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Rating: There are films that will never age, that even in forty years might be rewatched, sparking the exact same emotions as when they were first released. And "Pierrot le fou" is one of these.
Although the difference between watching this Godard masterpiece in 1965 and watching it in 2014 is immense - given that, between these periods, nearly fifty years of visual experimentation, trends, inventions, and manifestos have since accustomed us to everything - the emotional shock for the viewer remains almost the same.
To portray the hell of boredom, a caricature of the bourgeoisie from parlors made up of empty conversations, consumerism frenzy, and superficial stable relationships, to which society (not just French) reduced itself in the '60s, Godard rejects the simplest path - the more immediate way of slowness, silence, of dead times - and accelerates towards an orderly display of the wildest chaos.
“Pierrot le fou” is a journey, a true road movie, where the two characters escape from a world killed by non-life, by boredom and insensitivity, to embrace the harmony of disorder. And off they go with petty crimes, grotesque encounters, romance, quarrels, colors, film genres... a disorder, an explosion of life that also emerges in Godard's constant cinematic deconstruction, attempting more than once that suspension of disbelief that prevents you from believing what you're watching, even if what you see is far from reality. A disorder that also emerges in the inconsistencies of the characters, so in search of the purity of life yet still enslaved by the society they flee from, unable to live without buying something, talking about books, records, reducing their dialogues to TV commercial slogans.
A colorful and romantic "Bonnie & Clyde", yet desperate, with that epilogue that takes away any possibility of escape (or an alternative escape, if you will). Desperate? Perhaps cynical, maybe even tender. The fact is, it's in the very last instant of the film that the contemplation of harmony becomes tangible.
It's difficult to react in front of the kaleidoscope before which Godard pins us down, so overwhelmed by a continuous boom of tricks, naiveté, revolution.
A note could be made for the actors: Anna Karina, delightful and unforgettable femme fatale, and Jean-Paul Belmondo with his face of an eternal defiant dreamer; the extraordinary cinematography of Raoul Coutard should also be praised, with his brilliant combinations of primary colors. One could discuss it on a technical level, then discuss it philosophically and semiotically. One could.
"Pierrot le fou" is the ultimate expression of the Nouvelle Vague, a cinema that destroys, invents, seeks alternative paths leading to a cinema that even today appears fresh, revolutionary, overwhelming. A complex, ecstatic film in front of which one must surrender, setting aside for once the need to dismantle Godard's films piece by piece, analyzing every component in order to discuss it in absolute terms.
"Pierrot le fou" must be discussed, but only in part. Because it is one of those cinematic pieces that needs to be experienced before being quantified.
To endure, to love madly.
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