Годар. Диалог Наны с философом из фильма "Vivre sa vie"

Nana          Mind if I look?
              You look bored.

Philosopher   Not at all.

Nana          What are you doing?

Philosoper    I'm reading.

Nana          Will you buy me a drink?

Philosoper    If you like.

Nana          Do you come here often?

Philosoper    Occasionally. I happened by.

Nana          Why are you reading?

Philosoper    It's my job.

Nana          It's odd.
              Suddenly I don't know what to say; it often happens to me.
              I know what I want to say. I think about whether it is what I mean.
              But when the moment comes to speak, I can't say it.

Philosoper    Yes, of course.
              You've read The Three Musketeers?

Nana          No. I saw the film. Why?

Philosoper    Because in it, Porthos. This is really in Twenty Years Later.
              Porthos, tall, strong, a little stupid. 
              He's never thought in his life.
              He has to place a bomb in a cellar to blow it up.
              He does it. He places the bomb, lights the fuse, 
              then he runs away, of course. 
              But suddenly he begins to think. What about? 
              How it is possible to put one foot before the other?
              You must have thought about that, too.
              So he stops running. He can't go on,
              he can't move forward.
              The bomb explodes, the cellar falls on him.
              He holds it up with his shoulders.
              But after a day, or maybe two,
              he is crushed to death.
              The first time he thought, it killed him.

Nana          Why did you tell me that story?

Philosoper    No reason, just to talk.

Nana          Why must one always talk?
              Often one shouldn't talk, but live in silence.
              The more one talks, the less the words mean.

Philosoper    Perhaps, but can one?

Nana          I don't know.

Philosoper    I've found that we can't live
              without talking.

Nana          I'd like to live without talking.

Philosoper    Yes, it would be nice, wouldn't it?
              Like loving one another more.
              But it isn't possible.

Nana          But why? Words should express
              just what one wants to say.
              Do they betray us?

Philosoper    But we betray them, too.
              One should be able to express oneself.
              It has been done in writing.
              Think: someone like Plato can still be understood - 
              he can. Yet he wrote in Greek, 2,500 years ago.
              No one really knows the language,
              at least, not exactly. 
              Yet something gets through, so we
              should be able to express ourselves.
              And we must.

Nana          Why must we?
              To understand each other?

Philosoper    We must think, and for thought
              we need words.
              There's no other way to think.
              To communicate, one must talk;
              that is our life.

Nana          Yes, but it is very difficult.
              I think life should be easy.
              Your talk of The Three Musketeers
              may make a good story,
              but it's terrible.

Philosoper    Yes, but it's a pointer.
              I believe
              one learns to talk well only when
              one has renounced life for a time.
              That's the price.

Nana          So, to speak is fatal?

Philosoper    Speaking is almost a resurrection
              in relation to life.
              Speech is another life
              from when one does not speak.
              So, to live in speech
              one must pass through the death
              of life without speech.
              I may not be putting it clearly,
              but there is a kind of ascetic rule
              that stops one from talking well
              until one sees life with detachment.

Nana          But one can't live everyday life
              with... I don't know.

Philosoper    With detachment.
              We balance, that's why we pass
              from silence to words.
              We swing between the two
              because it's the movement of life.
              From everyday life one rises
              to a life we call superior.
              The thinking life.
              But this life presupposes
              one has killed the everyday
              too elementary life.

Nana          Then thinking and talking
              are the same thing?

Philosoper    So I believe.
              Plato said so; it's an old idea.
              One cannot distinguish the thought
              from the words that express it.
              An instant of thought can only
              be grasped through words.

Nana          So one must talk and risk lying?

Philosoper    Lies, too, are part of our quest.
              Errors and lies are very similar.
              I don't mean ordinary lies
              like I promise to come tomorrow,
              but I don't, as l didn't want to.
              You see, those are ploys.
              But a subtle lie is little
              different from an error.
              One searches and can't find
              the right word.
              That's why you didn't know
              what to say.
              You were afraid of not finding the
              right word. That's the explanation.

Nana          How can one be sure of having found
              the right word?

Philosoper    One must work.
              It needs an effort.
              One must speak in a way
              that is right, doesn't hurt,
              says what has to be said,
              does what has to be done
              without hurting or bruising.
              One must try to be in good faith.

Nana          Someone told me: "There is truth
              in everything, even in error".

Philosoper    That's true. France didn't see it
              in the seventeenth century
              They thought one could avoid error
              and what's more, that one could
              live directly in the truth.
              It isn't possible.
              Hence Kant, Hegel, German philosophy:
              to bring us back to life
              and make us see that we must pass
              through error to arrive at the truth.

Nana          What do you think about love?

Philosoper    The body had to come into it.
              Leibnitz introduced the contingent.
              Contingent truths and necessary
              truths make up life.
              German philosophy showed us that
              in life, one thinks with the
              servitudes and errors of life.
              One must manage with that,
              that's true.

Nana          Shouldn't love be the only truth?

Philosoper    For that, love would always have
              to be true.

Nana          Do you know anyone who knows
              at once what he loves?

Philosoper    No. When you're twenty
              you don't know.
              All you know are bits and pieces,
              you make arbitrary choices.
              Your "I love" is an impure affair
              But to be completely at one with
              what you love, you need maturity.
              That means searching.
              This is the truth of life.
              That's why love is a solution,
              on condition that it is true.

Jean-Luc Godard. "Vivre sa vie"