Goodbye to Language (2014) - full transcript

Those lacking imagination
take refuge in reality

if non-thought
contaminates thought

it was the best time we ever had

Not our experiences

but the silent tenacity

we affront them with.

Is it possible to produce a concept

about Africa?

Solzhenitsyn's novel has a subtitle.

No need to Google it.

Solzhenitsyn found it all alone.



"Experiment in literary investigation".

What does it do?

I don't understand.

The thumb. What does it do?

What did it do before?

So it's Little Thumb.

That's one way of putting it.

And to mark the trail?

Pebbles.

Where is the ogre?

See this?

"Experiment in literary investigation".

Exam time.

The Ogre takes
us by the hand.



All of us.

In 1933, a Russian, Zworykin,

invented television.

Does 1933 ring a bell?

Hitler was elected democratically.

I doubt that.

Everything Hitler said,

he accomplished.

Not the first time
someone conquered by arms

manages to conquer his conqueror
politically.

For example,

armies of the Revolution

were conquered.

But they carried
throughout all Europe

the idea of a Republic.

Alas, in Potsdam...

the allies declared:

We will wage peace as we waged war.

What do we see now?

The State is given absolute power.
1945, Jacques Ellul

He saw
it all coming.

Almost.

Atomic power.

GMOs“...

Advertizing.
The State takes all.

Nanotechnologies.

Terrorism.
This is Hitler's second victory.

We've got used
to the State doing everything

and whenever something goes wrong,

we blame the State.
Unemployment.

We ask it
to take the entire nation's life

as its responsibility.

Reacting implies

that we react against economic policy,

against the police,

against welfare.

We see the entire nation
rise up against us.

In fact, Hitler did not invent a thing.

A long tradition

led up to this crisis.

Machiavelli, Richelieu,

Bismarck.

And the Terror, Alain?

In '93, during the Terror,

the Convention produced:
the Civil Code,

the new calendar,

the decimal system,

Hitler's victory, children.

The manufacturing of steel,

government accounting,

the Music Conservatory.

Sir, is it possible
to produce a concept

about Africa?

The law that denies
its own violence, cheats.

The law that denies what turns it
into a state apparatus, cheats.

The law which deems itself
self-legitimatizing, cheats twice.

I think that in primitive societies,
this was not the case.

And during war?

It is a war,
but of society against State.

I don't care.

I am at your command.

The end lingers on,
I must live through it.

And it isn't easy.

The mouth closes...

Time to go straight ahead now.

I made the image.

What is going on?

End of this world?

Advent of another world?

So what happens

in that which seems
to have no clear name.

We've come to say goodbye.

Leaving for the Americas?

Got some cheap junk?

Just a little philo.

You'll tell them
what philosophy is.

Philosophy is a being,

the heart of it

being the question
of its being

insofar as this being
posits a being other than itself.

You think that in Europe
happiness is not a new idea?

I'm into Africa.

Good luck!

Hello again.

I'll call the police.

He's sick.

Just one question.

It's vacation.
We start again in September.

Two questions.

Is society

willing to accept murder

as a means
to fight unemployment?

Second question.

What is the difference...

between an idea and a metaphor?

Ask Athenians on the tram.

Interior experience is now forbidden

by society in general

and spectacle in particular.

You mentioned murder.

What they call images

are becoming the murder of the present.

The present is a strange beast.

I don't care.

Take truth.

Plato says that beauty

is the splendor of truth.

Now there's an idea.

A metaphor of truth...

Look.

A child playing dice.

I am at your command.

A girl or a woman?

You'll see.

I've never managed
to make it through just as it changes.

When you first met him...

where was it?

In Kinshasa.

At a bend in the river.

That reminds me of something.

The title of...

a book.

Nobel Prize in Literature.

Never been a Nobel for painting.

Or music.

What bank
did he work at?

Alas.

You must not stay here...

It's dangerous.

I am not afraid.

Today, everyone is afraid.

Apache Indians of the Chikawa tribe,

call the world: the forest.

This morning is a dream.

Each person must think
that the other is the dreamer.

A woman can do no harm.

She can annoy you, she can kill you,
no more.

You all disgust me
with your happiness.

This life we must love
at any cost...

I am here for something else.

I am here to tell you no.

And to die.

I have to go too.

Hurry UP!

You can't call this equality.

Rodin's sculpture, The Thinker...
you know it?

I don't know.

The image of equality.

A function, a position.

An instant belonging to everyone
in time and space,

the only one,

the nuts and bolts of equality.

Because everyone's thoughts
in this situation...

thought regains
its place in poop.

You're young.

At the height of your beauty
and strength.

I am going to die.

I do not want to leave you.

I do not want to take you back.

I want nothing.

I am down on my knees,
defeated.

We speak about nothing.

You hurt me
and offended me.

I'd told you so, as well.

We no longer love each other,

never loved each other.

In myths recounting
the birth of the hero,

being submerged in water

is similar
to representations of birth

manifest in dreams.

I can't hear a thing.

He says he's dying.

So let him die.

There has existed

for 20 or 30 years now

a universal declaration
of animal rights.

It contains ten articles.

It was drafted 200 years after 1789.

No one could think

freely

if his eyes
were locked

in
another's gaze.

As soon as
gazes lock,

there are no longer
exactly two of us.

Staying alone becomes hard.

It is not animals who are blind.

Man, blinded by conscience,

is incapable of seeing the world.

What is outside, wrote Rilke,

can be known
only via an animal's gaze.

And Darwin, citing Buff on,

maintains that the dog
is the only living creature

that loves you more
than it loves itself.

The shadow of God.

Is it not for a woman
who loves her man?

Everyone can stop God from existing,
but no one does.

I'm sorry.

Nothing was even broached
at that point in the story.

The reason for their being together

seemed
- although they claim the opposite -

to each of them
devoid of any future.

They enter a murky realm.

Look!

Go on, get out!

He seems nice.

It'll do us good.

Beat u,
fleabag, get out...

Have you been living here long?

Why "long"? "Do you
live here" is enough.

If being face to face invents language

Right and left were inverted

but not the top and bottom.

Why?

When he entered the gas chamber,

a child asked

"Why" to his mother.

An SS officer shouted

No whys!

I remember studying
the Laurent-Schwarz-Dirac curve.

Infinite in every point
except for one which is zero.

Or the contrary.

The two greatest inventions,

infinity and zero.

No.

Sex

and death.

Only free beings
can be strangers to each other.

They have a shared freedom,

but this is what separates them.

Four years ago, you stabbed me.

You've forgotten.

Do something
so I can speak to you.

What must I do?

Persuade me that you hear me.

I will barely say a word.
I am looking for poverty in language.

Where the hell are you going?

I'll show you.

He could not make us...

humble.

Who?

Or could not.

Or would not.

So he made us...

humiliated.

Who?

God.

It's here.

We're going
to see Frankenstein.

We'll be back.

In your circus

of forests,

of hills,

of valleys

pale death

blended the dark battalions.

I am at your command.

Where are you going?

Where I must.

In Kinshasa,

a journalist told me a story

about Mao Tse-Tung.

He was asked about the influence
of the '89 revolution.

He said it's too soon to know.

You know, in Russian,
kamera means prison.

You know, Russian cigarettes
are healthier than American ones.

Why is that?

Because they contain almost no tobacco.

Russia will never be part of Europe.

If Russians become Europeans,
they'll never be Russian again.

I've never made it through.
Not slowing down on green.

Use the formula from yesteryear.

Why are you here?

Because there are no grownups.

In Africa
you were coming out of what?

The silence.

There are tons of sounds.

There is war.

There are animals.

The silence arrives, then...

another country.

They're at the door.
Speaking to you.

With language,
something's happening.

Something awkward
about our relation to the world.

It acts against pure freedom.

I'm speaking,

subject.

I must not stay here.

I'm listening...

object.

You've given up everything.

Take it one step further.

Give up freedom itself

and everything
will be returned to you.

We need to get an interpreter.

Why do you say that?

Soon,

everyone will need an interpreter.

To understand the words
coming from their own mouths.

What does your husband do?

He organizes events.

He's just an individual.

Not my turn
to answer.

You know
better than me.

What did you mean

when you declared:

"I am at your command"?

None of that matters anymore.

What's at stake
is infinitely more serious.

Not simple thoughts
and simple glances.

Summer already

and you still haven't answered.

There was my voice.

I would like to call proletarian
the king of things.

A matter of harmony, then.

About what?

To let the other love.

Do you still take pictures?

Showing a forest, easy.

But showing a room
with a forest nearby...

So the years passed..

You all disgust me

with your happiness.

Yes,

I am here to say no.

This morning is a dream.

Each thinks the other is dreaming.

A woman can do no harm.

She can annoy.

She can kill.

No more.

When I was a kid, we played Indians.

Apaches were my favorite.

Their word for the world is: the forest.

Hurry,
I don't want to wait.

I talk about equality
and each time you talk about poop.

Because that's where we're all equal.

I know what you're looking at.

Yes, a shame, no more forest.

No more war, we said.

Pray to God
that all will be forgiven.

Go away now.

Try to smile
as you leave.

Avoid...

shattered memories.

The police are coming.
You must leave.

Words.

I don't want to hear about them.

No nudity in nature.

Animals are not naked
because they are naked.

Now that I have seen war,

I know that if it ended,

everyone would ask:

what do we do with the bodies?

Perhaps only for them
is the war over.

A philosopher is worried
by others' existence,

perceiving
the revolutionary force of signs.

The water spoke to him

in a deep, serious voice.

So Roxy began to think.

It is trying to talk to me,

as it has always tried to speak
to people over the ages.

Conversing with itself
when there was no one to listen.

But trying,

always trying to communicate
its news to others.

Some of them learned a certain truth
from the river.

The river is still asleep
in a dreamy fog.

We see it no better
than it sees itself.

Here is already the river.

But there,
no more can be seen.

All we see is the abyss.

A fog that stops us
from seeing further.

At that spot on the canvas,

paint not what we see,
for we see nothing,

nor what we cannot see,

for we must paint
only what we see.

But paint that we don't see.

Claude Monet.

I hate characters.

Ever since birth,

we're mistaken
for another.

We push him,

we pull him...

We force him
to get in character.

To live or to tell.

Yes.

We say
there's no choice.

Look in the mirror.

There are both of them.

You mean...

the four of them.

In fact

a fact does not translate
what we've done,

but what we haven't done.

We will have children.

Not yet.

A dog, if you want.

Imagine you're still a little boy.

We looked at cloud shapes.

As a girl,

I saw dogs all over.

In the blue or the white?

We are together, both of them.

We will need children.

Not sure.

A dog, yes!

This is the story dogs tell.

While the fire burns
in the hearth,

and the north wind blows,

the family, then,

sits around the fire.

Puppies listen but do not say a word.

And, when the story is over,

they ask many questions.

What is man?

What is a city?

What is war?

I can know

what someone else thinks,

but not what I think.

Do something

so I can speak.

I can know what someone else thinks,

but not what I think.

Do something

so that I can speak.

It is precisely because this gentleness

was necessary to give birth to pain

and comes back, moreover,

to soothe it at times...

that men can be sincere

with others

and even with themselves,

when they glory in

a woman's kindness toward them.

At the heart of their liaison
circulates, constantly,

secretly,

unavowed to others,

or unwittingly revealed
by questions, investigations,

a painful concern.

But this could not have arisen
without the previous gentleness.

They always want
to be on time.

Where does that
come from?

They want to be first.

A German mathematician...

Another German!

Concerning prime numbers,

Riemann arrived
atalandscape

in which each point
becomes music.

A line of zeros
along the sea.

Miserable...

that I can make you so wretched

the light of day will be hateful to you.

One can imagine
that Frankenstein was born here.

Obey!

One can imagine.

In 1816, Lord Byron and Shelley,
chased from England,

sought shelter by Lake Geneva

with Mary Shelley
who began to write a horror tale.

The hour of my irresolution has passed.

And the period of your power has arrived.

Your threat cannot move me
to do an act of weakness.

But they confirm me in the determination

of not creating you,
a companion in vice.

Shall I in cool blood

set loose, upon the Earth,
a demon,

whose delight
is in death

and wretchedness,

There is great talk of revolution.,

and a great chance of ??? bodies.

German soldiers

camps...

confusion...

tumults...

???...

Rage...

Illusion.

Nothing tragic about this story.

Not the laughter of giants,

no indifferent detail

recounts their pathetic love.

You are in bed, Professor.

You are asleep...

except...

we are not
your dream.

You don't know?

No, I don't know.

I don't believe you.

I'm coming down below.

Yes, in depth.

I think you have to...

start down below...

and then surface.

Two questions,
a big one and a small one.

What's difficult
is to fit flatness into depth.

Suffering.

The other world.

It's him.

Use a deep voice.

My word.

You what do here?

Me very upset!

Outside!

He seems depressed.

He's dreaming
of the Marquesas Islands.

Like in the Jack London novel.

Exactly.

Marlborough has left for war!

Don't know
when he'll be back!