Living My Life” which seems to link directly to this film.)

    For the most part throughout the film, the camera is an “invisible” presence.  Nana even seems to look directly at the camera a couple of times, but she isn’t.  At first, we feel “caught” (“busted”) by her gaze.  It’s with some embarrassed relief that we realize she is looking “past” us or through the camera at some action just beyond it.

    The ending leaves too many holes (and not just in Nana), and gives the impression that it was the result of a rushed decision.  Nana is kidnapped and in a struggle that ensues as she is being handed off to her “new owners,” she is shot and killed.  I suppose the message conveyed is that she is just an object and dispensable.  In the grand scheme of things, she doesn’t matter; anyone could be a stand-in for Nana’s life.

    Yet, I couldn’t help wondering why such a good film ended in such a sloppy way.  If these crooks wanted Nana bad enough to pay a lot of money for her, why didn’t they just kidnap her themselves?  (There were two of them after all.)  And if this was some sort of “something owed to the man” thing and they decided to cheat Raoul out of $1,000 francs in the process, why shoot him?  And, if these thugs must shoot Raoul, why not just gang up on him to do it (jerk Nana out of the way for crying out loud); Raoul didn’t even have a gun.

    Supposing there’s an explanation for all of these questions, and the two men felt they must shoot poor Nana after all, why didn’t they just rush up and shoot Raoul anyway as he’s starting his car to drive away.  There were just too many questions left unanswered at the end of the film.  I wonder what Sartre would say.