What Jean-Luc Godard Taught Me About My Current Existential Crisis
The film Breathless explains why we must embrace our personal freedom.
An existential crisis is our fear of total authenticity. It is a signal we must give up either a current routine, personal conception of pride, or the myriad of cultural attributes we use to describe ourselves. If we do not reconsider one of these variables (or all three), we can experience a debilitating fear we will never find meaning, purpose, or value.
Existential crises are often linked to depression or negative speculations about the purpose of our current state of affairs. Despite the initial, seemingly weird feelings an existential crisis can summon, it can also prepare you for a significant psychological turning point.
Questioning your place in the world can be a catalyst to reinvent your current circumstances for something more meaningful. Existential crises help us achieve a more vulnerable, less shameful self-concept. Our ability to cope with the present and positively prepare for the future is an inevitable part of how we perceive our identity.
Recently, the most common phrase I say to anyone who will listen is, “I am having an existential crisis.” The probing questions contributing to my crisis include, but (trust me) are not limited to: Why do I work here? What if Austin is not where I am meant to live? Is the future of our country scarred forever by sociopolitical self-interests? Is my spiritual practice working for me daily? And most appropriately, why are pickles called PICKLES!?
The weighty emotional and, sometimes, complicated world issues contributing to my probing questions are all symptoms of a crisis which, according to the Depression Alliance, refers to the “moment when a person metaphorically hits the wall.” During an existential crisis, everything may be too much or seem pointless. These philosophical musings can even manifest into concerning psychological health problems. Popular psychology sites like Healthline, Depression Alliance, and Talk Space state existential depression has the potential to be “all-encompassing anxiety about the meaning of our lives and choices.”
“All-encompassing anxiety about the meaning of life” is as broad, and overwhelming, as it sounds. Psychological symptoms of existential depression include anxiety and fear of freedom, responsibility, social connectedness, or feelings of isolation.
Existentialism has its roots in many theological texts, but its most popular reckoning came before, during, and after World War II when philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Søren Kierkegaard began to magnify the significance of personal choice in a world healing from terrible violence.
Jean-Paul Sartre is the most infamous, and one of the few philosophers willing to embrace the label “existentialist.” His theory refutes the notion that God made the universe, world, or us with any particular purpose in mind. (Side note: While my personal spirituality opposes this notion, there is something universally intriguing to consider about his perspective). If there is no particular authoritative structure ordering our lives, then there is no cosmic justice, fairness, or rules by which to live by.
Sartre believes life is “absurd” and has no order. It would be “absurd” for us to search for answers in an answerless world because everything is weirder than we think. We may attempt to invent knowledge to describe the human experience, but life, according to Sartre, is contingent on any random event.
When you first recognize the “absurd,” you begin to have doubts about your life’s purpose. The daily strangeness of our existence is therefore rich in possibilities. He calls this the angoisse (anguish, anxiety, distress, trouble, tribulation) of life. This fear acts as a catalyst to confront your own human experience; A crisis created not for lack of meaning, but for an abundance of freedom. If there is an absurd nature to life, then we are painfully, yet abundantly free.
We are able to design a set of rules by which to live by because there are no universal moral guidelines for our actions. Sartre argues we are condemned to be free, a fate he finds awful, yet uniquely necessary to help us grow as individuals.
The most crucial step to overcome an existential crisis is to accept our freedom in light of the absurd. Authoritative sources like the government or popular culture can tell you what to say and how to act, but because they too are created by humans, they are also figuring out how to live within the context of their abundant freedom.
“I am. I am, I exist, I think, therefore I am; I am because I think, why do I think? I don’t want to think anymore, I am because I think that I don’t want to be, I think that I . . . because . . . ugh!”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, La Nausea
Sartre warns if you refuse to accept this abundant freedom, then you are acting in “bad faith.” If you live in bad faith, you tell yourself things have to be a certain way because someone else (the government, organized religion, popular culture, or even family) told you so.
Sartre demonstrated the “bad faith” concept to one of his students who asked for advice about a personal dilemma. He could either go to serve France during World War II, or he could stay home to take care of his elderly mother. If he decided to serve France, then he would be a smaller part of a noble cause but would inevitably risk never seeing his mother again. Sartre explains that his student’s choice, no matter what it was, was the only right choice. The right choice is only authentic when the individual actively chooses the values he or she wishes to accept.
Sartre proposes we invent our own version of justice. Life only has meaning if we imbue our decisions with what we want. Existential crises are therefore not a feeling life is purposeless, they are a signal to fully accept the living, breathing abundance of personal freedom. We must always be aware that we uniquely define our lives through the choices we make. Our access to choice is our oxygen in an answerless world.
“I am condemned to exist forever beyond my essence, beyond the effective and rational motives of my act: I am condemned to be free.” ― Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
In addition to existential philosophers, psychologists have examined the personal impact existential crises make on the human experience. For example, existential psychologist Rollo May resisted rationalism, or the idea humans can merely be dissected scientifically to solve psychological problems. According to May, the human being is always becoming and existing due to free will. An individual has a unique set of experiences where their suffering, depression, or, in this case, existential anxiety are essential elements to the healing process.
Our psychological recovery is proof that our life experiences help us heal from past and current trauma. May warns that if you do not embrace your negative experiences, then you will have a false sense of happiness, emptiness, discontentment, and dissatisfaction: all contributors to a lack of personal growth.
“It is dangerous to know, but it is more dangerous not to know.” ― Rollo May, Love and Will
Existentialist philosopher and psychologist Victor Frankl in his quintessential, Man’s Search for Meaning argues we can transform existential dilemmas into meaningful experiences. Emotions and embodiment play a role in how we embrace anxiety positively. We have to find and create meaning within our current circumstances to curtail existential dread. Making sense out of fear is easier said than done in the midst of chaos, but if Frankl insists correctly, then we always have autonomy despite the external circumstances that may spur our anxiety.
“Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.” ― Viktor Emil Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
Personal growth ensures that an existential crisis can be a turning point when you feel the essential need to discover your life’s purpose. Psychologist Kazimierz Dąbrowski’s theory of positive disintegration discusses how individuals initially experience and relate to existential despair. His study evaluates whether individuals categorized as “creative” or “gifted” may be more sensitive to suffer a loss of connection with a previously coherent world.
Experiencing disintegration is a part of a developmental pathway where all individuals may break away from their previous, automatic, or socialized view of life. And while you may initially perceive feelings of anxiety in this adjustment, an individual moving through a series of disintegrations develop critical, positive perspectives about the world. They can fully evaluate the hierarchical value structure contributing to feelings of existential dread and then begin to accept total freedom.
The final stage of this process of unbecoming is when you develop a unique vision about how life should be on your own terms. In this stage, creativity is usually the remedy and expressing yourself through action, art, or social change solidifies your personal growth.
The relationship between creativity and existentialism leads me to the post-war French New Wave film movement (La Nouvelle Vague). La Nouvelle Vague was a term first coined by a group of French film critics, and cinephiles who rejected the Tradition de qualité (“Tradition of Quality”) of mainstream French cinema which “emphasized craft over innovation, privileged established directors over new directors, and preferred the great works of the past to experimentation.”
Similarly, to the creative individuals more prone to experience existential musings, French directors and writers began to re-shape cinema and make the absurd transparent. Directors and screenwriters were also prominent movie critics. Jean-Luc Godard’s film career began with his celebrated involvement in the magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, where he would publish manifestos like Une certaine tendance du cinéma français, or denouncements of the adaptations of “safe” literary works into unimaginative linear films.
Rising French film critics were young, rebellious, and therefore more than willing to go against the status-quo. The self-reflexive perspective of the French New Wave demanded filmmaking align with an artistic philosophy called ‘auteur theory,’ a concept where a film is a unique product of a director, or author, with an original and inspired aesthetic vision. New Wave filmmakers like Godard and Truffaut argued film is another form of modern art. They became artistic icons on par with respected writers, painters, and photographers because of this auteur status.
“At the cinema, we do not think — we are thought.” - Jean-Luc Godard
Sartre’s popularity in France inevitably influenced a wide-cultural reckoning of previous approaches to cinematic creativity. In contrast to their predecessors, filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut would use portable equipment, require little to no setup time for a scene, and edit in a documentary style. The subjective realism and authorial lack of structure embraced choice and resisted traditionalism.
The most essential existentialist film is arguably A bout de Soufflé (Breathless, 1960) because not only does it break the rules of convention, it demonstrates an existential crisis in the New Wave movement. Godard and Truffaut (the writer of A bout de Soufflé and director of the influential Les 400 coups) use their two main characters Patricia (Jean Seberg) and Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) to display how popular culture defines behavior and takes away from our true essence.
Patricia and Michel’s identity is so wrapped up in popular culture; it makes their many insecurities transparent. Their identity is based upon the principal of existentialist dread. The film ends with Michel a dead, criminal martyr and Patricia a quintessential femme fatale, incognizant of any real feeling or remorse for turning her lover into the police. The audience is witness to their failure to embrace authenticity. Michel and Patricia suffer under their own self-centeredness and failure to acknowledge their access to authentic freedom.
The personality of each character is humorously self-absorbed. Patricia and Michel’s physical and emotional well-being is depicted merely at surface value. Their dialogue is quick and assuming.
Patricia and Michel lack substance even when dealing with dramatic encounters with the police, sexual intimacy, or walking the bustling streets of Paris. They are never vulnerable and do not dig deep enough into their relationship to realize the impact they are making on each other’s lives.
Michel and Patricia’s lack of emotional depth show they are trying to figure out how to uniquely define themselves in a post-war Paris attempting to do the same. So, they piece together fragments of their favorite classic Hollywood and high art icons to artifically manufacture idealized versions of themselves.
Their highly constructed personalities hypothetically control how they want to be perceived by others. They create an identity based upon what they believe Parisian society to consider “interesting” (side note: kind of like our modern-day hipsters debating who listened to Mumford and Sons first before they got famous).
Michel, for example, strives to be as smooth as his cinematic muse Humphrey Bogart. The audience is frequently bombarded with images of the classic Hollywood icon. Michel compulsively imitates the “movie” like freedoms of lone criminality similar to Bogart in Maltese Falcon or Casablanca. He even adapts Bogart’s most famous on-screen mannerism, tracing his thumb across his bottom lip as if in deep thought.
In contrast to Michel’s obsession with classic Hollywood, Patricia has ambitions to be a cultural scholar. She is a journalist and sells the New York Herald Tribune in the mornings. A few minutes into being introduced to her character, she stands in front of a print of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s famous Portrait of Mademoiselle Irene Cahen d’Anvers (1880) and asks Michel, “Do you think she’s prettier than I am?”
Patricia and Michel each rely on either pop or high art culture to define themselves. Patricia’s admiration of artists such as Renoir and literature such as William Faulker mirrors Michel’s frequent, rehearsed Bogart-style act. They both manipulatively model their essential cultural icons in order to avoid revealing their true selves. In contrast to what Sartre defends as “true choice,” they model their behavior on preexisting authorities like mass media rather than their authentic soul-self.
Patricia and Michel are not particulary likable due to their lack of authenticity. The viewer cannot penetrate their self-absorbtion, we can only observe how their lack of originiality destroys their relationship. Patricia and Michel exist through ideology based upon what culture deems “cool,” further destructing existentialism as a means to an end. Truffaut’s characters and Godard’s direction help us decide how to handle freedom in a version of Paris where individuality is blurred between the realistic and exaggerated. Patricia and Michel have yet to acknowledge the absurdness of popular culture because they are too busy being absurd themselves.
Sheer disinterest in the world around them also contributes to the lack of any real courage Michel has to quit his criminal lifestyle once and for all. His commitment to his Hollywood version of criminality is merely for imaginative purposes. The only reason he seems to be a part of the lifestyle at all seems due to his admiration of Bogart and the depraved rebellious attitude he wants to share with the outside world.
Michel’s unrealistic relationship with his Hollywood persona drives him to look continuously and consciously “cool.” Michel’s human condition has made him an outsider, and he is happy to accept the consequences. He attaches himself to a criminal lifestyle to rebel against society yet continuously uses fictional cinema icons to justify his reckless actions.
If we were to examine Michel’s case through the theoretical lens of suitable existentialist philosopher Albert Camus, we would see Michel’s obsession to oppose society with a Bogart-style rebellion actually keeps society and its rule of law stable. This is evident when he courageously accepts defeat when Patricia turns him into the police.
Instead of running, he is comfortable with the isolation jail could offer him. Away from the city, women, specifically Patricia, he can isolate himself from a society he does not know how to be a part of. In the last scene, we witness Michel’s personality split when he gets shot in the back by the police attempting to out run the cops. When he finally confronts death he is no longer an absurd version of Bogart, but a mortal man who has been too afraid to cope with his true existential freedom.
Patricia demonstrates an extreme vision of Sartre’s existentialism. Her individuality and freedom are her number one priority over achieving romantic intimacy. Her obsession with high art and literature fuels her ambition to be perceived by others as cosmopolitan. She is more concerned with how others see her, thus eliminating her ability to be ultimately vulnerable with Michel, a man she loves.
Patricia may profess to follow an underground code that says high culture breaks through the confines of new media and commercialism. Yet, this does not make her authentic. She hates Michel’s obsession with Hollywood, yet her commitment to being “different” makes her susceptible to snobbery. Patricia’s ambition to be different is solely based on others’ appraisal of what they believe to be original. Patricia is what we modernly call a “hipster,” an individual following the latest unconventional trends to feel better about herself.
The ending of Breathless has a climax that is a result of Patricia and Michel’s denial of self. Michel dies by being shot in the back. The last scene shows him running, roaming down the streets as if in existential exhaustion. Michel sacrifices his life and Patricia rejects love in order to conform to society’s obsession with popular culture. Constructing their essence upon the arts, whether it be commercial or fine, compromises their ability to embrace their abundant freedom.
Michel faces the ultimate consequences of his criminal lifestyle. Patricia denies her personal freedom to create herself in the image she aspires to be a refined, muse féminin. Every step and decision they make is, therefore, premeditated due to their static vision of individuality. Godard represented Patricia and Michel like how many of us perceive ourselves, through a series of inauthentic social masks (side note: reminds you of Instagram culture right???). Godard’s obligation to prove this without over-the-top cinematic embellishment shows his character’s ad hominem: a failure to embrace an existential crisis condemns you to a life of vanity.
Godard teaches all of us that authenticity does not come from the way we wish to be perceived by other people. Popular culture obscures how we view ourselves and eliminates the possibility of true intimacy.
Authoritative sources like the government or popular culture can tell you what to say and how to act, but because they too are created by humans, they are also figuring out how to live within the context of their abundant freedom. Existential crises are self-actualizing because they transcend cultural expectations. If we attempt to construct our identities for the benefit of others, then you deny yourself freedom.
Sartre and Godard’s emphasis on choice reminds me that we have a living, breathing, abundance of freedom that makes us spiritually woke. An existential crisis is an incredible phase where our anxiety acts as a catalyst to achieve creative authenticity. Its when we deny the anxiety of existence, like Michel and Patricia, that we end up psychologically, if not physically stonewalled from the vulnerable, yet thrilling exploration of the self. Life and our purpose in this world must leave us Breathless, A bout de Soufflé.
