Criterion Review #3: 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her

2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967)

Like many of Godard's films, 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her is a political inquiry into the relationship between the macro and the micro, between society (at large) and the individual, and of course between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.  Specifically, this film seems to be an investigation into the connections between the city of Paris and its residents circa 1967, and a critique of consumerism and Capitalism, the residue of which can be seen in every frame of the film.  The eponymous "her" of the title refers to both the city of Paris and the protagonist, Juliette, a middle-class suburbanite who prostitutes herself for extra money.

To say that Juliette is a subject of the movie would be correct.  To say that the movie is about her would not be.  This is a movie in which the narrator asks which is more important: the main protagonist or the foliage above.  It is impossible to focus on both at once, he says.  Our narrator seems more interested in how the subject and her surroundings relate rather than he does in any kind of narrative centered around her. In one sequence, we watch swirls in a cup of coffee as the narrator speaks about the nature of one's self and one's connection to objects.


The movie seems to be commenting on the ways in which our cities and governments have gone on to do whatever they want by placating us with materials.  We no longer feel connected to one another, or have any sense of control over the big picture.  So instead, we prostitute ourselves in order to maintain a lifestyle driven by the desire for things.  In one hilarious sequence, a war correspondent watches as two prostitutes wear bags with competing airline designs over their heads.

The film ends with an image of cleaning products littering a field.  Somehow this is the perfect image to sum up the movie's themes.  Cleaning Products -- the perfect symbol of consumerism; of the consignment of women; of clean surfaces.  And yet there they are, removed from their "natural" habitat and put in an overgrown field of weeds.  How unnatural they look.  How excessive.  How surreal.