The Mondo Mugwump Letters: Sympathy For The Devil - Page 4

She was in bed for a week, she says, when Paul Haggis' Crash appeared.

Now, as I said, the flick we enjoyed that evening was Godard's 1968 sort-of-documentary concerning The Stones writing a song, although I forget which one (possibly "Let It Be") and in-between all this, yes, a series of bizarre vignettes;

Black Panthers wander back and forth across a junkyard carrying machine guns and radical literature and a couple white ladies in dressing gowns.

A woman called Eve Democracy is interviewed at length by a fella in a forest, he mouthing philosophical, sociological, political statements, she replying "Yes" or "No" as needs be.

A man reads from a pulp paperback novel concerning John Birch's daughter getting rodgered blind and something to do with Stalin and a bit about Che Guevara's corpse.

And so on and so forth.

Now;

Sympathy For The Devil (we didn't see Godard's preferred, slightly different cut, One Plus One, although Victoria tells me of a man in Krakow has it screening of occasion on his right testicle) is a peculiar fucker of a thing, I can tell you that. It is by turns beautiful and ghastly and brilliant and abominable and exhilarating and interminable. For every glorious shot of a woman raised on a camera crane towards the swell of the heavens, or of the city of London throbbing with revolutionary vigour, for each of these delights there exists a dozen shots of Keith Richard aimlessly plucking a bass string or Mick Jagger staring at his feet.

By intercutting (and in some cases overlapping) the creation of this particular "rock" ditty with those almost Bunuel-esque sketches, each imbued with this or that strain of leftist political discourse, Jean Boy Godard seems to be either drawing a parallel between Art and Politics or illustrating some dichotomy.

It's never overtly clear what his thoughts on the matter, or on anything, might be.

The real radicals, the flick does seem to suggest, and one would surely be hard pressed to contradict it, are the ones out there spraying Freudemocracy or Cinemarx on parked cars and billboards, the ones talking about things as a precursor to doing things (shooting folks, being one particular Doing Thing that gets explored herein) as opposed to talking about things because it keeps them from having to do anything, and whilst any amount of cultural import is flung t'wards the musicians and the writers and the filmmakers, what the hell are they really doing, tell me now, if not just sitting around for hours banging some bongo or other in pursuit o' a melody does no real good for anyone but themselves?

Article Author: Duke De Mondo

Visit Duke De Mondo's author page — Duke De Mondo's Blog