Inspired by the late-period essay films of mentor Jean-Luc Godard, Leos Carax’s 41-minute short film It’s Not Me feels like a project that tries to do many things at once, without being completely successful at any one of them. Mixing archive footage of historical events and tyrannical world leaders with images from his own films and big, bold texts taking centre stage, It’s Not Me can be overwhelming at times.
This results in an experience that could’ve very well worked as part of an exhibit at the Centre Pompidou (its original home, which never panned out), but that, as a film, is fascinatingly uneven.
Now, the project was initially conceived to answer the question “Where are you at, Leos Carax?”, which makes the end result rather intriguing. Because in order to answer said question, what Carax has done is mix several different thoughts and issues, some of them related to his personal life, and others linked to his professional one. At one point, he compares himself to Roman Polanski, both positively and negatively, and also includes a scene involving his daughters reading about Hitler. There’s a point to all of this, of course, but it can be a tad difficult to find it due to the film’s erratic and rather fast pace.
It doesn’t help that Carax decides to include a real-life call with Godard in It’s Not Me, which further motivates the viewer to compare the film to the French New Wave master’s later work. As an experimental, varied and sometimes thought-provoking visual essay, It’s Not Me isn’t bad at all. But if one compares it to Godard’s work, it can start feeling pretty underwhelming. For one, It’s Not Me has a rather soft tone, as if Carax wasn’t daring enough to include the uglier periods of his career or personal life as part of his self-reflection. And again, although he does invite us to a chaotic and sometimes confusing visual brainstorm, it doesn’t feel aggressive enough for it to leave a big impression in the end.
Nevertheless, It’s Not Me does succeed at making the viewer reconsider Carax’s filmography, making them perceive both his work and point of view from another angle. The movie is presented as a sort of unconscious self-reflection, with a scene of Carax making notes while asleep framing the whole experience and allowing the viewer to consider that all of these topics and thoughts and criticisms are constantly in the filmmaker’s mind. I don’t think it’s anything world-shattering, but it will nevertheless be interesting to re-watch some of his films after having experienced It’s Not Me.
Besides, the movie is not only about the past. Yes, it does remind one of Jean-Luc Godard and the influence he had –and seemingly continues to have– on Carax, and it does include many images of his previous directing efforts, which should create potent connections between them and other ideas in the viewer’s mind. But Carax also seems to be preoccupied with the nature of the image: the way an apple, for example, can be viewed in a flash, but also as twenty-four continuous images, and how we now take that for granted. He’s worried that movies have been commodified and seems to believe that we should return to the relative innocence of the beginnings of cinema. Having everyone be able to shoot videos with a cellphone might not be such a good idea.
Some will perceive It’s Not Me as pretentious. Some will get bored by it, others will find it fascinating and thought-provoking. Me? I’m pretty much in the middle, although I did enjoy it overall. I do think it’s too chaotic and fast-paced to be completely thought-provoking, though, and it’s really apparent that it started as a piece for an exhibition, rather than a short film. Still, it proves to be quite an interesting peek into the mind of a risky and mysterious filmmaker, someone who after many years in the industry, still has a lot to say and worry about. In the end, It’s Not Me seems to actually be about Carax, whether he wants to admit it or not.
Official Trailer:
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