Scénarios Jean-Luc Godard

In French, “scénario” is cinema’s name for how it tells stories. This is the title Jean-Luc Godard chose for his final film, which was literally completed the day before his self-death. This did not mean that it would remain unfinished, but that its very unfinishedness would make it complete. Yet Scénario, which then became Scénarios is twofold: DNA, fundamental elements, and MRI, Odyssey. DNA is a biological signature, which gives a human subject its uniqueness; MRI evokes medical imagery and the distress felt by a weakened body, and suggests the subject being dissolved at the whim of magnetic resonance. Between these two polarities, which evoke genesis and decline in a strictly materialistic way, a person’s story unfolds, one made up of a jumble of notes and images, condensed into 18’. It is a singular yet shared narrative of a life haunted by death, as this film is also a farewell, the lamentation of a funeral. The two segments of this film open with a series of identical sequences. The second segment then diverges and ends on a self-portrait of JLG – his last images – sitting on his bed, bare-chested, he hides none of the wear on his body in the manner of Pigalle’s sculpted portrait of Voltaire. He’s filming himself transcribing Jean-Paul Sartre’s double logical and witty apologue on non-fingers: thus ends Scénarios, as it began, with a repetition, the figure of eternal return, the moment where time, which has been the great – if not unique – question of cinema, will have ceased to flow.

Produced by | Écran noir productions (France) — Arte France (France) — Nekojarashi/Roadstead (Japan)