A continuing problem I have when talking about movies with friends and casual aquaintances is the eternal question, "What's the movie about?" I think to most people this question relates more to plot than anything else ("this movie's about a man whose niece is kidnapped by Indians and he spends the next decade looking for her"), or in lieu of that, some vague reference to the main characters and their circumstances ("This movie's about a group of people working in the film industry and what happens to them with the coming of 'talkies'"). The problem I have is that, while the above descriptions of The Searchers and Singin' in the Rain indicate I can think that way, I rarely do when contemplating an individual movie. For example, to me, Werckmeister Harmonies isn't about a group of people in a small town on the Hungarian plain, or about the circus coming to town, but rather it's about what happens to a society when reason and rule by law are replaced by superstition and the cult of personality. The people and events of the film are secondary to the core meaning of the film, which is usually some sort of philosophical argument the director is having with himself.
The philospohical argument in Masculin-Feminin (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966) isn't hard to suss out, given the secondary title of the film, "The children of Marx and Coca-Cola". Clearly Godard's interest in this film is in dissecting youth culture, circa-mid 60s, caught in the counteracting pulls of leftist political awareness and the attraction of (mainly American) commercialism and consumerist pop culture in general. In a sense, given its references to Vietnam, soft drinks, labor union strikes, random violence, Bob Dylan, artsy Scandanavian soft-core porn cinema, American imperialism, birth control methods, and self-aware postmodernist cinema, Masculin-Feminin could be considered the meta-film for the entire decade. That it's probably not even Godard's best film speaks volumes about his mastery of the art during that fascinating decade.
As far as the events go, the plot is so rudimentary it's almost laughable. Paul (Jean-Pierre Leaud), a young Marxist recently discharged from national service, meets Madeline (Chantal Goya), a young aspiring pop star who works at a magazine. Paul simultaneously hits Madeline up for a job while he hits on her. He gets the job, and eventually he gets the girl. Paul moves in with Madeline and her two roomates, one of whom may have feelings for Paul herself. Paul quits his magazine job, and gets another job doing public opinion polling, a nice plot device Godard uses to full effect, as Paul is able to ask a lot of questions to various characters throughout the movie, which allows us to see what Godard thinks the youth of the time think about, well, just about everything. Eventually Madeline becomes a star, gets pregnant, and then Paul dies by falling out of a high-rise apartment window (what an emblematically "mod" way to go.) The End.
Like I said, there's not much to the plot, but that was never the point anyway. The point is that Godard is making the BIG STATEMENT, about youth culture and everything else going on around him. If in La Dolce Vita Fellini was "taking the temperature" of Roman society at a specific place and time, in this film Godard is taking the pulse of an entire planet. So dense is the mise-en-scene, full of random images of pop stars, concert posters, advertising slogans, people running in and out and moving from seat to seat in restaurants, bars, and movie theaters (a common Godard motif) that, even after letting the film digest for several hours one is still dizzy from the activity. Seeing a Godard film is one of the more exhausting activities one can do while remaining seated. In addition to the visuals, the soundscape of the film is incredibly busy, with random gunshots punctuating several scenes, and other offscreen noise obscuring part or all of several conversations. Since what's important in Masculin-Feminin isn't what's going on or even what's being said, but who's saying it and how they are saying it, these distractions help to propel the film forward, and not drag it down.
Possibly the most beautiful thing about Masculin-Feminin is the fact that its beautiful leads, Leaud and Goya, while each representing the opposite pulls of political radicalism and mass consumerism, don't come off as particularly inviting in any intellectual way. Both characters are fairly shallow, with Paul advocating some sort of revolution he possibly doesn't even understand, while Madeline is content to ride the rising tide of stardom to wherever it may take her, even if she doesn't know where and she doesn't know why. For each they are merely doing what their particular "brand" is telling them they want and need. That brand Coca-Cola won out over brand Marx doesn't mean that consumerism is any better than radical politics, but it's sure a lot more fun.
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