Not To Be A Question Poem by gershon hepner

Only if you do not think
can you become the thought
of those who try make you shrink,
and nix you into nought.

You truly have to think to be,
with not to be a question
you only ask when you can’t see
yourself as mere suggestion.

Create a wave and ride it,
and don’t let others stall
your missile which, misguided,
like Icarus must fall.

Jeanine Basinger reviews “Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard, ” by Richard Brody in the NYT, July 23,2008 (“Creating a Wave and Riding It to Film’s Pantheon”) :
disagrees that at a crucial point in film history, he forced audiences to consider that film might, just might, actually be an important art form. (And not necessarily the one they thought it was.) In “Everything Is Cinema, ” Richard Brody reopens the arguments, lifting Mr. Godard out of the 1960s and placing him where he rightfully belongs: ahead of the game. In his first feature, “À Bout de Souffle” (released in the United States in 1961 as “Breathless”) , Mr. Godard threw away the rule book. Appearing suddenly on screen, he identifies the criminal hero (Jean-Paul Belmondo) through a newspaper photo and points him out to the police, who follow Mr. Belmondo as he drives away. After a cinematic iris-out on himself, Mr. Godard then disappears. He has entered his own film to see what no one else in the movie sees, show us what we need to see and make the definitive move that changes everything. He is director, character, self, commentator and the hand of fate. With “Breathless, ” Mr. Godard became the bad boy of ’60s cinema, turning the concept of postmodernism into date talk…. Mr. Godard’s personal journey is interwoven with his artistic development. Born in 1930 “to a prosperous and cultured family, ” he was an “eager reader” who was “not a frequent moviegoer in childhood.” By 1946 he had begun to “watch an endless number of movies, ” and by 1949 he was being cultivated by the famous film omnivore Henri Langlois, curator of the Paris Cinémathèque. Along with his fellow acolytes Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer and François Truffaut, Mr. Godard began living at the movies, “learning how to make films by watching films.” By 1950 his knowledge of movies had progressed to where he could write: “At the cinema, we do not think. We are thought.”

7/23/08