Pierrot Le Fou

Anna Karina in Pierrot Le Fou
Originally uploaded by rustedrare.

Art imitates life, but can life imitate art? After showing my high school film studies class Tony Scott's True Romance, I decided to compliment the film with Pierrot Le Fou; after all, the films are very similar in theme. Both films, Pierrot Le Fou and True Romance display human lives exploring a way out of their mundane existences, and their biggest inspiration is art (Clarence's muse is kung-fu and John Woo movies, and Pierriot reaches for Balzac and Johnny Guitar). In the mise en scene, Godard uses art (impressionism, expressionism, cubism, pop) to show Pierrot and Marianne's world they create. The message is clear in the end: life is not as easy to manipulate as a sentence; the rearranging of words can destroy meanings: "Words retain only what's pure." -- Marianne in Pierrot Le Fou