[ IN MEMORIAM]
QUENTIN TARANTINO ONCE described Jean-Luc Godard as “the Bob Dylan of cinema”. While the comparison captures the French-Swiss director’s seismic impact on his chosen medium, it also speaks to the way he transformed the language of filmmaking into something freeform and fun, groundbreaking and poetic. In short, Godard was amongst cinema’s greatest revolutionaries, a kind of Che Guevara with a movie camera who redefined not only what subject matter was possible in movies but also the way that subject matter was treated. Of all the heavyweight auteurs, Godard remains the most playful, mixing Big Themes (Morality! Politics! Intellectualism!) with zero respect for convention and an often overlooked mile-wide romantic streak.