DVD of the Week: Oh, Woe Is Me

On the occasion of the release this coming Friday of Jean-Luc Godard’s latest film, “Film Socialisme,” I discuss, in this clip, his 1993 film “Oh, Woe Is Me” (“Hélas Pour Moi”), which shares several of its themes. In the wake of the liberation of Eastern Europe, the end of the U.S.S.R., and the breakup of Yugoslavia and the resulting wars, Godard made a film that was partly of metaphysical inspiration—God’s surreptitious arrival on earth—and partly of sociopolitical import: the demise of the Communist ideal and the notion of a cultural legacy, not least, that of the cinema itself. It’s also one of Godard’s most Jewish films; it opens with a lengthy citation from Martin Buber’s “Tales of the Hasidim” and a central section features a discussion about Gershom Scholem’s views on the transmissibility of tradition. Given the discussion last fall, most of it misguided, regarding Godard’s attitude toward Jews (a discussion that, I suspect, the release of “Film Socialisme” will rekindle), “Oh, Woe Is Me” is a crucial film to consider, as much intellectually and ideologically as aesthetically. It is, for that matter, a movie of a voluptuous visual beauty: it depicts a miracle, and by no means a chaste one.