just great

have you seen tout va bien, the super-marxist godard one with jane fonda? i read this morning on the imdb page that it was released internationally with the title "just great."

the movie starts out with a man and woman voicing a conversation about what the movie should be about: a man and a woman, they love each other, but things go sour, and what else? a class struggle? some social criticism? all this over footage of a hand signing checks for all the mundane expenses of filmmaking: electricians, wardrobes, etc. and then it starts but i can't remember how.

there's a strike at a gross meat factory. jane fonda is a reporter so she goes to interview people and her has-been filmmaker husband tags a long. but they get held hostage with the boss, who workers locked up in his office. the union shop steward is mad because the workers messed with a foreman, who is also in the union, and that the workers' behavior is messing up negotiations between the union and the factory for better conditions, pay, etc. but the workers don't want to hear it anymore! they're sick of limited 5 minute bathroom breaks and getting groped by the foreman! there's some great equality stuff that comes up too. a woman calls her husband to tell him she needs to stay at the factory to strike, and you only hear her part but you can tell that he's giving her crap about not coming home to make him dinner, but then she lays out that when he had a strike she took care of the kids and stuff without complaining, and he must've understood cos the call ends amicably. they hold the factory for 5 days and then it seems like nothing much happens. we see more violence, jane fonda and her husband fighting, some discussion of the intellectual's place in the class struggle. what?

a lot of it is people as types (union guy, boss, worker, woman, man, reporter, director, etc) explaining their position or version of events directly into the camera. there's lots of talk of leftists and marxists. one thing that comes up a lot is "i can't explain" or "he didn't explain it right," a lot of people have problems with explaining or explanations.

there's also some great back and forth pan shots, one of a cross section of the factory, like the boat-cut-in-half scene in life aquatic, and another of a supermarket that troublemaker revolutionary students take over. the movie takes place in 1972, with jane fonda (wasn't she all about anti-war? i've totally seen an old as dirt car here that has a bumper sticker that says "screw jane fonda") and the student/worker freakouts in france in 1968 are talked about a lot, too, like that people are still frustrated.

there's a lot of blue, white and red, too. and painting over pictures. while they're holding the factory hostage, the workers paint the whole interior blue. whenever i see blue in a french movie, i think "liberty!" because of kieslowski.

just great is just right, i think, for a title.