10 Overly Pretentious Movies We Should've Walked Out Of

5. Film Socialisme

Few directors in the history of cinema have so frequently courted the epithet "pretentious" as often as Jean-Luc Godard. The enfant terrible of the French New Wave movement which emerged in the late 1950s, Godard has consistently challenged the formal conventions of filmmaking throughout his career, often to great effect (see Breathless, Pierrot le Fou, Band a Part, Contempt and many more besides) but sometimes with results which are less than satisfying. Film Socialisme undoubtedly falls into the latter category of Godard's cinematic oeuvre. Posing a "magisterial" essay on the collapse of European civilisation (something most audiences were probably wondering how they'd managed to allow such a monumental event pass them by without them noticing), Godard's all-encompassing treatise on the past, present and future plays out more like a self-conscious art installation, excusing itself for its lack of clarity with its visual ambiguity. All of which would be fine and well if the imagery was more provocative and intriguing than it is, but sadly that's far from the case. The deleterious effects of globalisation on the modern stage have been far more effectively evoked in a number of documentaries, and Film Socialisme is too avante-garde for its own good and ends up swamping the message in an impenetrable montage.